Hey blogosphere!
In a little over a week, I'll be heading to Quito, Ecuador, where I’m participating in a field studies program through the School for International Training (SIT). The program is titled, “Comparative Ecology and Conservation,” and the issues we’ll be studying include the culture, history, politics, and diverse ecological zones of Ecuador, traditional and currently appropriate uses for natural resources, natural resource management practices, and the intersecting social, economic, and environmental justice concerns related to sustainable living, in both an Ecuadorian and a global context. Although the program is technically split into separate courses, the curriculum is very interdisciplinary, and most of our learning will take place in the field or in the form of guest lectures. During the semester I will be living with a family in Quito, but, in addition to various day trips outside the city, I will also be traveling for 3 week-long stints to the Galápagos Islands, Yasuní National Park in the Amazon, and the Intag Cloud Forest Reserve.
I’m particularly interested in the conservation and sustainability aspects of the program, especially when applied to agriculture and food systems. In the past two or three years, I’ve spent a lot of time working on broader environmental campaigns that were largely legislation-based, but as crucial as passing comprehensive climate legislation, banning mountaintop coal removal, and subsidizing renewable energy is, that work can be pretty dehumanizing. I've found that keeping my nose to that grindstone for too long makes me feel like I'm losing touch with the personal, on-the-ground reality of those issues. That’s why I’ve become increasingly involved with urban food security and sovereignty projects, which seek to ensure that all people have equal access to healthy food by reclaiming local community control of food production and distribution.
More and more people live in cities every year, but our food system hasn’t adapted to meet their needs, and consequently many urban neighborhoods are “food deserts,” stretches as long as 100 blocks without a single full-service grocer in which residents rely on fast food and corner stores for the majority of their caloric intake. We need to figure out how to transform cities into places where people can actually live healthy lives, and I think sustainable urban agriculture is a big part of the solution. Urban ag is critical on a systemic, societal level if we’re going to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but it’s even more important on a personal, community level, because it’s bringing people together and putting the reins back in their hands.
During the last month of the program, I will be conducting an independent study project in collaboration with a local community group or NGO, and I hope this time will allow me to hone in on Ecuador’s approach to sustainable urgan agriculture. As more and more people migrate to Ecuador’s urban centers, the country’s municipal governments have developed a pretty solid record of subsidizing and promoting urban agriculture projects, which they see as an investment in the physical, economic, and social health of their communities. These projects and their counterparts in other cities range from small private plots in families’ front and backyards, to larger community farms that are communally cultivated, to grocery stores' hydroponic rooftop greenhouses. After working to address food insecurity in Cleveland last summer, I’m excited to see what systems with similar goals look like in Ecuador. I'm hoping to return from Ecuador inspired to keep working on these issues in my own community and energized to hit the books again and finish my BA in Latin American Studies and Environmental Science.
Of course, the expectations I have about what I’ll be studying and what I’ll learn may completely change once I’m actually living it, but that will be part of the fun! In the past, I’ve had trouble consistently blogging about my adventures away from home/school for people who are elsewhere, but this time I’m determined to succeed! This may be the longest entry I post here, but my plan is to post about once a week with some photos and an update about what I’m up to. Thanks for reading!
