Pinterest, Week One Article Comments, & Week Two Plans.

So I have a Pinterest account. I know what you're thinking--no, wait a minute, no I don't. Someone shouts: Get on with it Michelle! Okay, okay. Pinterest has actually been a really useful website for me to get new ideas. No, I am not just saying that because I'm using it to plan a wedding that's no where near my future. Pinterest has helped me gather ideas on a multitude of subjects like home & school organization, sorority recruitment (I'm in a sorority, this was a natural instinct of mine), craft projects, and kitchen recipes. So naturally when we were instructed to create an idea book to fill with ideas for the garden, my mind automatically went:

PINTEREST!!!

No, literally, that's what happened. I thought, "Pinterest would be so helpful and bring up ideas that I probably would never had thought up on my own!" I created a board on my Pinterest account devoted to the garden. I've already posted some preliminary things onto the board. I won't talk about each and everyone of them on here, but the ones I think are particularly applicable and helpful to UFarmIIT I'll comment on. Anyway's here's a link to that: CLICK ME & ENTER THE WORLD OF PINTEREST!

For Week 1, we had to read these three online articles: Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe (link), Concentrated poverty and homicide in Chicago (link),and Deadly Poverty (link) . This is the order I will be commenting them on.

Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe

First off, when I opened this article I said, holy smokes, that is a lot of .pdf pages. So I closed all my other internet browser windows, turned on some relaxing guitar music, pulled out a notebook and pen, and began to read. And no, I did not just read the summary and call it quits. Though... I did toy with the idea. Shame on me.

Here are my comments on this article :

This article is very thorough in presenting the picture of urban agriculture. It covers all aspects on urban agriculture including the advantages of urban agriculture as well as the challenges it faces today. Though a lengthy, the article is a good read and very informational. Urban agriculture addresses many of the issues today's society not just limited to the economy. Urban agriculture is the definition of reduce, reuse, and recycling in urban communities. Many of the tools needed to start and even maintain an urban garden are already present and available in an urban community. The article also presents many challenges that urban agriculture faces but then provides a list of appropriate ways to deal with them. There is an obvious need for urban agriculture which the author of article insists that communities to address. The benefits of urban agriculture would be felt throughout the local community.

The article was academic which made for the lengthy read. I'm not one to rehash and reiterate facts which is why I didn't. I guess you could say that this article gives UFarmIIT a bigger reason for being. It really puts into perspective what we're doing with the farm and why it's important that we continue to develop it.

Concentrated Poverty and Homicide in Chicago

I'm going to try and refrain from tangential outbursts for the rest of this post--no promises though. This article was an interesting read--very different from the last one I read. Here are my comments:

The subject of this article is made very apparent by its title. The author comments on the relationship of race, poverty, and homicide rate arguing that they are indeed related. The alarmingly high rates of poverty and crime are due to the racial segregation and discrimination that have occurred over the decades, the author argues. Though not directly commenting on the topic of urban agriculture, which is the one of the focal points of IPRO 314, the socioeconomic issues that these communities face could benefit from the introduction of urban agriculture projects. This was one of the points made in the first article, that the community that surrounds an urban farm stands to benefit from it. Again, this gives IPRO 314 a greater sense of purpose. It's not a farm for the sake of growing plants but a solution for social justice issues that many communities face.

On a less serious note, I liked that the page was very colorful.

 Deadly Poverty

And we're diving right into it:

This article was very similar to the previous one--a continuation if you will. The focus was placed more on the consequences of poverty and high crime in these areas on the population living there. The need for urban agriculture projects in these communities is very high since people suffer from inadequate diets. Much like I mentioned in my previous comments, urban agriculture would address the suffering these communities go through. I would be interested in reading an article that describes the effect urban agriculture when introduce to Chicago neighborhoods deemed poor.

As a junior in high school, I took a course in social justice. Now, that doesn't make me an expert in social justice by any means, but I can recognize when a social justice issue is being brought to my attention. Chicago has some pretty obvious social justice issues. Take a walk down Michigan Avenue and, while it oozes of consumerism, it is still very much populated with homeless people (is that the politically correct term?). Even still, you can walk the streets of Logan Square and find some pretty nice neighborhoods, walk a few more streets over and instantly be in a poor neighborhood (assuming we are relating poor, poverty stricken neighborhoods with high crime as suggested by the last two articles). The problem, in my opinion, is that there's a lack of movement for change. I'm not dismissing any sort of action that is currently being taken to fix the situation, I'm just saying it's not enough and we need more.

This is super far fetched, but it would be kind of cool if our IPRO 314 could spawn an organization that actually goes into these poverty stricken communities and begin urban agriculture projects. That's a very large task on it's own as UFarmIIT itself is still in development; however, even the small plot of land that it is on now, the lot next to my sorority's house (how many times can I plug my sorority into this blog? The limit does not exist... #nerdjoke), produces so much! Introducing the same sized lot to a neighborhood, maybe even a neighborhood as small as IIT's main campus, would still affect a great amount of people. A girl can dream.

Anyways, social justice issues aside, this week for IPRO we will be visiting the Iron St. Community Garden. I'm particularly interested  in seeing how large it is and what other products are being grown. Our chore duties start this week for the garden. Hopefully the rain doesn't interfere too much--I wore my white flats today. Good choice? Bad choice? Probably Bad.

Here's a dog is a superman costume:

Until the next post!