My essential question is, how can learning about food sustainability inform the sustainable practices I use in my own life? I wanted to explore this question because I’m really interested in food sustainability, production, and farming. Having had experience working on a farm throughout my childhood, I have always paid attention to where my food was coming from and how it was produced. I grew up learning how to physically grow and cultivate food, whether it was raising animals or planting vegetables. However, I think it’s really easy to forget what goes into the food we eat, even having this experience. Working on a sustainable farm showed me the importance of sustainability in my own small community and I wanted to learn more about its importance in a larger system. In the food sustainability class I took last year, I was introduced to many different aspects of food sustainability. We learned about the mass production of food and its impacts on people and our environment. Having this basic knowledge has been super helpful in my research because I can go deeper into the areas that I’m already familiar with.

I listened to a couple of episodes from a podcast last week, mostly about food citizenship and included interviews with sustainable farmers. I really valued listening to stories from real people because It helped me gain a better understanding of what really goes into sustainable farming for small operations. This informed my understanding of my essential question somewhat because I can better understand why it’s important to support small sustainable farms and how important their work is. However, there is so much information I learned this week that I’m having trouble piecing together. From the research I’m doing now, I’m slowly realizing that there are very few real ways to truly produce food sustainably while meat is a part of the system. I still want to understand the cultural, economic, political barriers to reducing meat production as it is the biggest contributor to climate change, land and water degradation, and many deadly health issues. Learning about all these horrifying impacts that the livestock industry has is also making me question my own eating habits. Although I rarely eat meat, I want to explore more about how changing diet can be a major way to become more sustainable as an individual and its larger impact that It could have on the planet.