2011 Sustainable Food Scholar Update 

Sarah Hoyle-Katz, Education Coordinator 

 Raina Martens, our 2011 Sustainable Food Scholar, is completing her first year at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. Read below about what your donations have helped her learn! (You can also read her reflection on her research on locavorism here.) 

This year has been full of learning opportunities for me at Guilford College. I am so grateful to have received the Common Ground Sustainable Food Scholarship! I have spent a significant amount of time thinking about the future of food, envisioning what a truly sustainable food system looks like and how to make that a reality through community organizing.  

My first semester I took a class called "What Should We Eat? The Ethics and Environmentalism of Eating." In this course I was given the opportunity to do extensive research on the topic of locavorism and the local food movement. I read books such as Food Justice by Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi and The Locavore Myth by James E. McWilliams. I realized that "local" is not always synonymous with better for the environment and that there is more to the sustainability of food than just the miles it traveled from farm to fork. Coming to terms with the fact that the local food movement does not provide a comprehensive solution to the current food system was very difficult for me. I realized that I must be prepared to face the daunting complexity of food issues and the food system in order to create effective change.

I took a class on community organizing, called "Community Building Fundamentals," that made me realize what a powerful tool communities can be for solving problems. In the class I was able to envision the strategies I learned for community organizing applied to food justice issues. The class empowered me by teaching me the skills necessary to address pressing food issues within a community context. Before I took this class I felt unable to cause any real changes to the food system as a single person, but now I see how powerful organized communities can be. An experience that really solidified this idea for me was attending a talk by Nikki Henderson, the director of the People's Grocery, a food justice organization in Oakland, CA. The People's Grocery is an umbrella organization that provides funds and support for community based initiatives that are designed and run by members of the communities they support. These programs are sustainable entities in themselves after initial assistance from the People's Grocery, which provides tools, resources and trainings to get them started. The People's Grocery model is successful on many levels and is extremely inspiring and gives me hope for a future of just food.  

This past year I have also been a part of the Greenleaf Coffee Cooperative, a student-run coffee shop on Guilford College's campus. The mission statement of the Greenleaf names sustainability as one of the core values, and the discussions that I've had on the meaning of sustainability have been extremely valuable. I'd always thought of sustainability from a strictly environmental perspective, thinking about reducing waste and such, but through the Greenleaf I've realized how the ethos of sustainability is all-encompassing. I particularly like this definition from Wikipedia: "sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions." I think that in the context of sustainable food and food justice, this definition is particularly important. It means that sustainable food is not only about the maintenance of responsibility for the health of the environment, but also for the viability of businesses and for the welfare of humans.

Expansion Update

Jacqueline Hannah, General Manager    

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