The Journey Back to Nature - Educating Ourselves About Our Food

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For those who have grown up not experiencing a working farm or what it takes to get food to the grocery store or the amount of effort it takes to bring heat to a furnace, there needs to be a different kind of approach to educate this section of the population. One way would be to increase the number of famer’s markets, especially in the cities. To get the message out, posters could be created and displayed in subways or on other public transportation sites. Because farmer markets have a very limited time in which they can be open outdoors, in New England at least, the messages about the value of a farmer’s market need to be made throughout the year. Some states are lucky enough they don’t feel the seasons as much as in northern states. Boston only has two such markets: Copley Square, which happens once a week, and SOWA, which also happens once a week but is not exclusively a farmer’s market. Perhaps if the government helped subsidize the cost of the space, there would be more opportunity for farms to participate in educating the public about their food options. It would also give them a platform to educate consumers about the importance and difficulty of growing food. Changing public perception and habits will take time and starting a campaign on multiple fronts, including the education of children, would help advance the cause in a significant way.

Humans are resilient and able to change course given the right incentives and information. Even when facing a potential spiritual danger, there is still hope that people can make a conscious effort to appreciate and understand the amount of time and energy that goes into providing the population with things we consider essential to living: food and heat. The grocery, with everything neat and organized, gives the impression that food is limitless and the shelves can be restocked forever. But the fact of the matter is that someone has to collect those chicken eggs that are covered in a thin film of sticky goop and clean them, and then they end up in the store for us to buy. Someone handpick the fruit that end up in the baskets in the produce section of Whole Foods, and someone goes out to sea to fish for the seafood that is served in restaurants. People have become spoiled in thinking that food and heat are limitless. There needs to be a more concerted effort in appreciating and preserving the gifts that this world has to offer and it starts with the education of how a simple egg can move from a farm to a plate.

Word Count: 1591

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Works Cited

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Special Commemorative

Edition. With an Introduction by Robert Finch. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.

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