The Urban Agrarian Practice Agriculture Touch Dirt Dont

The Urban Agrarian • Practice Agriculture • Touch Dirt • Don’t Grow it Alone

Genetic Engineering NO WAY! I’d never eat something with DNA in it…

Some important terms • Genetic Modification (GM): – Modifying the genes of the organism – can be done through traditional plant breeding. • Genetic Engineering (GE): – Combining DNA from two species that would be unlikely to be combined through traditional breeding methods.

Clicker Question • True or False: – Using this definition, sticky rice is an example of a genetically modified organism.

Food, Ecology, Politics From mechanism to organism Toward a Gaian Food System Food as a Political Flashpoint 7

Modernity & the Mechanical Worldview • Reductionism – The whole is the sum of its (inert) parts – Linear causality, predictable effects • Social & political translations – Possessive individualism – Sovereignty –� Commodification, efficiency, consumerism • Utilitarian approach to nature - and people! 8

Why should we not take solace in the fact that through the aeons, Gaia has always established a new equilibrium after catastrophes? 1. Gaia does not care about justice or ethics. 2. By that time, fossil fuels will have run out. 3. Any future equilibrium will be have far less biodiversity. 4. Any future equilibrium is likely to be less conducive to human habitation than the present. � 9

Towards a Gaian food system • Human systems as a subset of Earth system – Thinking in circles • All “waste” is food – Harmonizing the world system & the Earth system • Rebalancing carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus & water cycles • The person/planet politics question: What is my contribution to the whole? 10

Food as a Political Flashpoint • Nexus of survival, culture, economy, ecology – “The environment we eat” • Political ecology rooted in trade, petroleum, water� , uneven development, risk cultures, urbanization… • Food movements – Local food, school gardens, slow food, food sovereignty, food justice, fair trade, urban farming – Common ground? 11

Chicago Urban Farm 12

Detroit urban farm 13

South Central Farm (L. A. ) 14

Favela Farm, Sao Paolo 15

16 School gardens…everywhere

La Via Campesina protest, Cancun Climate Co. P 2010 17

French farmers’ occupation 18

Food as a political flashpoint 19

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Closing the circle… as the circle is closing 24

O wonderful! I am food! I eat food! My name never dies, never dies! I was born first in the first of the worlds, earlier than the gods, in the belly of what has no death! Whoever gives me away has helped me the most! I, who am food, eat the eater of food! I have overcome this world! He who knows this shines like the sun. Such are the laws of the mystery! From the Taittiriya Upanishad 25