Project by: Miles Horner (11th Grade)
Project Advisor: Kara Luce
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Kelly O’Shea
Description of the Project: Through a few online classes, I will be learning about the ways in which our current food system contributes to climate change and eurocentrism, and what needs to be done to remedy this. One online class focuses on the state of the global food system today, exploring how it interacts with climate change, and what strategies we need to take to the agricultural industry to transform both small-scale farms and larger-scale agribusinesses. The other class focuses exclusively on the US food system, looking at it from a public health perspective. Hopefully, I will leave the project with a greater understanding of food justice and will able to understand what needs to be done to transform the global food system to be both sustainable and to have it be able to provide food for the 2 billion undernourished people alive today.
Final Product:
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Open in new tab Final Reflection on Learning: The thing that I learned the most during this project was about the power of critical thinking. While doing my first online class, I was fascinated by the things I was learning, about how the food system was broken, and about how industrial agriculture was destroying our environment. I kept picking up, however, this underlying theme about how the systems and practices that were uplifted by western countries and western ideals generally seemed to be the ones that were worse for the environment. Then I learned about how the vast majority of food wasted is wasted in western countries, and not by producers, but by consumers. However, I kept finding myself angry at the class that I was taking, feeling like it was presenting all of the information surrounding the issue but failing to address the root cause of the issue: the western ideals that were perpetuating our food system. I then came to the realization that what I was doing with this honors project, what LREI had taught me to do, was to think critically about the information I was presented with. I had to make those connections and outline them in my final essay to properly show what I had learned. I hope that I was able to do that in my final essay, where many of my arguments about why our food system is broken centered around the failure of western ideas and practices to adapt and change to the changing world.
Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3 (include any photos or video if relevant): During the first three weeks of the honors project, I learned about the many drawbacks of the global food system. Specifically, I focused on how the system wastes much of the food it produces, how large companies need to change their practices almost immediately, and how the food supply chain is extremely inefficient. I also learned about alternative agricultural practices such as agroecology and agroforestry, which are more sustainable and more environmentally friendly methods of farming that can be implemented in the areas where nutritious food is needed the most. Although the amount of time that I was able to focus on the project was a bit hampered by the SAT and the final steps of our junior trip project, I was still able to do a good amount of learning. In the next two weeks, I hope to finish my online class, start the next one, and begin outlining my final essay on why and how the global food system needs to be changed.
I enjoyed doing a lot of this learning about specifically how the food system is broken and how it could be fixed, but I felt as if my class was missing another layer about exactly why it’s so imperative. The class also takes a very scientific and data-driven approach to the issue, and I hope that in my final essay, I am able to look at the issue through more of a social justice lens, analyzing how the systems of eurocentrism and capitalism work in tandem to make our food system work how it does today.
Link to my online class: https://www.coursera.org/learn/transformation-global-food-system?
Link to my Google Doc of Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFs302bMll9H9gHHz4uK4-NTohus3VCLXAA0LJFO79k/edit
Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6 (include any photos or video if relevant): During these weeks, I finished my first online class and synthesized a lot of the information into an outline. I also started the second online class but came to the conclusion that it actually isn’t relevant to what I’m trying to learn, and have decided to omit it from the project. In my outline, I decided to split the information I learned into two sections: what needs to be changed about the global food system and how we can change the global food system. In the section about what needs to be changed, I divided my knowledge into three sections: environmental damage, food distribution and loss, and capitalism. In the section about how we can change the food system, I also divided my knowledge into three sections: agroecology, getting rid of meat, and changing attitudes. In these next few weeks, I aim to simply write and finish my essay. I hope I am able to get it done in time and am able to post my findings to the honors project blog.
Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9 (include any photos or video if relevant):
In these last few weeks of the honors project, I synthsized the information I had already put into my outline a bit more, made my arguments as clear as they could be, and supplemented it with a little extra research to finish off the process. Then, I began creating and drafting my final poster and final essay, which I ultimately finished in the final weekend of school. I am very proud of my final product, and am excited to do more projects in the future.
