Thursday, May 27, 2021

Baking powder vs. Baking soda

 Hello and welcome to this blog! in my food for this spring term we got to learn about agriculture and how to grow our own plants. Some things we got to during this term were getting to go to uncommon ground. We got to see their beautiful rooftop garden where we learned how they grow their from their roof, and see how they get it to their tables. This term we're learning about cooking and how to make different meals and foods at home. Since food has to do with a lot of measuring it's important that we got to learn how to do different math as well. Some of those things were how to identify different variables. How to add,subtract,multiply, and divide different fractions. We also learned about how different things can cause a spike in our meals, like emulsifying, leaving, and proteins from our prehistoric porridge experiment. We got to learn about how porridge leavens overtime.

For this action project I had to make a food but I have to substitute a either a leavening, protein, or emulsifying ingredient in the food I'll make, for this experiment I'll be making pancakes but with one type I'll use baking powder and replace it with baking soda and my goal is to see which is better for making pancakes.  

The other person I'm working with for this is RMC he's making a burger and substituting the patty for a portobello mushroom, you can check his blog here:

https://rmgcelabschool.blogspot.com/2021/05/f2.html 

Here's the pancake recipe I'm using if you ever want to use it yourself:

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But without further to do let's begin the experiment!


Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Justice for discriminated farmers - Rbl

Hello my name is RBL. Welcome to this blog! In my spring class Food for Thought, we've been talking about older civilizations and how they've been impacted by slavery. For example, at first many European civilizations grew only certain kinds of agriculture themselves.  They did not know what existed outside of their civilizations. These civilizations began taking voyages where they conquered other indigenous people's lands. We've also learned about different country's slave maps and how they've evolved using google my maps. We researched different civilizations and how they enslaved African people. We learned the history of how food was grown and produced historically and how it is produced today. We took a trip to Uncommon Ground where we learned about a lot of different crops that farmers like to grow. Now it's time for our action project, where we are supposed to make a speech where we explain our claim about a specific SDG in SDG 2. After making our decision about which topic we have chosen to focus on, we have to then make a video explaining our claim to the world. I chose to focus on claim SDG 2.3 which is to double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers. I think this is extremely important because there are many small farmers who are doing hard work but aren't getting the credit they deserve for their efforts. Here's my video with the link below:


Script: 

The issue of inequity in farming is an important one, “Small family farms (less than $350,000 in 45) accounted for 90 percent of all U.S. farms. Large-scale family farms ($1 million or more in GCFI) make up about 3 percent of farms but 44 percent of the value of production.” The SDG’s (sustainable development goals) are goals that the United Nations made to try to help change the world for the better. The SDG, Target 2.3 which  measures the income of smaller food producers who are disrespected and disregarded because of their sex or indigenous status. Right now this is a major priority because everyone in the world needs food to survive and it is unfair that small food producers are not getting the money they need to survive or thrive.The purpose of this paper is to ask, how can we solve SDG 2.3 and give these small farms the resources they need. Here’s a solution, increase the income of the smaller farms by increasing the distribution of their product. 


This paper will explore ways to increase the income, capacity, and sustainability for underfunded farmers. This matters because some farmers are underpaid and don’t even get the chance to spread their crops around the world. “About half of U.S. farms are very small, with annual farm sales under $10,000; the households operating these farms typically rely on off-farm sources for most of their household income. In contrast, the median household operating large-scale farms earned $350,373 in 2019 with most of that from farming.” Around the world there are many less income people that depend on farming to survive. “Small-scale farming provides both food and livelihoods for the vast majority of the global poor.”If small scale farmers have more resources they will be more able to support healthy lives for their communities.

“Increasing and stabilizing farm incomes and food production in developing countries is fundamental to reducing global poverty.”


It’s unfair that small scale farmers are not able to make a living that can fully support their families. According to the History Channel website, a place that faced a similar issue like this would be 1870’s  United states. Why 1870? Because this was when sharecropping began, by that point there wasn’t anymore slavery in the United States. Even though this was true, there wasn’t really that much of a difference in the economic status of many black people. This being because black people would still work for whites but would make little money. The difference between slavery and sharecropping is they are getting paid for their work but the money they are paid is extremely low.  Rimas from Empires of Food explains that “Grain, argued the friar, isn't like spices or bolts of silk, because people require grain to live. Due to the nature of markets however, grain merchants have an incentive to hoard during times of want, keeping food in reserve as prices rise and then selling it at the moment of greatest profit.” This quote explains a system that controlled the access of the majority of people to fair access to food. Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet who analyzed the issue in a bigger way in his poem The United Fruit; he writes that  “The Fruit Company, Inc. reserved for itself the most succulent, the central coast of my own land, the delicate waist of America.” The quote supports the idea that the large company controlled the access to the best land in his land.


In the United States, this problem is connected to the history of slavery where the majority of workers had no access to wealth and when slavery ended, they had no access to land.

Globally, the issue seems to center around the fact that small farmers have less land. With small farms it is difficult to increase profits. “Steadily, a near-feudal society emerged in the South. At the top was the aristocratic landowning elite, who wielded much of the economic and political power. Their plantations spanned upward of a thousand acres, controlling hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of enslaved people...Below the elite class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people. These farmers were self-made and fiercely independent. Small farmers without enslaved workers and landless whites were at the bottom, making up three-quarters of the white population.” We can learn when people are not able to control the land it limits their ability to make profit. Small farmers are limited by the size of their farms and what they are able to produce and sell.


By this point we’ve already seen how different people mentioned were able to combat issue 2.3 and how they were able to make small farming easier for them. Now it’s time we look at how we can try to make the same changes today. Brandon Youst, an author, and a teacher, who wrote about the farm to food truck model. The idea is that food trucks come to local farms every month to weigh the amount of crops they grow. The farmers would collectively own the trucks. Depending on how much they grow, it will determine how much money they’ll get back in return. After said trucks take their food, they’ll sell their crops out to community markets so when the markets sell the farmers crops, the market makes money for it and the farmers make more money from it too. Some major benefits from this are higher margins made but with less food waste, a lot more flexibility,extra hours that will give farmers good ways to grow more types of food, and markets with less risk.


Historically small farmers have struggled to make profits and grow. We are trying to develop ideas to increase the profits of small farmers. Small farmers around the world are limited by resources and by profit. In the United States this is connected to the history of slavery.

If we create ways to increase production and distribution it will help to create more profit for small farmers. Recommendations will increase production and distribution which will increase the amount of money that small farmers can make which will help to reach the SDG target. The impact of the lack of equity in food production by better understanding the challenges of small farmers is still affecting a lot of small farmers today, but with these ideas, you can help to fix the issue.




 Sources:

  • Kassel, Kathleen. “Farming and Farm Income.” USDA ERS - Farming and Farm Income, www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/. 

  • 6th, By: ArrowquipPosted on: Jun. “Top Benefits of Buying Locally Grown Food.” Arrowquip, arrowquip.com/blog/animal-science/top-benefits-buying-locally-grown-food 

  • Youst, Brandon. “The Farm to Food Truck Model – Mini Course.” Upstart University, university.upstartfarmers.com/courses/farm-food-truck-model-mini-course

  • “SDGs: Indicator 2.3.2.” Land Portal, 15 Mar. 2021, landportal.org/node/61293

  • Noack, Frederik. “The Contrasting Effects of Farm Size on Farm Incomes and Food Production .” Iopscience, 31 July 2019, iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2dbf.

  • Empires of Food book - Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew rimas 

  • “La United fruit co” - Pablo Neruda 

  • How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South - GREG TIMMONS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-econom


Monday, May 24, 2021

The farming experience

 Hello this is Rbl and in this blog I'm going to tell you all about my trip to the your bountiful harvest farm. It's located 9000 S. Mackinaw Avenue, Chicago, Illinois where many people work hard to help grow different crops for the later seasons. My Mom is good friends with one of the leaders of the farm so I get to go there every now and then. They grow tomatoes, eggplant, and a lot of other healthy foods. One way we try to support them is from their summer veggie box. For every month in summer if you pay money for it you get a assorted basket full of all kinds of healthy veggies. They were really good the last time my mom got some and she still keeps some of them in our freezer from last years boxes. Overall it was a great experience and you should go support some of our local farms too. Thanks for viewing and have a good day 

Sunday, May 2, 2021

3 soils 3 seeds and window gardening



In this term in Food, we’ve been learning about farming, planting, and the production of food. We’ve also been reading about Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer who had a different mind about planting his crops compared to us modern day farmers. I agree with most of his ideas in "Four Principles of Natural Farming", but one that doesn't make a lot of sense to me is not having a fertilizer because I feel like when growing you should have at least something to protect your plants. Even though this is true I can relate with The first is principle that being no cultivation because there's no plowing or turning of the  soil because you can't really do that in a small container. For centuries, farmers have assumed We also watched a video about Ron Finley, a guerrilla gardener who planted his own gardens.One thing that he said is that, "can become a planter or gardener". I think when people will be planting in the future they should try to use symbiotic planting with cornbeans, and squash. This is because each of them all benefit each other. My blog is about 3 plants and how they will look different depending on what I put in each. In my orange cup, I have my good soil and my one bean sprout. In my white cup, I have a mix of the bad soil and fertilizer with one bean sprout. My green cup was only filled with the bad soil and one bean sprout. From Food class, we got to learn a lot about life and how we can plant a lot of different things together. For example, we got to go to Plant Chicago where we got to meet Rock and learn about plant farms. here we learned about how to use water, grow plants, and have fishes all going at the same time. This relates back to this project because they both have to do with growing plants and seeing how they'll do other things to grow around.

This experiment is about using three different soils to try and see different results from looking at the 3 soils. One with good soil, one with bad, and the other with a mix of fertilizer. The purpose of this is to see how the type of soil and product you use for your planting affect your plants. This experiment helps us to see how the conditions of planting can be seen in different ways. Here are my calculations:




AREA

VOLUME

CALCULATIONS

Container #1



A =6.28in^2


V = 25.12 cubic in = 

1.71 cup

A =3.14 x 2in ^2

V = 3.14 x 2in^2 2in



Container #2



A =6.28in^2


V = 25.12 cubic in = 1.71 cup

 

A =3.14 x 2in ^2

V = 3.14 x 2in^2 2in



Container #3



A =6.28in^2


V = 25.12 cubic in = 1.71 cup

 


A =3.14 x 2in ^2

V = 3.14 x 2in^2 2in




Picture of my plant pots:

Orange container:Good soil
Orange container: Good soil 
White container: Bad soil ( with fertilizer)
Green container: Bad soil
 

Now let's see what my final results were:





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