In 2012, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians engaged research specialists working in several different fields, including anthropology, the physical sciences, and law. Our assignment was to assemble a report to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about air quality on the tribe’s reservation in northern Wisconsin. With this report, the tribe aims to redesignate its reservation’s air quality from Class II to Class I under the “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. The air on the reservation today is too clean to be classified as Class II, and redesignation as Class I will help the tribe ensure that this status is formally recognized and protected. In fact, the tribe first initiated this process in the 1990s, but suspended its work due to the anticipated legal costs that it would incur if the redesignation were challenged by the State of Wisconsin. Now that five other tribes in the United States—including the Potawatomis in Wisconsin—have set a precedent by achieving this same redesignation, Bad River decided to reinitiate the process.

The requirements of the federal law that enable redesignation of air quality include assessment of the environmental, health, social, and economic effects that upgrading air quality is likely to entail. Larry Nesper, who has extensive experience working with tribes in Wisconsin, was asked to contribute the “social effects” section of the report to the EPA. He invited me to assist him by conducting interviews with members and neighbors of Bad River during a one-week visit to the reservation in the summer of 2012.

We began our research with the premise that the sociocultural vitality of the Bad River community is rooted in culturally meaningful interactions with non-human elements of the landscape. Nesper’s previous research with the Sokaogan Band over the development of the Crandon mine has illustrated the deep significance of such relationships for Ojibwe people in Wisconsin. Thus, rather than focusing our interviews on speculations about what could happen if the high quality of air on the reservation were to deteriorate, we mainly discussed what people do on the landscape right now, how these activities underpin the health of the Bad River community, and what happens within the community when environmental degradation interferes with these activities.

From among the many activities that involve culturally meaningful interactions with the environment, one subset emerged as a particularly productive topic of conversation: the wild rice harvest that occurs in the late summer. Wild rice plays a key role in Ojibwe mythohistory and lends its Anishinaabe name to Bad River’s annual Manomin Powwow, which takes place during the harvest. “It’s just a big community thing out there, and a lot of people look forward to it,” one man said of the harvest. “It’s something else. If you come into the sloughs [the wetlands near the mouth of the Bad River] and you come around the last corner there by the line, you look and you can stand up in your boat and you can see all the guys out there ricing, all the boats, all the guys out there ricing. […] Same thing in spring time when there’s fishing: you’ll see everybody out there pulling their nets.  You know, it’s always good to [ask], ‘Hey how’d you do?’ And, you know, finding out the scoop and it’s… it’s a lot of fun.  It’s a whole community thing.” Our interviewees remembered going to the ricing camps that were set up near the slough during the rice harvests of their youth—occasions at which they learned about Ojibwe culture from their elders.

Several years ago, the committee of elders that oversees the rice harvest was forced to cancel the annual harvest entirely because low water levels in the Bad River slough disrupted the growing season for the rice, resulting in very low yields. The committee decided that any harvest would impair the rice’s ability to reseed itself for the following year. The cancelation was not prompted by poor air quality, and most interviewees did not attribute the poor yield to human-caused environmental damage. Still, the decision to cancel that harvest triggered tensions in the community that are of direct relevance to our research. One elder, who compared the normal rice harvest to a holiday that draws out-of-town relatives back to the reservation, recalled the year the harvest was canceled: “The younger people really got angry. They were looking forward to going out, bringing rice for the family. They’re all macho guys wanting to do all this stuff, and they couldn’t go. […] Some of the guys, they rice for their family and then they go and sell some. And so they got a little cash in their pockets and they can go buy something [that] they’re not able to get or whatever. And that’s not there. They have to go tell their grandparents there’s no rice. So nobody has the rice for the winter. And there’s special ceremonies, special holiday’s during the year, and on your birthday there’s rice. Whatever kind of meal you have, there’s always been rice there. And it’s…well, you’re feeling sad. It’s like a grieving when something has died. You know when someone dies there’s grieving because it’s not there no more.”

The wild rice harvest is, of course, only one of many activities that bring Bad River Ojibwe out onto the landscape. Our interviewees also talked at length about hunting, fishing, and gathering for subsistence and ceremonial purposes. Each of these activities strengthens the social fabric of the Bad River community as it draws people into closer relationships with each other and with non-human elements of the environment. Amongst humans, extensive networks of reciprocity are activated each time a resource is harvested: interviewees commented that they donate a part of their take from hunting and fishing to the elders, that they give to neighbors who have been less fortunate, that they give foods to relatives who live off the reservation, and so forth. These foods are also a necessary element of feasts celebrating life-cycle rituals. In fact, since many Ojibwe consider it taboo to replace feast foods with store-bought items, special licenses are issued by the tribal council for harvesting certain resources out of season when they are needed for feasts.

A prominent leader in the tribe explained how Ojibwe cosmology extends human sociality and reciprocity to non-humans: “essentially it’s an understanding that we’re sharing the land, that we’re sharing the water, that we’re sharing the air, and as much as we’re sitting here talking about impacts to the people of our reservation, if we really wanted to explore it through an Indian world view, we’re going to talk about the impacts—in as much depth as we do with people—as it pertains to frogs, blue herons, wild rice, forget-me-nots, things like that. Because they all have their spirit. Those rocks under that lake bed—when I talked about water clarity being as important as air clarity and the potential impacts—those rocks have a spirit, and the way we look at them and the way we pick them up and hold them and put them back and things like that, all of that stuff has a place and an importance in who we are and for what they are.”

Succumbing at one point to the temptation of “what ifs,” I asked two men of around 30 what might happen if the air and water quality were to worsen: “If there’s a haze over the watershed, or the mercury levels go up in fish, what happens?” The tone of the interview changed instantly. After losing himself for a moment in thought, one of the men replied, “I say we failed.” He explained: “You know, it’s not in our beings to just let that kind of stuff come into the land that we’re trying to protect and live off of. We are a part of the land, you know; it’s not just for us to use up the way we see fit, but to live within the means of the land. And, I don’t know, it’s just—it would be hard to imagine my rez with those kinds of things, with mercury pollution or any kind of pollution. I don’t know what to think if something like that were to happen.”

The second interviewee, an employee of the tribal natural resources department, agreed: “I think that failing, it’s huge.” He pointed out that the quality of the air, the water, and the land, which the tribe is attempting to protect, affects people well beyond the borders of the reservation. “So when we’re trying to preserve not only our rights and our waters and everything else, we’re trying to preserve [them] for the entire population—the entire world—because our area is something to be seen by, I believe, the entire world. We got one of the most pristine, beautiful wetland areas in the world, I believe. And I’ve been around a little bit in the United States and I’ve yet to see places [like those] that are seen around here. So I think if it becomes like that, [then] yeah, we failed. I think we’d lose a lot. I think our rice is so… so touchy. If an inch of water could affect how it grows I can just imagine what dirty air could do to it, and with the cycle that it’s in I think it’d just be too much for the rice to grow. But… it is something to think about, I guess. You never know until the day comes, but… it would be nice to preserve it for everybody in the future.”

Nesper completed a first draft of the “social effects” section of the report to the EPA in August 2012. He will return to Bad River in the summer of 2013 to conduct further interviews. When the physical scientists and the lawyers have weighed in, a final application will be made to the EPA with the full expectation that the agency will approve the higher air quality standards for the Bad River Community. Redesignation will reaffirm the pride with which community members speak about their stewardship of the land and will help them continue to look after the wellbeing of both human and non-human spirits that inhabit the landscape in and around the reservation. It may also become an important tool in the tribe’s efforts to oppose the construction of an iron mine that was recently approved by the State of Wisconsin.

Joe Quick is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He studies indigenous peoples and material culture in the global economy. His dissertation research explores tourist-oriented handicraft production in highland Ecuador.

Larry Nesper is Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He studies American Indian law and politics in the Great Lakes area and is currently working on a book about tribal courts in Wisconsin. His edited volume with Brian Hosmer, Tribal Worlds: Critical Studies in American Indian Nation Building (SUNY Press), was published this year.

When I began researching honey collecting in the Philippines, I never anticipated that making visual collections of objects and images associated with marketing honey was going to become a powerful way of stimulating discussion about my study.  But the clues were there all along. Collections are things brought together, in so many senses of the term. Such assemblages have a capacity for telling stories about how different products make their ways through the world, and into our homes, bodies and lives. Honey collecting, like other forms of forest harvesting or hunting, tends to evoke ideas about a bound type of thing moving in one direction – out of the forest and into a market (wherever that might be).  But what happens when a ‘natural forest’ honey supposedly harvested on an island in the Philippines is manufactured and sold in Manila?  And when this honey’s association with nature and forest environments is hardly natural, but needs to be made apparent by literally rendering the final product green?  How do such commodities relate to the forest honeys actually being harvested by Indigenous experts as part of their livelihoods and lifeways, and being marketed by non-government organizations?  In attempting to discuss the issues that arose from my research, I found that bringing together a range of honey products that had different, yet related, trajectories could be a wonderful prompt for talking about the social and spatial disjunctures that often occur within efforts to add value to certain types of natural resources.

Sarah Webb talking with a honey street vendor in Metro Manila

In the Philippines, Palawan[1] honey is one such ‘value-added’ forest product.  Indigenous experts[2] seasonally harvest honey mainly from Apis dorsata beehives in forested areas on Palawan Island.  For the Indigenous Tagbanua families I worked with, honey is not only a part of their livelihood but also an important source of nutrition, sweetness, medicine and cultural identity.  Within the Philippines, many people are interested in buying Palawan honey because it is a highly valued product with a reputation for purity and quality[3], particularly because of its association with Palawan’s iconic forests and ‘natural wonders’, such as the Puerto Princesa Underground River.  Local Indigenous representatives who market honey promote non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as honey because these products support their current goals for sustainable forest livelihoods.

The notion that NTFPs, like honey, can contribute to sustainable forest livelihoods has influenced international development projects, policies and research initiatives – especially since studies began to suggest that the economic value of NTFPs might exceed that of timber.  ‘Value adding’ NTFPs often means building up markets of more highly valued forest products as an alternative to logging and mining.  The idea is to provide income for forest harvesters, while maintaining the resource base.  However, ongoing research makes apparent the need to approach the potential of NTFP commercialization for sustainability agendas with caution.  Scholars have demonstrated that merely providing more valuable resources will not necessarily address the socio-economic marginalization of forest harvesters, or the concerns of sustainable livelihoods (however these might be conceptualized).  Important research in environmental anthropology has documented how value-adding incentives can pay insufficient attention to the reasons forest harvesters do not have access to valuable forest resources – or why they no longer have such access[4].

Drawing upon this line of research, I examined how the politics of capturing value is a part of the social processes of making products valuable in the Philippines. When I began searching for Palawan honeys sold in Manila, I found that it was not only those interested in sustainable forest livelihoods who were ‘adding’ to honey in order to make it a valuable product.

Adding to Palawan Honey

The reputation of Palawan honey as ‘natural’ and ‘pure’ gives it certain market appeal, but has also inspired a burgeoning range of imitation products.  Different ‘fake’ Palawan honeys are made by adding water and sugar, the name of Palawan, and even green food coloring to honey of dubious origin.  On Palawan, campaigns have targeted adulterated honey, which is made by adding water to increase volume, and sugar or kalamansi (native lime) juice to disguise the diluted taste.  In Manila, experts on the honey trade assert that the volume of honey claimed to originate from Palawan exceeds both Palawan estimates for local production and state records of honey transported from the island. Green honey is an expensive[5] product (supposedly rare and medicinal) identified as coming from Palawan when sold across boutiques and farmers’ markets in Manila.  However, according to testing conducted by Dr. Cervancia of the University of the Philippines Los Banos, ‘green’ honey is made green by mixing yellow and blue pigments into the honey – additions which she contends change its composition in such a way that it should no longer, technically, be called honey.

A manlalbet (honey harvester) indicates the location of a hive

So what does a black market for green Palawan honey in Manila mean for Indigenous Tagbanua harvesters? Firstly, Indigenous peoples are often blamed for adulterating local honey.  Although this practice is more likely conducted by transitory middle traders[6], these rumors cause some to shy away from purchasing honey directly from Indigenous harvesters on Palawan.  Some local buyers use such rumors to negotiate a lower price for the honey they buy from Tagbanua families, claiming the honey is of a lower or ‘reject’ quality.  Secondly, my use of the term black market is somewhat facetious. While practices of ‘fake’ honeys are widely considered undesirable, and have been banned by Palawan local government, branding or labeling honey as coming from Palawan (even when it does not) is not regulated at a national level.  At the same time, honey from Palawan does not easily make its way from Indigenous harvesters to Manila.  State permits are required to transport honey, and seasonally driven, local production means that a relatively low volume of honey from Palawan enters the Manila marketplace.

As these forest products are made valuable, particularly through their association with iconic forest environments, a space has emerged for creating even more expensive ‘fake’ honey products.  Such cultural politics are part of, rather than external to, the processes of making products valuable.  Those manufacturing and purchasing such products are actively involved in creating social and economic values of not only honey, but also the ideals of nature through which consumers position their tastes and health in relation to the environments of Palawan and the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples.

Taking Away from Added Honeys: Understanding Commodity Flows and Values through Material Culture

As I investigated these politics of valuing honey, I initially collected products[7] because I was interested in the actual objects of honey marketing.  That is, not only was I interested in what people had to say about honey, or how they behaved during sales encounters, but I also wanted to know what these material objects themselves said about honey production. I was fascinated by the material transfer of honey from the large plastic gallon jugs used during harvest to smaller containers for resale, the colors or textures of the honey itself – indicative of different qualities and tastes – and, of course, the product labels that communicated both explicit and implicit messages to potential customers.  All of this material culture supplemented, furthered, or contradicted what different people told me, and it was in making sense of those relationships and tensions that I was able to understand how Palawan honey is made valuable. But during ethnographic fieldwork, I also noticed collections everywhere I looked – from displays of product samples at non-government organization (NGO) workshops, to samples of ‘fake’ honeys being tested in university laboratories, to the ways people arranged important objects in their homes.  And this made me realize that what I had collected might be of interest to others too, and so the collection became the basis of workshops conducted at the end of my fieldwork.

Sarah Webb and research assistant Mr. Rogelio Rodrigo at a honey collection workshop

For workshops with Tagbanua families, I prepared descriptive labels for honey and beeswax products that included information about the price and provenance, as well as photographs of different contexts of sale.  My research assistants and I arranged these into displays, and talked about the different products, answering any questions participants had.  After doing so, we passed the different objects around, and sampled each – trying on beeswax cosmetics, and smelling and tasting honeys.  At their request, a group of harvesters ran their own tests on the honeys we presented to determine for themselves whether they considered any ‘fake’, and to ascertain differing levels of quality.

Tagbanua families are only too familiar with what they describe as the dangers of ‘fake’ honey – particularly, they fear being blamed for the production of such ‘fakes’, and the resultant punishment by the state or low prices from buyers.  Most Tagbanua people are aware that a fraudulent ‘green honey’ is sold.  But the complex connections and distances between the existence of such commodities and their own experiences can be difficult for any of us to talk about.  When these differently sourced, made, packaged, and promoted honey products were brought together, they provided us with the means of discussing the bigger social stories surrounding the journeys of Palawan honey to the marketplace.

The fate of my collection of honey products was important to me; I hoped that it would remain together, and be able to support ongoing research engagements. To this end, I was thrilled to hand the collection over to NATRIPAL, the Indigenous peoples’ federation of Palawan, as an addition to their own display of sample products collected during their research and marketing activities. In the offices of the organization, we installed the display of honey products and conducted an additional workshop to discuss the collection’s relationship to my research and the federation’s ongoing work. Apart from their nationally and regionally awarded efforts to provide more favorable market relations for Indigenous people and to develop the brand of Palawan honey, NATRIPAL has lobbied intensively for the land and livelihood rights of Indigenous peoples across Palawan.

There are many challenges for environmental anthropologists to work through in considering how collections can be used as forms of engagement.  But there is great potential for harnessing approaches to objects, which have traditionally resided within the fields of material culture studies or museology, for research in environmental anthropology. Visual collections are not just symbolic of what we do throughout our research activities, or simply representative of the issues we are exploring.  They can also act as a means for thinking and talking through pressing social and environmental issues in ways that draw from the experiences researchers and those they work with already have.  And perhaps most thrilling, there is a possibility that such collections might have a vibrant life beyond the intentions of researchers. This is, of course, only one of many innovative pathways for collections to act as powerful tools of engagement.

Back in 2005, as Emory University embraced sustainability as part of a new strategic plan, it was the physicians on the visioning committee who insisted on including food as a priority.  Recognizing that environmental, economic, health, and social justice concerns intertwined with food, the committee encouraged local sourcing of vegetables, fruits, dairy, and poultry from farms with sustainable certifications.  Imported items (bananas, coffee, tea) could contribute to campus goals by embracing products with Fair Trade or organic certification.

As an anthropologist with long-standing interests in social and environmental justice, I have been an active participant in Emory’s move toward sustainability. From 2007 to 2011, I chaired an active Sustainable Food Committee that brings together campus stakeholders to pursue increased sustainable food purchasing, nine Educational Food Gardens, a weekly campus Farmers Market, regular speakers and panels, an annual Sustainable Food Fair, a student summit on sustainable food, a guide to healthier event catering, and sustainable food information sheets written for general use: (http://sustainability.emory.edu/page/1008/sustainable-food).

Peggy Barlett meets with Burning Kumquat farm leaders at Washington University in St. Louis.

To inform the work with the Sustainable Food Committee, I also conducted a study of campus sustainable food projects at thirty colleges and universities around the US—small, medium, and large in size, both private and public in funding. It turned out that about half of these pioneering schools had some sustainable food purchasing commitment in their dining program.  Social scientists have debated whether institutional purchasing commitments are capable of having an impact on the global food system, but with an annual budget of $4 billion in food purchases, U.S. colleges and universities would seem to have the capacity to redirect significant purchasing power to an alternative food chain.  In addition, by explaining the rationale for such purchases, higher education can support a more public debate about the costs and benefits of our current food system.

Nevertheless, one of the important findings of my research is that few schools have transparent accounting systems in place to document their claims with regard to new directions in food purchasing.  Such transparency can be seen as a critical next step as more and more institutions embrace the goal of supporting an alternative food chain.

Beyond campus dining, campus food projects include direct marketing and experiential education for students.  About two-thirds of the schools in the sample had some academic program or courses around food issues. Many included dynamic co-curricular activities such as a movie series or Slow Food Club. Three-fourths of schools had a newly-established local farmers market or CSA, thereby making new purchasing patterns more easily accessible to employees as well as students.  Together with the rationales of sustainable food initiatives, these efforts spread an implicit critique of conventional food along with an embrace of emerging alternatives.

Perhaps most surprising is that 25 out of the 30 schools have an active farm or garden.  Farms have long been a feature of schools with a college of agriculture—or of schools with a particular mission, such as Berea and Warren Wilson Colleges—but the addition of farms to liberal arts institutions such as Dartmouth, Hamilton, and Luther and non-agricultural schools such as Stanford, Washington University, and Humboldt State demonstrates a new level of interest among students in agricultural skills, especially in organic production.  Most of these programs have begun since 1995 and offer volunteer opportunities, course credit, or paid internships.  No longer dominated by male students, women farmers are in the majority at some schools.  This embrace of both manual labor and the riskiness of organic production represents a new skill set demanded by students.  At Washington University, students obtained campus land and funds and learned to produce food organically on the Burning Kumquat Farm.  Produce was sold in a low-income neighborhood over the summer.   Such hands-on learning and the popularity of international volunteer experience on farms is evidence of emerging aspects of a new food paradigm that connects ethical action and considerations of place to the daily act of eating.

Anthropologists can contribute in many ways to these campus food efforts.  Courses that draw on anthropological expertise offer insights into the promises and challenges of developing sustainable food systems.   Many campus farms or community gardens require the support of a faculty or staff advocate in order to thrive.  In some schools, faculty can also play a critical role in making sustainable purchasing goals a reality in campus dining halls. Though dining services staff can be strong advocates for new policy directions, alliances between the “operations side” and the “academic side” build the strongest programs and also offer rich educational experiences.  Many campus sustainable food initiatives are led by students as well, so for anthropologists who are not prepared to work personally towards campus change, the adage “support your local hero” may be relevant.  Finally, anthropologists at every level who attend to how food can become a locus for consideration of alternative practices—in production, in distribution, and in consumption—can help lead the way toward a more sustainable food system for us all.

Peggy F. Barlett is Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology at Emory University.  Her research has long concerned the social and ecological dimensions of agrarian change in Latin America and the United States.  More recently, she has focused on sustainability in higher education as a tangible arena in which to understand and enact sustainable development more generally. 

Once a booming agricultural and factory town, Muncie, Indiana, is today a post-industrial rustbelt city grappling with questions about its economic and environmental futures. As heavy industries left town, Muncie’s economy has flagged, leaving some 24% of its residents at or below the poverty line.  To make matters worse, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined in 2007 that one-third of the city’s former industrial sites were brownfields that posed risks to human health and safety.[i]

In spite of these challenges, Muncie residents are transforming and revitalizing their city. In particular, they have shown renewed and growing interest in sustainably produced foods as a boon to overall health, safety and environmental restoration. Innovative partnerships have enabled Ball State University (BSU) professors and students to directly contribute to these community efforts. Inspired by Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd’s pioneering community study, Middletown, BSU professors and students are expanding this tradition of conducting engaged, local research to benefit the region. The result has been the transformation of former brownfields into public wetlands.[ii]  Also through direct civic engagement, student volunteers have helped remove 70,000 pounds of trash from the White River watershed over the last six years. As significant as these restoration efforts are for the community, local residents are also finding ways to combine sustainable economic development with environmental restoration.

As an environmental ethnohistorian and a resident of Muncie, I became interested in these grassroots efforts. I signed up for a plot in a local community garden, an experience that enabled me to better understand how organic and sustainable efforts to produce local food are also contributing to large-scale efforts to clean up and breathe new life into east-central Indiana. Gardening on everything from parking strips to abandoned and foreclosed properties is one step residents are taking towards restoring the landscape and increasing green space in the city. Such efforts improve the quality of life and encourage people to invest more in Muncie, overall.

In spring 2012, I launched a pilot study with student researchers from the Department of Anthropology in order to explore different dimensions of local food production in Muncie and Delaware County. Students compared organic and conventional farming, explored urban community gardening and studied the history of agriculture in east central Indiana. Student teams conducted archival research, participant observation and interviews, identifying three areas for community-based research. Several new and exciting student-led projects have emerged from this pilot project, which my students and I describe below.

Ball Brothers Glass Factory – Muncie, IN

HOOSIER ROOTS

Dr. Cailín E. Murray on the History of Home Production in Muncie         

Muncie’s answers to its own questions about 21^st century sustainability and environmental restoration can be located in family traditions and local histories. The Hoosier heartland is rooted in much older traditions of self-sufficiency and local sustainability. When new settlers arrived to the region in the early 1840s, they brought with them an ethic of self-sufficiency. Families took pride in the home production of seasonal fruits and vegetables, fresh meats, dairy products and eggs through family-centered activities on urban homesteads. BSU Geography graduate student, Bryan Preston, in his recent MA thesis, demonstrated that gardening is an old activity in this region and is once again on the rise in Muncie.[iii]

My own work with my colleague Mark Groover—an historical archaeologist who specializes in the study of homesteads and the American transition to consumerism—involves collaborating with members of the Delaware County Historical Society and homeowners to uncover clues about past household production in Muncie. Using both ethnohistoric and archaeological methods, we plan to reconstruct this local culture of self-sufficiency by demonstrating how Victorian-era residents in Muncie met the food needs of their families and communities. For example, early settlers Thomas and Matilda Neely worked tirelessly to grow and process a wide variety of foods on their large house lot for over 40 years. People like the Neely family also relied on the production efforts of neighbors. We’ve discovered that one neighbor in the area kept bees on his property and sold the honey locally. These are small glimpses into a complex early food web that will hopefully provide knowledge for contemporary urban growers seeking to promote self-sufficiency and sustainability in 21^st century Muncie.

Muncie became a world-renowned symbol for the possibilities of home food production and preservation with the arrival of the Ball Brothers from New York in the 1880s. They selected Muncie as the location for their new glass factory and began producing the iconic Ball canning jars.

Yet, as Muncie prospered and more residents came to rely on commercially purchased foods, home food production waxed and waned. When the need arose, citizens responded to community gardening initiatives with enthusiasm. Portions of the Ball State campus were reserved for Victory Garden plots during both World Wars. To make ends meet during times of global economic and political strife, residents did their part by planting vegetable crops at home and in local community gardens and by canning their own foods.

In 2013, Muncie’s post-industrial ‘rustbelt’ image is changing as residents once again become involved in sustainability initiatives and local food production. The community supports eleven different public garden sites, where residents from all walks of life raise food. While the gardens represent different initiatives, they have organized into a formal network: the Muncie and Delaware County Urban Gardening Initiative. This structure enables them to share resources more effectively, offer educational opportunities and encourage more public engagement.[iv]

At the same time, within the city and beyond its borders, small-scale farmers are also using sustainable methods to produce food for local outlets, including Muncie’s farmer’s market. While student researchers found few farmers can afford the formal organic certification process, many farmers still endeavor to produce food using more sustainable methods. In fact, Muncie’s Farmer’s Market has grown in size and scope in less than ten years and has become an important community gathering place. In addition to replacing rust belt and toxic waste with gardens and green belt, public gardeners and small-scale food growers are addressing the need for greater local food security—the ability of individuals, families and communities to meet their own nutritional needs. Food insecurity, a widespread social problem especially among poorer people, is the result of inadequate resources to secure and prepare food on a regular basis and can lead to hunger and even starvation.

GARDENING IS A GAMBLE

One of my students, Whitney Lingle—a Master’s student in the Department of Anthropology—is conducting ethnographic research with gardeners from Muncie’s African American community. Whitney’s work looks at the complexities of gardening, including how it might not be a “one size fits all” solution for local food insecurity.

Model for a WWII school Victory Garden – Frankfort, IN (image courtesy of IN.gov)

Whitney Lingle on Poverty, Food Insecurity and the Hidden Costs of DIY

My thesis research explores the attitudes and practices of gardeners affiliated with the Roy C. Buley Community Center, a local non-profit with deep roots in Muncie’s Whitely neighborhood. Their mission is to engage families in Muncie through community-building activities, including an after-school program, and a children’s garden, built near the site’s playground. The plots are used by Buley community members, as part of summer education programs and comprise a link in Muncie’s growing network of community gardens. As a volunteer with the Buley Center, I spent time with children and parents and engaged them in conversations about cultivating food. Community center members expressed a range of attitudes toward food production, ranging from enthusiastic descriptions of gardening as a fun family activity to anecdotes of disappointing yields or guilt over not gardening more.

While gardening is considered to be a positive facet of local foodways and urban landscapes, my thesis research looks at the socioeconomic complexities of gardening. I examine two key questions: 1) How does gardening contribute to food security for Buley Community Center families? And 2) What makes gardening practical for, or prevents it from being a viable, and worthwhile, contribution to reducing household food insecurity?.

High-profile urban gardening efforts, and a renewed interest in systems of local food production, have contributed to a resurgence in the home food production movement in the United States. This do-it-yourself trend signals a shift in how Americans valorize local food production. This is not a negative phenomenon, but there is a risk in assigning virtue to poor families and communities who grow their own food over those who do not. Gardening should not be a prescription for distinguishing the “good” poor people from those less deserving of time, attention and resources, especially given the complexities of food insecurity.

For individual gardeners, especially those without reliable access to food, gardening is a gamble. Some non-gardeners within the low-income Whitely community told me that they are hesitant to invest their resources into gardening activities, given the recent record-breaking droughts and because there is no guaranteed return. One woman I interviewed cited “not having enough time to garden and cook” after work. Even successful gardening could result in an overabundance of one particular food, or an insufficient amount that does not justify the expenditure of time, energy and resources.

Other people simply do not have the tools, space or knowledge and experience required to successfully cultivate food. For example, some people living in apartments garden in community plots or containers, but that option is not practical for everyone. During an informal interview, one parent commented that without a yard, you have to pay “extra” to garden. Growing one’s own food is not always a viable option, but remains one piece of an evolving web of urban foodways in Muncie.

GOD IS GREEN

Another feature of local sustainability is the role of Christianity in promoting land stewardship. Combining faith and agriculture is not a new trend. Hoosier farmers relied on religion in good times and bad. Victory Acres farm sells organic produce to fund their urban ministry. Another one of my students, Britny Burton, who is an undergraduate majoring in Journalism, is examining how Evangelical beliefs are influencing local ideas about sustainability. Britny’s research explores the varied ways faith-driven food producers interpret significant environmental challenges, like global climate change, and how their attitudes are key to developing sustainable local initiatives.

Britny Burton on Restoring Body, Land and Spirit in the Indiana Heartland

Through Dr. Murray’s course and pilot study, I was introduced to the Victory Acres farm as a field site, and I decided to take my class research project one step further by making the farm the basis for a semester long multimedia project: www.victoryacres.weebly.com. Through my ethnographic research at Victory Acres I was able to understand how the products of the organic farm nourish bodies and spirits while the farm itself acts as a sanctuary for those working the land.

Pigs at Victory Acres eat leftover food that is donated by Taylor University. (photo by Britny Burton)

Victory Acres of Upland, Indiana, has been in the Himelick family since the 1830s, but the farm didn’t become an organic Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) until 2000, when Victory Inner-City Ministries (VICM) purchased the property. Terry Himelick still manages the farm while his son, Eric, is a pastor at VICM.

Victory Acres believes Christ is visible in every aspect of the farm. They open their doors to people from all walks of life who are struggling with personal and substance-abuse issues. Victory Acres invites troubled souls to work on the farm as a way to re-energize and restore their faith in God. Just as the organic food they produce is free of chemicals, the farm is a place for all to come and free themselves of evils they may be carrying with them and to strengthen their relationship with God.

Leslie Gottschalk, an agricultural coach, plants garlic. Garlic is a very important crop on the farm. Victory Acres uses garlic in the natural spray they put around trees to ward off unwanted pests. (photo by Britny Burton)

William Buck, a farmhand whom I had the pleasure of interviewing, has a rough background and came to Victory Acres after living on the streets of downtown Indianapolis. Buck told me: “Victory Acres showed me something different. The whole essence of being here is to deepen my religion with Him because that’s what is going to ultimately root and ground me.”

Buck takes one day at a time and isn’t sure where he would be if he hadn’t come to the farm. He feels that God led him to the farm and that God will let him know when it’s time to go somewhere else. Most other farmhands I met were like Buck—they were at Victory Acres to overcome hardships or to escape unhealthy environments. Farmhands stay as long as they need to, and most end up becoming part of the Himelick family.

Charlie Akers (left) and Zach Hughes (middle) interview William Buck (right) about his path leading up to Victory Acres. (photo by Britny Burton)

Britny Burton discusses William Buck’s daily routine on the farm. (photo courtesy of Charlie Akers)

FUTURE RESEARCH

There remains a need for greater awareness of the cultural dimensions of landscape restoration in the lower Great Lakes. While organic farmers are restoring the Hoosier Heartland through sustainable agricultural practices, there is work to be done with Tribal stakeholders as well. Native peoples have gardened in these lands for centuries, and more collaborative research with indigenous stakeholders concerning traditional environmental knowledge would be beneficial to those interested in creating a diverse and sustainable regional future.[v],[vi]

Cailín E. Murray is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  Her work on environmental and indigenous issues has been published in Ethnohistory, The Journal of Northwest Anthropology, and in edited volumes such as Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence.  Dr. Murray and her students are working to expand BSU’s tradition of engaged research that promotes social and environmental justice in Muncie and beyond.

REFERENCES

Throughout the course of my research, I’ve seen how there is no one way to eat locally or to farm sustainably. These concepts and practices are quite fluid and change based on context, but also with the flash of a dollar sign. The “Loca-vore” movement is but one incarnation of many efforts to (re)connect to land and food, to foster food autonomy, to check out of the ConAgra-Monsanto complex, or to profit off of well-intentioned consumers’ desires to be more responsible or ecological with their purchases.

My field site—a series of agricultural valleys along California’s Central Coast—is simultaneously one of the claimed birthplaces of the U.S. organic movement and a key commercial fruit- and vegetable-growing region. In this region of contrasts, efforts to eat and produce locally and sustainably find inspiration in very different logics and ideas. The many motives of local eating and food growing reflect social status, race, class, gender, immigration status, as well as the marketing strategies of corporations that mobilize their sales pitch glossaries in order to sell more food.

Customers at the Watsonville Community Farmers’ Market use WIC coupons and food stamp tokens to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables grown within a 100 miles of town. These food assistance programs are sponsored by the state and federal governments and represent an effort to help support regional farmers markets, farmers and growers.

In my work with farmers, farmworkers, consumers, and activists, I encounter very different approaches to local consumption. Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma influences the eating practices of a very specific class of people living in the United States: those who have the liberty to shop their way to health. The advice he presents, while well intentioned, isn’t necessarily useful or relatable if one is poor or working class, of color, and/or located in areas with limited fresh-food options. Pollan also neglects the gendered roles entailed in food production and consumption. While his vision of loca-vorism is mainstream, it is by no means the norm.

The word “loca-vore” takes on a rather derogatory meaning amongst activists and scholars who are angered when the folks they work with are unintentionally excluded from Pollan’s core audiences. Rooted in long-standing race and class inequalities, this marginalization has prompted a national surge in community and school gardens, farmers’ markets accepting food stamps, and community coalitions working to attract grocery stores to food deserts. Are community gardeners “loca-vores?” What about EBT or WIC aid recipients who shop at farmers’ markets? State agriculture officials also invoke the local in their “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” campaigns, even as other policies on the books regionally, nationally, and internationally make the slogan difficult to achieve for farmers and consumers. For instance, it’s really hard to get a loan if you are a new farmer (even harder if you are growing organic food). Access to land is especially challenging for aspiring small-scale farmers in California because it’s owned by so few people who don’t want to take risks with folks who may or may not make any money. Free-trade agreements and the subsidization of commodity crops like corn, soy, and cotton that are used to make the key ingredients in heavily processed, cheap, junk foods also limit the Buy Fresh Buy Local programs. What are the state’s objectives in invoking the local? How could they make their programs more effective for producer and consumer participants?

Following a day of canning, the children of Oaxacan indigenous farmworkers and community gardeners work on saving tomato seeds, to be dried on a recycled piece of cardboard, for next year’s harvest.

I don't think my gardening partner (an indigenous farmworker woman from Oaxaca, Mexico) would identify as a loca-vore: even if I could find a way to describe it in our shared second language. I speak English and Spanish, and she speaks Triqui (one of many languages spoken in Oaxaca) and Spanish. But here we are in the year 2012, growing a garden together "locally" in a town we both immigrated to. We have both had to become locals in this community. As we grow an array of foods for our households, we are at the same time transgressing many borders. I do it as a form of solidarity with her. She does it because it makes her happy. Whenever we work together in the garden, I notice she is always smiling, even sometimes laughing with delight. We learn from one another. The space is a support for her in her efforts to feed her family and stay connected to her food and rural heritage. It is a distraction from many levels of suffering: violence in the homeland, a husband and son gone back to Mexico, a daughter pregnant, a crappy paycheck, two wild but bright teenaged sons, loneliness, language barriers. She eats my Euro-heritage beets (hardcore, like radishes), and I eat her starchy native dent corn (on the cob with butter and salt, not ground into masa flour). Are we loca-vores in the same way that other people are?

At another site, not far from our garden plot, I chatted with some men in recovery—from alcohol and drug abuse—who live and rehabilitate in a group house with a nice chunk of vacant land attached. The space, on an incline, reminds me of the terraced lands used to grow milpa (small acreages of corn, beans, and squash) in Mexico, and of all the yards in town occupied by Mexican families growing their own food. The men, relaxing over cigarettes and taking in the dusk, got really excited about the idea of making a garden. The ideas poured forth: it could be a "hustle" to support their program (always at risk of losing funds) so the garden could be source of extra income and also a sort of occupational therapy. Their vision included intentions to (re)connect with neighbors and visiting family members. Are they loca-vores?

Farmworkers pick, pack and inspect organic blackberries grown in the Pájaro Valley. Commercially grown berries are consumed locally, celebrated in festivals and state fairs, and internationally, as the products are cooled and shipped all over the world: from the U.K. to the United Arab Emirartes.

In a nearby Trader Joe's store, the nation’s largest fresh strawberry companies market their products as "local". Meanwhile, they ship strawberries from the same fields thousands of miles away for non-local consumption. Glossy sales materials pair with corporate websites featuring links to “Sustainability” and “Philanthropy” and pledging commitments to the environment and the local community. My farmworker friends tell me about how some of these companies ship produce in plastic cartons with Japanese characters or otherwise unfamiliar lettering. I read this use of the “local” label as a kind of greenwashing—a means of capitalizing on popular desires to eat local. In California, commercial growers of strawberries and other crops often say they "feed the world"; however, strawberries and salad are luxury items. Who are they really feeding? How are they accomplishing this oft-quoted mantra of agriculture? And where do those “locally grown” berries go?

Local--as I have discovered through two years of engaged anthropological fieldwork--can mean many things, can evoke many emotions, and can reshape the economy of food production in many different directions. It is a term whose meaning extends well beyond the roots of a plant or our human roots in heritage or geographic places. We need to consider carefully this diversity of meanings, identities, and experiences before gravitating to a seemingly universal solution. Being local is complicated when it comes to people, places, and food.

The anthropologist and a gardening compañera (friend and community ally) show off their eight-pound zucchini. Many folks don’t like to eat squash when it gets this big, but Constantina cooks it with brown unrefined sugar and water to make a nutritious breakfast drink common in Oaxaca.

Dvera I. Saxton is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC. She lives, gardens, writes, and community organizes in Watsonville, California. Her dissertation examines how corporate agricultural power on and off the farm shapes the lives, health, and welfare of immigrant farm workers and how farm workers respond to these challenges by mobilizing networks of care and support on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.