Treasure Hunting in Phoenix

Food Conspiracy Co-op

April 13, 2012

The last place of the day that we visited was the Food Conspiracy Co-Op in Downtown Tucson.  The Co-op is 41 years old and it is owned by 2,000 people who buys equal shares.  This is the main difference between a co-op and a corporation.  Equal shares means that each vote is extremely important for that shareholder.  Each share is $180, and they get their profit percentage back if the co-op makes money for the quarter.  If they ever want to quit being an investor, they get their money back, and someone else can buy that share.

Inside the store, everything is labelled neatly.  Green tags label where the produce have come from while brown tags label how far away it is from Tucson.  There is a rule that farmers must deliver their produce within 24 hours of harvesting to ensure freshness.  

Native Seeds Search

April 13, 2012

The idea of the Native Seeds SEARCH was to start a plant library to save the seeds of plants that are no longer used in commercialized food.  Arizona has lots of indigenous agricultural crops and some are unique to this area because of the hot climate and influence of Native American and Spanish crops.  There are 4,000 years of agriculture in Arizona and Native Seeds SEARCH has collected 2,000 varieties of crops, including corns, beans, squash, chilies, wheat from Spain, chickpeas, lentils, watermelons, and sorghum.

Seeds can be viable for decades if kept frozen.  They are kept in a giant refrigerator in the facility and grown out every so often to replenish the supply.  They determine the fertility of the seeds through random germination tests.

It is important to save seeds because of the lack of diversity in commercialized plants and food.  For example, the Havasupai sunflower seed saved in Tucson saved the commercialized sunflower when the species was attacked by fungus.

The movement to save seeds started in the 80's, and there are now 1700 different seed banks around the world.  

The founder who spoke to us shared his story.  He was going to go to law school, but instead he found out about saving seeds from his boy scout education and volunteered.  He wanted to dedicate 3 years of his life to this cause.  Instead, the search for seeds took him around the world, visiting seed banks, saving seeds, and even to Siberia.  He started the nonprofit and the rest is history.

He encouraged us to do something that would have an impact in 1,000 years and asked us the question, "What are you going to do that will have an impact long after you are gone?"  Like each person, each seed has a story that needs to be preserved.

Blue Willow

April 13, 2012

Marana Heritage Farms

April 13, 2012

Our first stop on our Tucson field trip was the Marana Heritage Farms and community food bank of Tucson.  The farm grows food for the food bank, and it serves 250,000 people per month through the distribution of boxes that can feed a family of 4 for a week.  25% of Tucson uses this program, and it is meant to supplement meals.  Currently, 1/8 of the children in Pima County go without a meal everyday.

The goals of the food bank are to find long term solutions for hunger.  They have many programs including food gardens in elementary schools, an urban garden with 60 plots, youth farm projects for high school students, and internships, all funded by the CPPW grant from the CDC $15 million dollars.

It is difficult to become a farm in Pima County because the zoning laws say there must be 20 acres of irrigated land.  Therefore, another goal of theirs is to make farming a viable job option, because it is complex hard work, and the farmers are not rewarded.

We also talked with the Americorps workers, most of whom had been working there for more than a year.  They gave us a summary of all the Americorps programs and their experiences.  One volunteer even met his wife on a previous americorps assignment.

The farm was very viable, and had so many different things going on.  They own 10 acres of farm land and we saw kale, the three sisters, flowers, and artichokes growing. They also have composting, which the chickens help by eating the plant waste and pooping all over it in their coop.  We walked inside their warm house, where they plant the seeds before moving the baby plants with established roots into the ground outside.  THey also grow the rare spanish mission plants that have evolved to adapt to Arizona weather over generations.  They even had a worm composting bed.  

The documentary Forks over Knives focused on the health effects of a plant based diet.  A plant based diet consists of giving up many animal based food products, such as eggs, milk, and meat.  

Before I watched the documentary, I was skeptical of the plant-based diet.  I've been told my entire life that animal meat is important for protein and milk for calcium.  For someone who is living an active lifestyle, it was imperative to eat meat and drink lots of milk so that they wouldn't get injured or weak while athletic training.

Research done by two doctors shows that the plant-based diet reduces cardiovascular disease, the chance of type II diabetes, and the risk of cancer.  Evidence from analyzing different periods of history such as the Chinese famine, and the German occupation of Norway, where meat products were scarce show that all these measures of disease decreased and then increased after the meat products were made available again.

There were many people who started eating vegan or semi-vegan such as an MMA fighter and nutritionists and doctors who vouched for the plant based diet.  The patients who had diabetes, hypertension, etc. saw their symptoms disappear after several weeks on the diet.

When I was growing up, my mom took me to the weekly farmers' market to treat me to dinner every Thursday.  At the time, it was a really small operation with just a few stands.  

Now, a metro light rail station has been built 5 minutes away from the location, and the farmers market now have expanded greatly in the years since I left for college.  Now there is a diverse group of local foods, from apple stands, vegetables, grass-fed beef, flowers, and awesome meal stands.  It's great to see.  But the best thing that I loved seeing was the number of families and young people there.  There was programming for little kids and their families' that were picnicking on the lawn, volunteer balloon artists entertaining children, and my favorite, a street musician who looks like jimi hendrix, who brought small drums for toddlers and babies to play with and accompany him while he sang.  It was so adorable.

March 30, 2012

I love learning about people's stories and hearing about their family histories.  I really enjoyed the aspects of seeing the people who are doing the work and reading the case studies about successful enterprises.

March 9, 2012

This has to be one of the best field trips we've gone on so far.  The house is an old craftsman bungalow near the corner of Roosevelt and 6th Street.  The house is in the historic Phoenix neighborhood called Roosevelt Row.  I love areas of Phoenix that are unique like this.  The area I live in right now is called University Park and it has old houses that are small and unique, the way I think it should be.  I'm not a fan of the similarity of houses in new developments.

The area in Roosevelt Row has many beautiful houses that have been neglected.  There are weeds growing up the sides of the roofs and walls and vacant lots are prevalent  It was so sad to see.  There is an area in my hometown of Pasadena, CA that has houses built in the same time period and style, but they have been protected and preserved.  It is illegal to tear them down.  I hope there is a restoration process that can start soon for Roosevelt Row.

As we were walking from downtown ASU campus, we couldn't miss the Grow house.  It is a house that is vibrant and full of color.  The flower beds extend towards the street in the areas between the sidewalk and the street.  They grow a lot of vegetables and they have fruit trees and chickens in the back of the house.  Their work extends to the neighboring dirt lots as well.  They are planting sunflowers in one plot for a high school biofuel project.  It will bloom in the spring!

The grow house's work is slowly bringing the community together.  There are volunteers from the high school and ASU, autistic volunteers, and refugee projects with the IRC.

Our guide, Kenny, was extremely informative.  He had helped found the grow house in 2008.  Before it was the grow house, it had been a writer's studio and then a painter's studio.

It was obvious that a lot of love was put into this endeavor by the group of friends.  There are paintings in the backyard, handmade mosaics, and even composting.  It was awesome to see something so beautiful translated from an organic friendship of like-minded people.  Their work extends to not only grow house initiatives, but also Roosevelt Row CDC, Valley of the Sunflowers Project, and ARTS garden, which reforms blighted lots into agricultural plots.

Isn't the wall beautiful?  It was painted by the artists that founded the Grow House.

Just 5 years ago, this work would have been unimaginable.  Kenny told us his story of how he got so involved with the Grow House.

Kenny was trained as an artist.  After graduating, he went and did a year in the Americorps, which changed his life.  He knew he wanted to do social justice, so he went back to school to study business.  It wasn't right.  He was miserable and dropped out of the program to work.  He worked and saved up enough money to go to Barcelona for a year where he did an art workshop.  He returned back to the US to live with his parents until he found the means to move out.

We asked him how he learned to garden, and he said "by trial and error, and by killing a lot of plants."  That was encouraging for us amateurs.

The documentary King Corn followed the story of two post-grads who decided to have an adventure together instead of finding a job.  After hearing about the prevalence of corn in our foods, the two decided to try their hand at growing corn by returning to the town their great-grandparents had lived in in Iowa.

The town retained the same look it had 100 years ago.  The people are still very friendly and it is a typical small-town American scene.  Everyone knows who they are and who they're related to as soon as they walk into town.

It seemed pretty easy to start a farm.  I have several friends who want to be farmers/artists who would definitely be happy to know this.  It took one year for a growing season of corn.  Everything was mechanized, from the planting, to the weeding, to the pesticides.

The two men then followed the corn to learn the future uses of the corn they planted.  They visited a cow ranch in Colorado where all of the cows are fed corn products.  The farmers explained that if people wanted grass fed cows, they would do it, but it is so much more costly because of the length of time it takes for cows to get heavy enough if they are grass fed.  They then attempted to make a trip to a high fructose corn syrup factory but they were unable to obtain permission.  Instead, they made their own in their kitchen.

40% of all corn grown in the United States becomes high fructose corn syrup.  The compound allows us to sweeten drinks and food without the use of pure sugar.  It has phenomenally changed the landscape of American food and contributed to obesity problems.

The fact is, we are walking corn carbon isotopes.  Everything we eat is corn.  McDonald's meals are all filled with corn.  The drinks are sweetened with corn syrup.  The beef is corn fed.  The french fries are fried in animal oils that were once fed with corn.  Even the ketchup isn't free from corn.  

Maya's Farm at the Farm at South Mountain

February 17, 2012

Journal Entry:

I am sitting out by the picnic tables in an old orchard outside the restaurant called the farm kitchen.   The sandwich I had was amazing.  I had the Italian and Annalise had the Tuscan.  Inside the restaurant, there were so many choices of sandwiches, drinks, and desserts, I didn't even know what to do with myself.

The sun is shining and there is a slight breeze.  Today is beautiful.  I have to remember Arizona summers though when I think about Maya's farm, because it shows how hard she works for her farm.  Farming isn't something you can easily take a vacation from.  As Maya herself said, blood, sweat, and tears goes into every dollar the farm produces.

On an empty plot of land in South Central Los Angeles, 13 acres of garden were cultivated by the local Latino community.  In 2004, the City of Los Angeles began a process to take the land from the South Central Farmers and give it to Ralph Horowitz, who had bought the land from the city.

What made the farmers so angry was the back room secrecy between Ralph Horowitz, city councilwoman Jan Perry, and Concerned Citizens for Central Los Angeles advocate Juanita Tate.  Through complicated proceedings of ownership and eminent domain, Ralph Horowitz ended up buying the land for $5 million and granting a portion to Juanita Tate for a new soccer field.  However, the soccer field she had built on Slauson and Main had only dirt and goalposts.  They had raised $5 million dollars for soccer fields and had only built one field for $5,000.  The rest of the money had gone directly to Tate's sons.

Ralph Horowitz said that if the farmers could raise $16.3 million dollars to buy the land, (remember, the plot had only cost him $5 million), he would sell it to them.  Miraculously in 5 weeks, they raised the money.  But Horowitz went back on his word and razed the land anyways.

The images of the farmers protesting and the police entering the peaceful community garden with riot gear are heartbreaking.  Bulldozers destroyed years of family gardening in less than 10 minutes.

The documentary was very emotional.  I was shocked that the city would do something like that to such an innocent project.  It was easy for many people in class to feel cynical about the elected councilwoman and the roles of city government in community development.

February 3, 2012

Isn't it awesome when you eat a sandwich and you think that each individual ingredient was hand-picked for you?

Annalise

The Olive Mill was started in 2005 by the Italian Reya family who wanted a hobby to do together as a family.  They did their research by touring mills in California, Spain, Italy and France before buying 100 acres of land in Arizona.

There is no automated way to make edible olives: the brine solution must be done by hand.  That's why they specialize in olive oil.  Arizona has the perfect weather for growing olives.  Olive flies are the only pests that threaten the plants, but they cannot survive past 103 degrees Fahrenheit, much lower than the temperatures Arizona gets up to in the summer.  They are the only extra virgin olive oil makers in Arizona and harvesting is mid-October to mid-December.  The machines they use are from Italy, and 100 pounds of olives equals 1 gallon of delicious olive oil.

Our guide informed us that there is no such thing as extra extra virgin olive oil!  In her words, "You're either a virgin, or you're not."  The grades are a result of how much pumus oil is put in (leftover oil in the mixer).

The mill blends every 6 weeks and bottles every 3 weeks.  It is a family oriented business and it is still owned and operated by the same family, although they have been able to expand because of their success.  They now have 50-100 employees.  The family farm concept is really inspirational.  It was founded only 7 years ago by a family who simply wanted to do an activity together.

The property now has olive trees, the mill, a restaurant and eating area, and a local foods store where 75% of the products there are locally grown or produced.

This is the cute cafe that is inside the building with the olive oils.  Our class ate lunch together and had sandwiches with olive oil and cookies.  It was so delicious!  I recommend it to anyone who is in the area.  You can pick any kind of olive oil you want at the store too, and sample them.

They also had a pretty outdoor patio area that was Napa valley-esque.  There are little twinkly lights and old picnic tables as well.  Wedding reception site possibly?

We were reminded of how difficult it was for growers to be certified organic when the guide told us that they used organic growing practices, but that they could not be certified because the neighboring farms used pesticides that could blow over with the wind on to their fields.  

Friday, January 13, 2012

It's the first day of class and our first field trip!  Our class walked over to the lot just north of downtown campus and saw a large group of people eating and talking among a cluster of food trucks.  It was awesome seeing all the local small businesses coming together for the community.  I'm from a little town in California called South Pasadena, and every Thursday, there are food trucks and food stands and produce at the South Pasadena Farmers' Market.  Seeing these trucks reminded me a little of home.  There were hot dog, fry bread, ice cream trucks and more.  Me and Annalise had carne asada on Indian Fry bread and pear cabernet sorbet from sweet republic- delicious.