Staff spotlight: Chango Reese, Summer Practicum TA

Chango Reese will be serving as Teaching Assistant
 for the Groundswell Summer Practicum.

Groundswell volunteer Audrey Gyr caught up with Chango Reese, Groundswell's Summer Practicum TA, to share a bit about his story in this Staff spotlight.

by Audrey Gyr

When Chango Reese first moved to Ithaca from the Bronx three years ago, he immediately noticed the disparity between who had good food and who didn’t. In order to combat this inequity, Chango began a program with his friend Anthony Gallucci they called “Healthy Food for the Hood.” Their mission was to “combat unhealthy food pantry traditions with organic and locally grown food for our people, who felt excluded from places like GreenStar and the Farmers Market and who felt stigma about going to local pantries.”

The duo contacted local CSAs, who supplied them with surplus produce that they then boxed and distributed to families. Chango credits Ecovillage, West Haven Farm, Joanna Green, and Elan Shapiro for helping him and Gallucci make the program a success. Ithaca Community Harvest, an organization that strives to provide all of Ithaca's residents with locally grown, organic produce, heard about Anthony's and Chango’s program and suggested turning it into a market box program similar to a CSA, but without the up-front investment that many families find prohibitive. Chango saw it as an opportunity to expand the program's reach, so Ithaca Community Harvest hired him and devoted resources to support the program.

After turning over the program to Ithaca Community Harvest, Chango got involved with other groups in Ithaca's food movement, volunteering for urban agriculture group Gardens 4 Humanity and participating in Groundswell’s 2011 Summer Practicum. Chango found the Practicum to be valuable because it covered an immense amount of information in a short period of time. He says, “I was really interested in the farm tours and seeing all of the different livestock operations, from organic meat farms to commercial dairies. I realized that the lack of butchers and processing plants are very limiting to small farmers in the area.  Mondays were also great because we were able to get in the dirt and work outside.  The two biggest things I got out of the Practicum was learning more about the regulations that surround food production, and the meaning of labels such as certified organic and all-natural.”

Student Profile: Max Chapman

Groundswell volunteer Audrey Gyr caught up with 2010 Summer Practicum student Max Chapman to find out what he's been up to and what the Practicum means to him.

Max Chapman

Max Chapman first heard about Groundswell's Summer Practicum from his adviser Kelly Wessel when he was an Environmental Studies major at TC3. At the time, Max was interested in becoming a biology major and was hoping to gain a greater scientific background in agriculture. He quickly grew to love working on West Haven Farm in Ithaca and began to feel a deeper connection to the Ithaca area after visiting local farms and businesses. 

He began working at Greenstar Cooperative Market in Ithaca after a Practicum class visit, and you can currently catch him at the deli counter at the West end location. He says that taking part in the Summer Practicum "broadened my awareness and consciousness, and helped shape my personal philosophy." He enjoys working at Greenstar because they sell many local products and he can see firsthand how they contributes to Ithaca's food system. When not working at Greenstar, Max is busy completing his EMT certification. In the future he plans on focusing on wilderness medicine.

Modern Day Slavery in Agriculture: Another Good Reason to Buy Local

Florida farm workers tell their stories as part of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' anti-slavery media campaign.

By Milagros Gustafson Hernandez

In 1993, in Immokalee, Florida a group of Latino, Mayan, and Haitian workers began meeting regularly to discuss changes in their community. They organized and named themselves the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (“CIW”). Fighting for fairer wages, and succeeding, they moved on to help the federal government in the fight against involuntary servitude through worker-led investigations. In the last 10 years they have helped in the prosecution of 7 cases in Florida alone (with two pending) --exposing the horrendous farm-worker abuses. Here are some examples:

• U.S. vs. Flores -- In 1997, Miguel Flores and Sebastian Gomez were sentenced to 15 years each in federal prison on slavery, extortion, and firearms charges, amongst others. Flores and Gomez had a workforce of over 400 men and women in Florida and South Carolina, harvesting vegetables and citrus.
  
  
• U.S. vs. Cuello -- In 1999, Abel Cuello was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison on slavery charges. He had held more than 30 tomato pickers in two trailers in the isolated swampland west of Immokalee, keeping them under constant watch. Three workers escaped the camp, only to have their boss track them down a few weeks later. The employer ran one of them down with his car, stating that he owned them. The workers sought help from the CIW and the police, and the CIW worked with the DOJ on the ensuing investigation. Cuello worked for Manley Farms North Inc., a major Bonita Springs tomato supplier. Once out of prison, Cuello supplied labor to Ag-Mart Farms, a tomato company operating in Florida and North Carolina.
  

Student Profile: Ellie Limpert (Summer Practicum 2010)

Ellie at West Haven Farm.

Groundswell volunteer Audrey Gyr caught up with former Groundswell student Ellie Limpert this past week to capture her reflections on her participation in Groundswell's Summer Practicum in Sustainable Farming & Local Food Systems.

Groundswell: What is your background?

Ellie Limpert: I am a senior at Cornell University majoring in Biology and Society with a focus on Human and Environmental Health, and Agricultural Development. Before the Summer Practicum I was a nutritional science major. My minimal agricultural experience was as a horticulture apprentice at a greenhouse for 2 summers, and a bit of volunteering at Dilmun Hill the student Organic Farm. 2010- I was unsure how to spend my summer, I got an email from a sustainability club about the practicum and I was intrigued…looked into it, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

GS: Where are you and what are you doing now?

EL: I am currently studying abroad in Granada Spain—in an Environmental Studies program. I am taking classes on Sustainability in the Mediterranean, Environmental Politics of the European Union, and Ecosystems of the Andalucia. In addition (most exciting!) I have found work on a local small organic farm! Never would I have even dreamt of seeking this out on my own, but since working at West Haven I have been longing to be on a farm again—there honestly isn’t another way I’d rather spend my free time—and it’s one of my most cherished experiences here!

Student Profile: Joseph Amsili

Joseph Amsili is a student in Groundswell's Summer Practicum in Sustainable Farming & Local Food Systems.

by Drew Walsh, Summer Practicum Teaching Assistant

Joseph carries transplants destined
for the field at the Ithaca Youth Farm.

Joseph entered the world of local food in 11th grade at the Lehman Alternative Central School (LACS) as part of the Green Thumb Committee, spending his summers in the fields at the LACS garden and West Haven Farm.  During 11th and 12th grades, he was involved in in growing food for the school cafeteria in the LACS garden and hydroponically.  He recalls preparing lots of pesto, salsa, and other produce for the school, musing that even though slicing lots of peppers doesn't seem like much on the surface, he was also forging connections between students and their food as well as gaining a better understanding the environmental consequences of agriculture, which he finds to be extremely important and meaningful work.

After high school, Joseph spent some time abroad in Barcelona, tending gardens in a housing co-op and working with Transition Barcelona and Wiser Earth, an environmental activist networking site, in between his many hours of skateboarding.  Upon returning to the Ithaca area, he interned at Stick and Stone Farm, and resumed his volunteer work with the LACS garden and Localvores club.  Joseph attended American University for about a year, finding himself again working in student gardens and even began an internship at Will Allen's Growing Power, before that was cut short by a broken collarbone.  

After the Summer Practicum: A guest entry from Krista Fieselmann

Krista was one of 14 students who participated in Groundswell's first college class, the Summer Practicum in Sustainable Farming and Local Food Systems. She caught up with Groundswell this past week to share a bit about where she is now- and relay some important reading material. Thanks Krista!

An update on me: After this week, my 1st semester of graduate studies in foods and nutrition will be completed! The program is really focused on practical application of the science of health and physiology and how it shapes policy, and life! So this was an exciting time for me, as the new dietary requirements from the government came out.  I spent a lot of time reading the papers that went into the decisions and discussing the their strengths and weaknesses.

The summer practicum really showed me that food choice and nutrition has a wide range of impacts, and the research that goes into discovering what those are is really developing, and freaking awesome! I wanted to share the findings of a recent speaker in the department with you. Dr. Kevin Hall was the speaker, and he came up with a model for how people eat that reflects body weight (it is very complicated but that is the gist). Compared to the normal body weight for Americans, he was able to see that most food available in America is not consumed and an estimated 3-4/8ths of all food produced is wasted! The USDA doesn't have a good tracking system for food waste, but EPA data on food energy in landfills supports his numbers. This obviously has huge environmental impacts, and really shows how food in America has become more of an industry, and less about feeding people! 

Heres a link to his paper (check out figure 1):

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007940

 

- Krista