With Vincent and Raymond
New York City is a recognized food capital and destination. What makes this possible? Where do all the produce and ingredients come from? Where do they all go? We will travel around the five boroughs and beyond (yes, including Staten Island), trace the origins of the food we see and love to eat, and in the process, sample some of the tasty treats that the city has to offer.
MONDAY: Queens County Farm
Questions that I had was :How many people can the farm of that size feed? How much money do they get? Do they get enough money to get new living? When we got there, we had high hopes. Our group is about food and how we get it, so we thought we would see a lot of plants and fruits. But instead, we just saw animals like alpaca, goats and chickens. Actually, those were the only 3 things we saw.
I would recommend you coming here in summer but not in winter because there is nothing in the farm but just animals. Maybe in the summer it would be better. – PETER MOROCHO
I liked the trip to Queens county farm a lot, because we got to see some of their livestock. Some of these livestock included Goats, Alpacas, and chickens. We also got to feed the goats some of what they eat. However due to it being winter they did not have plants for us to see. – ZIGME SHERPA
TUESDAY: Brooklyn Botanical Garden
WEDNESDAY: Randall’s Island Urban Farm (Borough of Manhattan)
On Wednesday we went to Randall’s Island Farm. We learned the importance of compost, cut some crops, cooked and most importantly learned the steps of how food gets to you the Industrial Way or the Sustainable Way. The Industrial way usually comes from far away with many steps and processing and with all of this it has chemicals and causes lots of pollution. The Sustainable way doesn’t really use chemicals and take a very short time to get to you without all the chemicals and cause less pollution, the Sustainable way also in addition to all of this can just go back into the earth and decompose naturally. Industrial way just goes to the landfill. So we on Wednesday we learned how to farm and mainly the difference between Industrial farming and how it gets to you and Sustainable farming and how much better Sustainable farming is. – SEBBE GAASTRA VAN
The Industrial Agricultural System
- Plant Seeds
- pesticides
- harvest
- transfer by truck
- process/package produce at factories
- transfer by truck
- retail
- consumers buy from store
- cook and eat
- transfer remains of produce by truck to landfill
The Local Sustainable System
- plant seeds
- harvest
- distribution
- cook and eat
- compost
- REPEAT
– LUCAS CORONA
THURSDAY: Snug Harbor Heritage Farm (Borough of Staten Island)
FRIDAY: Thinking about how our food choices impact wildlife and the environment
Our food choices affect the climate and causes global warming. Animals are affected in terrible ways due to our food choices with meat. The animals we farm are in extreme quantities, but natural processes of animals create greenhouse gasses. With so many animals, many heat releasing gasses such as methane are released into our environment. This traps heat into our environment, causing global warming, which results in many animals in colder environments losing their homes after their ice melts. – GOLAM MAHI
Our food choices also lead to increase conflict between wildlife animals and humans. Farming causes the lost of habitats of animals because of the need of more and more farmland which replaces the tree’s that house birds or the forests that hid away deer’s.As a result animals would go into farms and graze/feed on the crops which makes the farmers lose money so in turn the farmers would put up fences to keep out the animals.This conflict leads to fighting between animals and people such as farmers and the deaths of animals who are caught grazing on farms that were built on what once was their home. – BRIAN RODRIGUEZ
Our Food choices leads to deforestation and causing harm to wildlife Our dependency on a specific food affects the trees and wildlife because trees are chopped and destroyed for the crops for agriculture . The specific food needed causes us to be inconsiderate of the environment around it thus events like deforestation, erosion, frequent natural disasters and homes and lives of wildlife taken away for this cause. – TENZIN SAMCHOK