20 Ways to grow, think about, and EAT food

From The Vermont Quarterly, University of Vermont (UVM)

 

by Joshua Brown | Megan Camp ’84 | Lee Ann Cox | Jon Reidel G’06 | Amanda Waite ’02 G’04 | Jeff Wakefield | Thomas Weaver | Dave Zuckerman ’95

The study and practice of food systems threads through academic disciplines, across political boundaries, and into the lives of every individual on the planet. As complex as these questions are, they might be boiled down to this—creating positive approaches to food for the wellbeing of the environment, farmers, and ourselves. Extension Dean Doug Lantagne ’77 directs UVM’s Transdisciplinary Research Initiative on Food Systems, a focus particularly well-suited to Vermont. On a visit to the state several years ago, author Michael Pollan, a leading voice in the food movement, was struck by the passion, expertise, and innovation he found in Vermont and at the state’s university. Read on for a glimpse of some of this work being done by UVM faculty, students, and alumni.

AGRICULTURE & AESTHETICS
A social geographer’s view
"Food systems, to me,” says Cheryl Morse, assistant professor of geography, “is not just about food choice. It’s about the landscape that provides the food.” Here in Vermont, the look of that landscape—the idyllic pastoral scene, the “sweeping view with a mountain in the background and a maple tree in the foreground”—cuts right to the soul of the state for most people. The irony, Morse says, is that classic mix of farm buildings, open land and forest was a nineteenth century creation of the state to lure back people who had fled after the Civil War, whether as tourists or to live. “They crafted a narrative about the rural ideal and the agrarian landscape of Vermont,” she says. Leave the land alone, and it wants to be trees.

According to Morse, it’s not just agriculture that’s keeping spaces open but private landowners who see scrubby boundaries creeping in and bring out the brush hog. “It makes people really sad,” she says. “It makes them think people aren’t taking care of the land. So it’s not so much an ecological perspective they’re coming from, it’s more from a cultural historical legacy.”

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