LSP Environmental Studies Community Event Reports

Amanda Sakuma

I had managed to pick up a spare in the last round, but with only two pins down and one frame left, prospects were not looking good. My opponent was already ahead and she could plow down the field with a wicked curve that came out of nowhere. Sadly, that opponent was a 6 year-old girl who stood no taller than my waist. She was absolutely schooling me in pumpkin bowling. I watched as she lobbed the stemless pumpkin down the lane at the rows of butternut squash serving as pins. Each “pin” keeled over in defeat. It was no surprise when the little girl won the prize of a mini painted pumpkin for conquering the match. Her parents offered me warm, thankful smiles as a consolation. As if I had lost on purpose.

Instead of living in up at school in New York City, I was spending my first Saturday of October in farm country. After taking a 5-hour flight to my hometown of Burlington, Washington for a completely unrelated event, I found myself at the Festival of Family Farms. An annual event of the community, the festival was originated by Washington State University’s Department of Agriculture. Composed of 12 local farms in the area, the event was established to educate the community on understanding where their food comes from. Now a non-profit organization, the Festival of Family Farms combines learning with fun family oriented activities under the slogan of “Acres of Fun for Everyone!”

My family’s berry farm (yes, berry farm) was one of those featured in the festival. My parents had bribed me to attend with prospects of free food. So, with a steamy, hot and fresh corn on the cob in hand, I sat squished in between two little kids on a trailer of hay bails for a tractor-ride tour of the farm that I had worked on all summer. My mom, the tour guide of the hour, sat at the head of the trailer with what looked like a mini karaoke machine that projected her voice over the roar of the engine.

I munched on my snack with kernels lodged in my teeth as my mom explained the progression of how our food is grown and harvested. Though I had worked on “the farm” since I could remember, it was almost embarrassing how little I knew about it. I did not know that our plants were propagated, or reproduced, through a process called plant tissue culture. This process essentially replicates plants without ever having a seed. It still sounds crazy to me.

After the tour, I headed towards the information tent to get out of the cold and to grab more free food samples. Tables were set up along the perimeter of the tent, some offering tutorials on pruning; others were giving free samples of caramel apples. The table that drew in the largest crowd was the one dedicated entirely to information on organic food. “Charlie the Organic Guy” was already in a deep conversation with some young families by the time I had joined. The question of the day asked by many parents was why buy local organic food instead of what is available at the grocery stores?

Charlie had an interesting response. He told the crowd that though conventional produce at grocery stores offered lower prices, customers are unable to know where it came from, how it was grown, and what pesticides were used. An advocate of buying fresh local produce, Charlie explained the importance of knowing that what you buy is fresh and suitable for consumption. He had an interesting point that though there are organic certifications on food, they are only applied to how they are grown. According to Charlie, there are no government regulations concerning the transportation of organic produce. The verdict, he said, was to buy fresh and local whenever available. His talk made me appreciate the Union Square market that came in front of my dorm 4 times a week.

Overall, to me, the event seemed to be a success. This was the first year of the festival that I was able to be a bystander rather than the hired help. Washington is notoriously dreary during this time of year, and this day was no different. The gentle drizzle was a testament to the family’s dedication and stability against the weather. I was told later that the festival of all 12 farms drew in roughly 15,000-20,000 visitors throughout the two-day event.

I am an advocate of the festival and what it stands for. My rural community is expanding faster than ever, but it still seems as though community members still believe in farmland preservation. Kids were able to physically see where their food came from, and how it was harvested and brought to their table. Parents were able to learn about the difference between organic and non-organic products to determine what they want to offer their family. It really was “Acres of Fun for Everyone!”

I attended the community event of “Climate and Water Series”, delivered by Daniel Hillel, senior research scientist working at the Center for Climate Systems Research. It took place on Thursday, September 25, at the Rudin Family Forum for Civic Dialogue between 6:20 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. When I entered the room, I found myself facing about 30 other attendees. There was a small table being set up on the corner with light snacks on it. People were engaging in light conversations with each other. A teacher from Wagner also brought her class to the meeting. Two big pictures of human body structures were being showed on the big screen. They showed how much percent of human body are being occupied by water. Daniel Hillel started his speech with an interesting fact. He claimed that new born babies are made up of 90% of water, while grown ups have about 65% of water in their body. A person’s brain is made of 75% of water. It shows how important water is to our survival, and therefore led to the topic of the speech; the perception of interactions between human and environment.
Immediately, Daniel Hillel put a picture of the futile crescent, present day Middle East, on the screen. He talked about how civilizations were developed in this area. As a result of uneven distribution of rainfall in this place, different environments were being created. Different tribes with different lifestyles and religions also emerged on this piece of land because of their necessities to adopt the amount of water available. Daniel spent a lot of time describing the three kinds of environments; rain fed, pasture, and desert domain. He talked about how people living in the rain fed areas worship the god of rain because of the constant thunder storms. The dense forestation in the area also encouraged people to develop agriculture. People who lived in pasture domain would depend mostly on animals. As a result, they worshiped animal gods. On the other hand, people who lived in the desert domain needed to manage water very carefully. They learned how to direct water into different places and therefore, invented irrigation systems. With some histories about the Fertile Crescent, Daniel went on talking about different river valleys. He greatly emphasized on Egypt because it was the only civilization that survived to present day. Other civilizations had fallen due to the failure in agriculture. They overused land and caused problems such as salinization and land poison. However, Egypt is a special case. The Nile visits it every year and drained out the raising water, preventing salk to pile up. With all of this information, Daniel was trying to tell the listeners that history can repeats itself. If the ancient countries could fall due to abusive use of land, it could happen again to the present day nations.
After some more histories about Egypt, Daniel finally went on with the problems we are facing today. He talked about many cases where water resources are scarcer. His examples included the Soviet Union’s Aral River. He talked about how much the river had shrunk ever since it was being used to grow cotton for the nation. Then, he shared information on some problems Australia is facing presently. Because Australia over cut the trees, it exposed the west and east coast to danger of salinization. He explained that, when the trees were abundant, they were able to hold of the salt from sea water which got mixed up in the rain. However, deforestation took place; the salt got washed directly into the fields and damages the crops. Even Egypt, the country once safe from salinization is now vulnerable because of the huge population it has to support.
This was the first time I attend something like this other than the speeches I listened to for classes. Before attending the event, I never expect the world would run out of water. Since I live in a country where water is very abundant and cheap, I never considered water as a limited resource. Even one of the teachers in my junior high asked us to take long showers because he claimed that New York has the best water resources, and we should not be worrying about running out soon. I used to see educational commercials, urging people to save water. However, they never left a mark in my brain. I continued with my careless actions since I never truly understood the pressure of water source. When Daniel first introduced himself as a hydrologist, I even smiled a little bit. I never expect that there are people who devote their lives to study water, the most common substance on earth. However, as Daniel presented fact after fact about all the dangers the world is now facing as water is literarily running out, I started to feel the tension. Starting with a statement about how much percent of human body is made up of water, he successfully emphasized the importance of water to our survival. As he proceeds on with the speech until he reached his conclusion about the danger of water shortages, the listeners were more and more aware of this serious problem. The speech totally directed my thinking to a different way. I started to notice the amount of water we are wasting in our everyday activities. I start to understand the importance of saving water as a very precious resource.
The speech also proved to be very interesting. Daniel gave much information about ancient tribes and their interactions with water. He talked about how people used to believe the sky was having sex with the land when there were thunder storms. These interesting facts brought the speech to life. Everyone enjoyed listening to shocking and surprising events while being informed about these ancient cultures.
In general, I walked out that room with a lot of new concepts in my mind. I think the speech was definitely effective in informing people about a current environmental crisis. However, I felt that Daniel could have focused more on the possible solutions. He was running out of time in the end. Therefore, the lecture kind of ended on the problems not the solutions. This only makes the listeners more uneasy and unconfident about the present day issues. In addition, he could have made the lecture a bit more alive with more comprehensible visuals. The maps should have bigger and simpler marks. It was, however, a brand new experience. I would definitely attend something like this again since it was so informative and eye opening.

-Cheng Yu

images:

http://www.mideastweb.org/egypt.gif

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/aral_sea_1989_2003.jpg

Aral Sea: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/aral_sea_1989_2003.jpg

Map of egypt: http://www.mideastweb.org/egypt.gif