Jake Wasinger
Blog 1
6 March 2011
The Mid-South Center for Peace and Justice in Memphis, Tennesse strives in their community service program GrowMemphis to sustain a healthy, progressive community in Memphis. The idea of an urban gardening program promotes healthy citizens, social awareness and the utilizing of urban space. It is true that parks and open areas of cities (and towns) can be utilized to grow healthy food for communities. Not only is Memphis taking steps forward to make certain this is available to their community, but also by opening up their volunteer work to others, allows the volunteers (like myself) to be involved in community gardening. Prior to hearing Daniel Dermitzel speak about the current state of environment on Saturday, March 3rd, I was not aware how beautiful the idea of community gardening may come to be.
Dermitzel began his presentation with a short introduction about the 'history of our environment.' This information was insightful, because it grasped the way certain scholars look at things like the ecosystem, agriculture and the environment as a whole. For instance, looking at the act of agriculture as a 10,000 year old or the earliest evidence of wheat beginning in 9800 B.C., allows the recipient of this knowledge to ponder: How has the life of a farmer changed? How has our food changed? Did farming occur in urban settings in the past?
As we ask ourselves these questions, it was interesting to hear Dermitzel reveal modern farming practices. Statistically, Dermitzel brought to attention the amount of farmers necessary to sustain agriculture. He showed that in recent history there has been less farmers but more output of agriculture (due the advancements of technology). It is interesting how he put this statistically in correlation to the use of fossil fuels: that the output of agriculture (creating food), used to produce workers (people would eat and then work); however, nowadays agricultural industries use great amounts of fossil fuels to create great amounts of food.
On a more optimistic note, Dermitzel revealed the beauty of urban farming. As any person produces food in a sustainable urban setting, they are not separating or "mechanizing" nature, as the agricultural industry does. Using different sources to create food (ie: wind or solar energy), communities could be less dependent on fossil fuels, and more dependent on the earth and what it does provide us create healthy food. As healthy food is something a lot of people take for granted, creating healthy food should not only be a priority, but something that people love to do.
