Food has always been important to me. There are certain smells, tastes, and even vessels such as glassware that take to me specific wrinkles in time, nostalgic memories, that bring me comfort and nourishment. My passion for understanding food cultures and systems has taken me all over the world. One of the foundational lessons that I have learned in my research, travels, and volunteer work with food and eaters is that sustainability in our food systems is food justice.

Initially when I thought about sustainable food systems I had thoughts of vertical farms, organic gardening tehcniques, farm to table, and other trendy lables and terms. While these are certainly part of the food sustainablity umbrella, I have learned that sustainability also means that our practices of food production, distribution, and consumption must be grounded in anti-capitalist and anti-racist methods to have truly sustaining food systems that are equitable, healthful, and environmentally friendly. As I reflect on my experiences across town and across continents, this has become abundantly more clear to me.

My introduction to sustainable food practices began half a world away, unexpectedly, without intention, and left me hungry for more. I found myself outside Moshi, Tanzania speaking with an Australian woman who owned the hostel I was staying in for the month. I had come to Tanzania with no plans and was discussing ways to be involved and busy during the days to get away from the hostel. She put me in touch with a permaculture farm near Kilimanjaro. In that moment I had no earthly idea what permaculture even meant, but I was excited about being on a farm and growing food. I learned that the purpose of the farm was to sustain a home for endanged and orphaned children. It was important that the farm was completely self-sufficient to provide for the children all throughout the year and without the dependence of the government (which was very problematic at the time) or other entities. I learned about permaculture practices from the farmworkers and the coordinator of the project. I asked lots of questions. One day, she handed me a book on permaculture practices to take home and study (which I graciously did).

This idea of self-sufficiency and autonomy over one’s food system became a strong tenet in how I began to think about sustainability and food. They were cultivating their own food for their own consumption, not for a market, and in this action alone they were working to de-commidfy food. There is also a sense of empowerment in being self-sufficient. Permaculture requires such a profound level intentionality. Everything from sourcing water, eradicating weeds and pests, and harvetsing had to be done with great purpose and intention. For example, there was a stream on the property that we used to irrigate the gardens and for drinking water.

I returned from Africa excited about these topics and with a new worldview in which to think about them. The next food adventure took place in a small town in northern Thailand where I learned that the socio-economic status of a person is directly tied into the kind of rice you receive (the most nutritious rice was a high premium) and how important culture played into meal making.

I spoke with a jovial chef and cooking instructor who was eager to talk all things food (my kind of person). He walked me through a market and upon reaching the rice vendor and seeing my suprise at such a variety of rice, explained the nutrient and price levels of each of the rice variations. Depending on your status, you received a certain type of rice. The most nutritious rice option reserved for the wealthy. Additionally, he taught me that the most important aspect to Thai cooking is balance. Every dish should have elements of sweet, sour, hot, spicey, and bitter simultaneously. On the train ride out to the culinary school, he discussed his passion for food and growing fresh organic ingredients.

The traditional style of serving Thai food is family style and everything comes out when it is ready. There are no courses per se. Sharing a meal in Thailand transcends time as you pass around soup and rice and organic vegetables and fish, you are sharing more than just food. You are sharing a moment, sharing reflections of the day and anticipations for tomorrow, and you are sharing community. Eating is very much a communal practice. I took home these flavors and lessons in community building and what it means to share food.

When we think about sustainable food systems, community should be at the heart of that conversation.

Travel with me next week to explore the foodscapes of Puerto Rico and Bogota and how citizens are working to disrupt colonial food practices.

The assignment:

Sustainability as Practice in Our Lives as Community Members and as Student Affairs Professionals

The goal of this assignment is to understand how sustainability is present (or not) in your life – personal and professional. To do this find a mechanism where you can record what your notice, think and do about sustainability. If journaling or blogging works for you do that. If tweeting is something you like and you want to share that’s good, FB posts, Instagram – of course. Using a Notes or other app is fine and if you want to record and document via photos or voice recording do that. If other mechanisms are better for you use those. The point of this assignment is to think about, notice and document where and how sustainability shows up in your life both personally and professionally. There will be opportunities throughout the course to post these to the ELC site. During the last week of the course we will have a sustainability summit to discuss and analyze what we’ve learned.

Blog Post 1 for the Assignment: This Feels Very Meta

My initial reaction to reading the description of this assignment was a smile and reflection on my previous blog posts about sustainability. In 2016, my husband and I (and our dog, Emma) decided to move into a camper. We purchased a vintage Avion and completely remodeled it to live in for 6 months. Well, spoiler alert, we stayed in it fulltime for 2 years! We fell in love with tiny living. As I started a master’s program with a focus on sustainability, I had grand plans of keeping a blog to document our sustainable living project. Of course, I quickly realized how UNsustainable keeping a blog would be during grad school, so alas, the blog fizzled away as quickly as it had appeared. But when I read about this assignment, revisiting that blog from 4 years ago seems like the perfect place to start. So, you now find yourself reading a blog post for a sustainability class assignment within the blog that I started several years ago on sustainability. Talk about a way to recylce!

The name of the blog, The Rusty Rivet was used as that is the name we lovignly gave our camper that we remodled. We decided to move into an old camper because we loved the idea of repurposing something that already existed instead of using resources to build something new. We also liked the idea of using less energy and water for our small space. We took the adage “Reduce, reuse, recycle” very seriously, by reusing a camper as our residence, reducing our carbon footprint and resource use, and recycling as many things as we could. This project transformed how we viewed material objects. One side of this sentiment is you have to be pretty minimalist to live in a 300 square foot home, so everything you bring into the home must be functional and/or bring you great joy (which we later learned had massive impacts on our wellbeing in addition to sustainability). The other side is, we now continuously see material objects in multipurpose ways. You know the phrase, “One person’s junk is another person’s treasure”, well we have taken it to heart and ya’ll there is treasure everywhere! Food jars got turned into soup containers and served organizing needs, old pallets got turned into a comfy outdoor bed for lounging and studying (you have to understand that when you live in a camper, the outdoors are an extension of your home!). We were and continue to think about alternative uses of objects. The idea behind the Rusty Rivet blog was to help document these thought patterns and share ideas and resources. 

So, here I am, writing a blog entry about a blog, this is feeling very meta! I decided to begin this assignment with my previous short-lived blog, because I think it is the perfect starting place for helping me to articulate how I think about sustainability. I have been very interested in sustainability for as long as I can remember. My passion for sustainability and food led me to a master’s degree in Geography where I focused my work on sustainable and just food systems (which I am certain will be a blog entry on its own). I was also a writer and reviewer for the student run science blog at UGA, the Athens Science Observer. I contributed to sustainability topics. Sustainability is a common conversation topic that emerges with friends and in my marriage. At this point, I think it is evident that sustainability very much influences me and my decision making. 

The specific question of “How do I think about sustainability” still remains. I think based on my previous blog and excerpts from life, I conceptualize sustainability very much in the ways of the first tenets I learned from elementary school, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. To me, finding alternative ways to utilize items that we already have is foundational. I also tend to think about sustainability in terms of the macro and the micro, with a little more emphasis on the micro. It is important to me to live as sustainably as I can because it helps fulfill this sense of responsibility that I have to be a good steward of our planet and to our future generations. Do I believe that my actions will eradicate climate change? No, absolutely not. But I think that my actions observed by others in my community and circles have the capacity to change attitudes around climate change. I am a believer in the ripple effect and that starting small and local can shift the larger macrocosm.

So I hope that you enjoy flashing back a few years with me as we rediscover together my previous views around sustainability and how I am growing in that area. Please be kind as the previous blog posts were written years ago and I have only recently returned to this upon reading the assignment for this class! This blog just felt like the right home for this assignemnt to reflect, write, and discuss sustainability from my perspective. Here are a few more pics of our time in the Rusty Rivet and some pictures of a quarantine remodel we did for a client last year!

Last year we had the pleasure of assisting a client-turned-friend in purchasing a 1972 Airstream and remodeling it for her. We saved this camper that had been sitting in a junkyard for 10 years and gave it a new home and new life to enjoy for years to come. Here are some of the before and after pictures. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.