Food and Farming Justice Senior Integrated Projects
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This collection includes Senior Integrated Projects (SIP's, formerly known as Senior Individualized Projects) related to Food and Farming Justice.
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Item The Survival of the Island of Vieques : Resilient Agriculture and Community Solidarity(Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College., 2019-09-01) Perez, Ranya; Garriga-López, Adriana, 1978-The island of Vieques has been a US colonial territory for centuries. This paper will examine the colonial violence of the United States in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in particular, looking at the realities of the occupation of the United States Navy on the land. Through ethnographic work gathered in the summer of 2019 from working with La Colmena Cimarrona, a resilient agro-ecological organization, I was able to gather stories of the realities of Vieques. The ethnographic work collected allows for an understanding from the Viequenses who have faced centuries of colonial oppression but have used their power and community solidarity in order to rise up and survive. The resilience of the Viequenses are observed through the stories shared by residents who have worked to become autonomous. I use the work of other authors in order to situate the historical context of Vieques. Additionally, the stories shared allowed me to understand the theory of community solidarity, agroecology, and food sovereignty.Item Evaluating the Carbon Footprint of Agriculture Products : a Meta-Analysis of Various Agricultural Life Cycle Assessments(2019) DeGraff, Gina; Georgic, Will CameronThe purpose of this Senior Individualized Project was to investigate the environmental impact of various agricultural products. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) for the subject products were collected and compared using an analytical technique called meta-analysis. The LCA evaluates the greenhouse gas emissions at each stage of an agricultural product's life cycle: agriculture, production, packaging, transportation, retail, consumption, and waste. Using meta-analysis, the data from each LCA can be analyzed together. Comparing the data from independently conducted LCAs allowed for the identification of one specific life cycle stage that resulted in the greatest amount of greenhouse gas emissions for each product considered in the study. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that the agricultural production stage was responsible for the highest level of emissions for each agricultural product. The results from this study support the need for changes to be made at the agricultural level in order to achieve sustainable production processes. The study also found a need for more comprehensive LCAs to be conducted in livestock production.Item Adverse Effects of Farm Labor Housing on Mental Health(Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College, 2018) Lennox, Madison R.In order to comprehend mental health and well being among the migrant farm worker population, one must consider the various stressors that may have contributed to poor mental health statuses. This project examines stressors such as socioeconomic status, the working environment, language barriers, acculturation, social and geographic isolation, and health care access with an emphasis in how these stressors correspond with substandard living and housing conditions to contribute to poor mental health.Item Bringing Children's Art into Nature : A Community Art SIP(2011) Schaub, Jamie L.; Rice, Thomas, 1960-For the summer of 2011 I was an intern at Edison Environmental Science Academy in Kalamazoo, ML I helped facilitate a Garden Camp which took place two days a week at the garden outside the school, and two days a week at Pretty Lake Farm in Mattawan, ML My community art project was developed by observing the garden camp during the first week. When we were at Pretty Lake Farm the children enjoyed drawing, journaling, and eating on the picnic table outside the barn. I noticed that no surfaces or seating existed at the school garden and I hoped to create a gift that the school could continue to use in the future. I decided to build a picnic table, as functional art. This table was a canvas on which the students painted, and became a place for activities and eating. The project began with a buildup of art lessons in order to get the children to think creatively about their surroundings. I taught art lessons relating to nature throughout the six weeks and asked the students to brainstorm ideas for the final art project. It was their idea to make a farm scene, and so they painted animals, plants, fruits, and vegetables allover the picnic table. I was impressed by their creativity, and used their ideas to create the plan for my community art project.Item Ecological and Cultural Self-Understanding Through the Language of Food(2018) Carter, Lee Raymond; Latiolais, Christopher, 1957-Applying a critical analytic approach to food studies touches both environmental and social concerns since food exists fluidly—inextricably connecting the two. Thus, a critical theory approach to food extends across the disciplinary lines drawn between environmental and social realities. Food is necessary for heterotrophic life; and, in the complex social world of humans, food is an important piece at almost every level: food is social; food is religious; food is political; and food is economic. Food is a connective force that leaves its influence in people’s day-to-day lives, the way we organize ourselves, and our relationship to the land. Food is an area ripe for research because of how it brings so many different human issues into play through the focus on one aspect of our lives. It is an intimate element that draws together not only society and nature but also human’s internal reflection with the reality of the outside world. Through questioning our interaction with and thoughts about food, critical food theory strives to explain why we think about food the way we do, how our understanding of food shapes the role it has in our lives, and, in turn, how the role of food in our lives affects our outlook on life more generally. In this way, critical food theory, like critical theory more generally, “has as its object human beings as producers of their own historical form of life” (Horkheimer, 1993).Through this world-historical model, critical food theory looks at the ways in which humans have been defined by our foodways and attempts to uncover the ways in which these developments have fallen short of their potential to promote human good, freedom, and self determination.