Future Farmers of America in Edible Portland - Kids and Food

In the Winter 2010 Issue of Edible Portland there was a great article about Future Farmers of America, describing the renewed interest in farming skills. There may be hope for agriculture and animal husbandry after all! The program doesn’t exactly teach sustainable farming or animal raising practices, but it does provide kids with small business skills as well as technical / trade skills related to food, like butchering and small scale farming (it’s not just for hippies anymore!). The culture of the organization seems like something I wouldn’t really fit in with (fairly conservative), but it seems like an organization that is leaning towards common ground of real people making good real food. I’m considering trying to study some of these kids for my dissertation, to explore their experiences of food from a more conservative perspective than my current study subjects, urban farmers.

Last year I was reviewing vendors for the Farmers Market at Portland State University in the Park Blocks for recruiting participants for my study, I came across a listing for Food Works:

"Food Works is a youth-run farm project based in North Portland that uses farming to support youth to develop their skills, engage in their community, and increase their leadership and involvement in the food system."

Which made me think about the movie Ingredients (see post in a few days), especially the part about taking kids to working farms to help reconnect kids with food. This is another angle to take, talking with urban kids before visiting the farm and after (and follow up). It might be interesting to study the transition that kids go thorough, but probably would be hard for kids to articulate change...but there ARE more programs, so it is still interesting...

I’m also thinking about studying a different population altogether, people who have never gardened before, have picked it up recently, and found unexpected benefits that compel them to continue, either in the context of garden programs in prisons (see the same Winter 2010 Issue for A Prison Garden) or for low income community gardeners. Talking with people about my project, both of these suggestions came up, since both groups have been used in some studies about gardening as therapy or as exercise, etc.