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| Boston Oxfam Action Corps World Food Day Training- October 16, 2011 |
The food movement, and other progressive movements, speak
eloquently about the importance of “community.” But no matter how much ink is
spilled over the issue, community is something that can only happen by people
showing up.
So on Sunday, October 16th, I decided to show up
to the Boston Oxfam Action Corps training along with dozens of other people
from the Massachusetts area.
What brought me there was a journey I started about two
years ago while reading, volunteering, and interning for food justice projects.
There seemed to be plenty of bad things happening in the
food system, and I wanted to do something about it. To name just a few:
·
From seed sales
to organic food
production, power and ownership in the food system has
become increasingly monopolized
And of course I could go on about all the bad stuff, but I
showed up that Sunday to learn more about the good stuff.
Fortunately, I was far from the only one.
The round table introductions revealed a group of people who
were born in all parts of the country and in some cases from other parts of the
world. There were people in their early 20’s, and people in their 50’s and
60’s. There were different genders, races, ages, accents and viewpoints.
Yet we had all come there with a shared value. We knew it
was important to create a just and sustainable food system.
We wanted to learn how that could be done.
Just one of the impressive projects we learned about was the
System
of Rice Intensification (SRI), an innovative approach to rice production
that could increase yields by 50% while reducing water usage by half.
So you’d have to wonder what kind of fertilizer, pesticide,
and/or multi million dollar machine could lead to these miraculous results.
And you’d have to keep on wondering because SRI is simply a method.
The method is taught from one farmer to another, forming a global patchwork of
farmer communities. These communities are bound by their shared livelihood, the
shared educational experience of learning about SRI, and the shared benefits of
living better, with a smaller footprint, on their own farms.
A similar sense of community came out of the Boston Oxfam
Action Corp meeting that Sunday. Even though we began with introductions that
revealed just how different we might be, we ended that workshop as a community
of people brought together by shared values, and bonded through a shared
experience.
That Sunday gave us the opportunity to create community, and
as that community starts to flourish there is no doubt that it will make
significant contributions to the food justice movement that Oxfam and so many
others are dedicated to.
-Drew
Love
Oxfam
Action Corps Volunteer
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