Cultivating Change Women Transforming Local Food Systems

Cultivating Change Women Transforming Local Food Systems

Meg VanDeusen

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Women and Gender Studies, Anthropology

Dutch interviews submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for SIT Study Abroad, The Netherlands: International perspectives on sexuality & gender in Spring 2013. Final paper written for

Honors 352 Carolina Global Food Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Women Transforming Local Food Systems 2

Abstract Women are the transmitters of cultural codes about food: food systems are culturally constructed

and most food work is women’s work. Food practices have a history of both sexual and socio-economic

division of labor, and are part of the social paradigms that inform personal identity. Returning to the land

has become a recent, primarily white upper-middle class, phenomenon. These efforts, while limited in

practice, are broad in scope. Women are taking control of the complete food cycle to improve their local

community’s quality of life. Society imposes a domestic identity on family food practices. Understanding

where food comes from, how it is grown, and how it comes to their table empowers women. Cooking and

feeding practices are viewed as both a burden and a pleasure. By creating a life of gardening, cooking,

feeding, and eating – taking ownership and/or leading the production of one component of the food

system – women are able to overturn the burden-pleasure binary. Ultimately, by reclaiming their position

as gatekeeper, women bolster their perception of self, decrease modern society’s individualistic

tendencies, and create sustainable community around healthy food systems.

This research gives voice to nine influential women who are initiating transformative projects in

slow food, community kitchen, community garden, urban farm, and youth focused initiatives throughout

Holland, The Netherlands and North Carolina, USA. These women encourage everyone to learn about

their food and to overcome individualistic tendencies; the result will foster sustainable community around

healthy food systems. Their organizations could increase social impact by collaborating with one another

through the physical medium of a shared meal. These women will overturn the perceived burden-

pleasure binary within women’s relationship to food by sustaining positive change within their local food

systems. By comparing initiatives between North Carolina and Holland I examine a global understanding of

the importance of knowing and connecting to food.


Introduction Food touches everything and is the foundation of every economy. Eating is an endlessly evolving enactment of gender, family, and community relationships.

- Penny van Van Esterik

I became interested in food – what it means to eat with intention, be sustainable, have a just food

system – while going to school on a working sustainable farm in Vermont during my junior year of high

school. I got to eat off the land and in doing so became more and more connected to the food I was

eating. More importantly, I was spending hours every day working with my friends to grow that food, both

to sustain ourselves and future generations of students. I was hooked.

When I returned from The Mountain School I wanted to have my own garden and continue to

embrace the cyclical nature of food production. My parents joked that I never wanted to help them in the

yard before! New garden beds never happened, but around the same time my family was becoming more

invested in our own food practices. My family has always valued eating dinner together, so when I had

become a vegetarian the year before I catalyzed the family’s decision to be more creative with our meals.

My love for cooking began to grow. We went to a farmer’s market every week and established

relationships with a few of the farmers. Having fresh food and eating together had become a lifestyle.

When I came to the University of North Carolina for college I was severely disappointed by the

dining hall’s vegetarian options. I dropped my meal plan within the month and became a creative dorm

room chef. I thrived in this new lifestyle with the aid of my somewhat illegal toaster oven. Sautéing garlic

and onions in the dorm’s shared kitchen guaranteed the flocking of new friends. One of my favorite things

to do became feeding others. Although every time I went to the grocery store my college mind debated if

I should make food choices based off of what was good for my body, for the environment, or for my

wallet, I was fully committed to playing the role I could in establishing a just food economy.

I had also joined a local community garden/urban farm project my first weekend of college, so I

was back to getting my hands dirty and connecting to my produce. The organization, HOPE Gardens,


creates access to fresh and sustainable produce for our neighbors living in poverty. I began to understand

on a more interpersonal level that my lifestyle choices around food were not ones that could be made by

everyone, even if they wanted to. In talking with women from the homeless shelter I learned that they

wanted to feed their children well but were faced with too many interconnected barriers. Conversations

and actions around food had become a part of my daily life. To me, it was all related.

My gender studies training began to influence the way that I looked at food. If homeless mothers

were feeling the burden to feed their families, who else was affected? I became curious about how

different parts of the food system were gendered. Suddenly I noticed gendered divisions of food labor

everywhere: chefs at high end restaurants – men, cooking competition T.V. shows – men, large scale

farming – men, everything that relates to food and meals in the home – women. These are broad

generalizations and there are absolutely exceptions to every rule, but for the most part men are

responsible for everything in the public eye and women for everything in the domestic sphere.

My junior year of college I studied abroad in Amsterdam on a program for international

perspectives of sexuality and gender through the School for International Training (SIT). This was my

chance to pull all of my interests – gender relations, food practices, ethnographic research – together. I

was surprised to discover that food practices in The Netherlands had only really began changing towards a

local, ecological food economy in 2008 when the government created a grant for the creative

revitalization of urban neighborhoods. Many of the projects proposed were to start community gardens

and urban farms across major cities. But, even with such recent developments, the food and farming

projects remain gendered. Men were directing large scale technological initiatives and women were

orchestrating the community oriented garden projects. Just like other forms of work, especially within

capitalistic societies, women’s contribution to agriculture is rendered invisible and is devalued.

It became clear to me that power relations are embedded within food practices. Women’s and

men’s varying relationship to food tell us about how society addresses, reproduces, and resists gendered


constructions. The more I began to immerse myself in my research the more I came to recognize that

women are the transmitters of cultural codes about food. Although women’s contributions in the home

are often represented as a natural division of labor, gender roles within our food systems are culturally

constructed. A women’s identity of self is often integrally connected to the ability to feed her family.

Discourse around food is necessary to understand who we are within communities we identify as home. I

believe that anything can be accomplished over a meal or around a table, long standing gender

discrimination notwithstanding. My research therefore focuses on what women leaders within the food

system are doing to empower both themselves and others by creating a life of gardening, cooking,

feeding, or eating.

This research gives voice to the women cultivating change within both Holland’s and North

Carolina’s food systems. After having conversations with women in The Netherlands about their

experiences, I became interested in what changes to my own community that stirred my interest in food

and gender relations initially. By highlighting the stories of my interviewees, this paper validates their

efforts and brings light to the position of food consciousness in Dutch and American society. The stories of

the women I interviewed serve as a building block towards reconciling the stereotypical role of women

and food with their modern day leadership position in food systems. Further, my observations and

gathered knowledge can provide an outlook on how existing organizations and current leaders can expand

their social impact and reach.

Background The agricultural and the food system is broken. We broke it. America broke it. And hopefully what we are

doing is contributing to fixing that problem. We’re offering people access to products that we can stand

behind, that we’re proud of, and that we know the people who make them and they’re made without

chemicals and hormones and all the other bad crap out there. So hopefully on the macro level, we might

be making a tiny tiny dent; but it’s an important one.

– Jamie DeMent


The development of local food systems has recently become a global trend. Food shortages are

becoming more frequent and poor health results from a growing capitalistic, globalized economy.

Between international food important-exports and worldwide government subsidies, our agriculture

industries are in disarray. Backyard gardens are not expected to be the solution that feeds the world; they

do however, allow citizens to take matters into their own hands. Studies on the influence of large scale

industrialized farms show the disappearance of family owned or small industrial farms. Debates over

genetically modified crops persist and work has been done to explain the importance of organic

treatments. There is a global demand for communities to respond to food security issues locally.

Large scale agricultural food production has more to do with the structure of power than it does

growing food. In reality, farming should be about feeding people and building community. Such projects

have long served as a response to social and political events on a local, national, and international level.

Little research has been done on the relevance of urban farms and community gardens in these food

systems. Researchers and anthropologists alike recognize that small scale initiatives are not going to feed

the world and end the current agricultural crisis. Local food systems can, however, be supplemented by

these community efforts and should be recognized as an asset to the community.

Community gardens exist in urban and rural areas, and provide a variety of services according to

local need. “Community garden” is a phrase used in modern literature that intentionally lacks clarity but

covers a wide range of initiatives. There are typically three main types of community gardens: an

organized group of people cultivating their own individual plots, a group involved in using produce

cultivated together for a greater project, and an organized garden project that is dedicated to the owners

and participants on that property (Pudup, 2008, p. 1231). Across the board, community gardens are

idealized spaces which bring people together in response to a local need.

In the United States, this need has typically occurred as an act of resistance, and only in recent

years have such projects become a testimony to personal responsibility and empowerment. US


community gardens date back to the late nineteenth century. Multiple gardening movements correspond

to events of social and economic crisis (Bassett, 1979). Post war time emergencies encouraged subsistent

domestic food production. Relief agencies saw collective gardening as an affordable way to address

unprecedented levels of need how social resistance. This perception did not take hold until guerilla

gardening emerged in the 1970s. This movement reclaimed and reused urban land that otherwise would

have been left to trash. The very existence of an urban space that could and should be used for beauty

was an inherent act of resistance.

At the turn of the twentieth century, social change began to become the aim of many garden

projects. The poor, the working class, and immigrant families were seen as a threat to social order and

national identity. Upper-middle class, white American reformers saw gardens as a way to uplift these

populations and instill a strong work ethic. By the 1980s community gardens were considered a source of

collective empowerment for building social capital. These projects were inherently sites where people

work together, but the emphasis was on individual change and self-actualization. Over the course of that

decade a shift occurred away from neighborhood based change and towards technological advances,

leading to collective mobilization from outside actors (Pudup, 2008, p. 1230). Ultimately, all garden

projects serve two purposes: personal empowerment coming from the individual choices and

responsibility associated with gardening and social transformation that ensues from working with and

beside others striving towards the same purpose.

In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, six axioms of community garden types can be identified:

leisure gardens, child and school gardens, entrepreneurial gardens, crime diversion/work training gardens,

healing and therapy gardens, neighborhood pocket parks, ecological restoration parks, and demonstration

gardens (Ferris et al, 2001, p. 559). The food projects featured in this study cover child and school

gardens, entrepreneurial gardens, crime diversion/work training, and demonstration gardens, although

many fit in to multiple categorizes. These are the types of gardens seen across the United States, although


such a variety of purposes are not also hosted globally. Backyard gardens, serving just the family table and

a few neighbors, are a dying breed and therefore not featured in this study, although many interviewees

believe the resurgence of such practices could drastically improve modern food systems.

In part, the types of gardens researched, and on a whole currently existing, are based on the

knowledge that food practices host a strong class divide. Sustainability studies indicate that social

inequality is inextricably tied to environmental degradation through systems of domination. Similar to the

capitalistic resistance, contemporary systems of oppression target poor US communities. Aspects of

environmental destruction, such as mountain top removal and coal mining, result in public health effects

within the endangered community and ecosystem (Shea, 2013, p. 19). However, this worldwide peak in

energy production relates directly to the fossil fuel energy used in industrial agriculture, making food a

salient aspect in the discussion. Reducing energy use “presents a unique mix between the ecological

connection of farming and the cultural heritage of food cultures and identities” (Shea, 2013, p. 26).

Whereas farming was historically a lower class occupation, the push to return to the land has

become an upper middle class phenomenon. Social inequality is intrinsically connected to environmental

degradation (Shea, 2013, p. 15). Although food practices instill a sexual and socio-economic division of

labor, recent agriculture based initiatives strive for equity. Despite these efforts, however, most projects

and initiatives continue to appeal to a Dutch and expat crowd and the vast majority of participants are

women. Holland’s initiatives to understand local food systems include neighborhood gardens, urban

agriculture, and shared meals. Public involvement is central: do it yourself, learn together. Each project

combines increasing food awareness – knowledge of the quality of food and the cultivation processes –

with efforts to improve the local community’s quality of life.

Many of the community development agendas seen in US garden projects were derived from the

United Kingdom’s urban regeneration policies. UK efforts expanded in too many other European

countries, but there was not an equal effort in policy and therefore documentation. Limited research


exists on efforts towards a local food system within the Netherlands, not to mention their impact. As in

many European countries after World War II the Netherlands’ government and factory owners worked

together to provide allotments of individual plots of land to the country’s citizens. During that time of

economic rebuilding these ‘volkstuinen’ served as a means to establish food security and improve the

quality of life of those living in industrialized cities. (Zimbler, 2001, p. 18) Holland had a unique

opportunity to convert volkstuinen and creatively build community. Today these same volkstuinen serve a

somewhat different purpose: recreation, access to nature, and sometimes supplementing store bought

produce. The owners of these plots are shifting from mostly older men to increasingly younger women.

Women are at the center of building new, local, ecological food systems. (McMahon, 2002, p. 203)

Due to the economics of the import and export system, The Netherlands is not pressed to

maximize food resources for the sake of feeding its population. The country’s agriculture sector employs

only two percent of the labor force but provides a large surplus of food products for both the processing

and export industries. For the most part, food is accessible and affordable. Therefore, local food systems

are not expected to feed the city; sustainable food production, processing, distribution and consumption

are recognized as a way to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place.

Urban farming has developed as a way to use existing city assets – green spaces and neglected places – to

make the city more edible, healthier, wealthier and happier.

Urban farming has been recognized by the Dutch government as an asset to value communities,

dissipate urban neglect and stimulate local economies. One of my interviewees, Ann Doherty, explains

that “they see that a piece of empty land can be bad for the neighborhoods: there´s more crime, and

people don´t feel safe. If you get people involved in growing food on this land, you can completely turn

that around and build the social fabric in a neighborhood and build a community and make it safe. The

government knows they cannot maintain all the gardens so they give people the tools and the training to

maintain them themselves.” It has the opportunity to bring together representatives from an expanding


range of participants: community activists, local politicians, planners, policy-makers, farmers, gardeners,

shopkeepers, social workers, developers, landlords, engineers, health professionals and academics.

Maria Turesky explored how women are a central component of this shift in food systems by

recording the personal life stories of six Dutch female farmers. Each woman’s farm was by no means small,

but still an alternative to the mass produced food available at chain grocery stores. Small scale farmers,

whether male or female, can be culturally and politically feminized; viewed as economically powerless,

unproductive, and dependent. Turesky demonstrated “how a few current female farmers shift or uphold

the historical stereotypes of women farmers.” Telling their individual truths exemplified each woman’s

commitment and passion to their farms while simultaneously depicting perseverance through gender

discrimination. Her work indicated that female farmers are running the business, not taking care of the

family on their husband’s or father’s farm. However, Turesky failed to address why these food systems are

gendered in the first place. Just like the rest of women’s work within capitalistic societies, women's

contribution to agriculture is “rendered invisible or devalued.” (McMahon, 2002, p. 204) Therefore,

women involved in local farming, represent cultural and economic resistance.

The economic resistance, and capital based asset of local farming, resides in its environmental

sustainability. Globally, people are hungry because they lack access: limited money to buy food or no

access to land on which to grow it. Similar to capitalism’s historical silencing of women, it has a tendency

to “displace people and places through investment processes governing industries and urban space”

(Pudup, 2008, p. 39). For more than a century we have seen recurring episodes of capitalistic

restructuring. With each episode, more people are discriminated against and cyclical oppression

continues. Community gardens in the United States have responded to these prevailing concerns. From a

neoliberal mentality, gardening places individuals at the center of economic restructuring and puts them

in charge of adjusting social dislocation.


Increasing greenspace within urbanized communities “could improve both the environmental and

aesthetic quality of the urban areas.” (Zimbler, 2001, p. 20) Such an improvement would also reap

economic benefits of a healthier and more active population. Urban farms can establish a local economy

through market gardens and neighborhood jobs. In addition to the asset of urban farms, small scale rural

farming increases “participation among more social niches such that more women would be economically

independent and self-sustaining.” (Turesky, 2011, p. 38) Female farmers develop independence from their

male counterparts and establish their own contribution to the food system, increasing the amount of

inputs and outputs. More importantly, “community gardens help remedy the environmental problems,

such as water, soil, and air pollution, that result from the intensive use of center city land in the

Netherlands.” (Zimbler, 2001, p. 26) Having a better cared for urban terrain will decrease governmental

spending and improve the Dutch quality of life. Each of these authors recognizes the presence of

economic influences, but none elaborate on how arguing the capitalist advantage of a local food system

could increase participation or appreciation. Most individuals interested in local food do not study find the

economic influences appealing, all aspects of a system are interconnected.

Community building, arguably more influential than economics, remains a great asset of local

food systems. Zimbler frames her thesis around a US historical perspective where urban farming

addresses underserved populations, offers outdoor education opportunities, and provides a focal point for

community gathering. She notes that The Netherlands is just beginning to develop this perspective since

historically the volkstuinen were a place for individuals or families to cultivate their own land. In any

society, food can become a vehicle of power; this can be witnessed even within the volkstuinen analysis. It

is necessary to recognize, however, that “when we partake in food, we consume relationships.”

(McMahon, 2002, p. 204) Current research lacks any explanation for why people have become so

disconnected from their food and how the relationship McMahon imagines can be valued. But the

communities created around new gardens and urban farms can address the disconnectivity.


Between 1998 and 2010 the United States witnessed a rapid increase in consumers supporting

local or organic food projects. In those twelve years, organic food sales increased by an average of 3.3

percent annually and reached 4 percent of total American food sales. Nationwide, farmers market sales

also grew by 3.6 percent in that time (Stoffel, 2011). Local food initiatives decrease unsustainable

practices by providing local communities with ecological, economic, and social services. Not only do these

efforts create systematic change, but the social effects of local food “provide opportunities for cohesion

and interconnectivity between community members” (Shea, 2013, p. 67). Putting consumers in direct

contact with producers creates access to fresh, healthy, whole ingredients for all community members.

Change makers use local foodways to engage individuals in social justice.

Who are the people creating alternative communities based around food? Food representations

and practices can tell us about the culture that constructs our personal identity. Participating in various

food related projects around Holland and within North Carolina, it became evident that the people

investing in local, grassroots, bottom up change were primarily women. Women are the ones caring about

where there food comes because they are the ones responsible for understanding how it affects their

family. More importantly, the women whom I spoke with recognize the importance of food within the

fabric of their communities. I investigate how these communities use their assets for social change:

bringing communities together, providing for the underserved, and educating youth.

Methodology Oral History changes the writing of history much as the modern novel transformed the writing of literary fiction: the most important change is that the narrator is now pulled into the narrative and becomes a part of the story.

- Alessandro Portelli My research is rooted in an anthropological approach to documenting the lived experiences of

female leaders of Dutch and American food systems with case studies focusing in Holland and North


Carolina. I advocate for sustainable food systems and community based meals which lends to my distinct

perspective within this research. My own opinions on the importance of local food systems – urban

farming and community gardening – induced the assumptions used to frame this project. Personal

experiences with gardening as a community asset led me to look for the social benefit within each project.

Furthermore, I recognize my own reflexivity having been interested in the way food affects individuals and

community interactions for the past several years. Two years ago I began an oral history project based

around gendered food systems which quickly developed in to examining how an individual’s personal

history with food affects their view on the relevance of food in their lives, more importantly, the impact of

food systems on their community. Therefore, I approached this research with the knowledge that food

and identity are inexplicably connected and the curiosity for how a woman’s self-presentation can often

be traced to her relationship with food.

I began seeking answers from those invested in a food movement in The Netherlands. Through

casual conversations with various female leaders at their gardens and in their homes over dinner, I came

to realize that the “movement” I envisioned does not exist. Change is being made, but there is no

cohesive group mentality among the Dutch. This report is therefore the result of a one month qualitative

and anthropological study of the women leading various projects dedicated to creating a grassroots based

local food system within Holland in comparison to women leading similar projects in North Carolina.

According to recent theories and literature, women are at the center of building new, local, ecological

food systems. I was interested in seeing how. My investigations and resulting analysis is based on

individual interviews as well as participant observation within the changing food system: community

gardens, urban farms, slow food, and education.

Of course, this research is inherently limited in many respects. I do not claim that the women and

projects features in this research are all inclusive. With endless time and resources I would continue to

meet the women making deep rooted impact in the communities around me. Each has its own story, but I


do believe this to be fairly representative of the various types of projects that exist. In addition, my project

is clearly self-limited to the women conducting food system, bottom up change. This is not to ignore the

great influence many men have on the projects discussed and other ones across the globe. However, this

research focuses on overcoming the historical oppression of women in regards to food, and how

reclaiming domestic expectations dramatically increases the kind of work women are doing, and their

personal happiness within it.

Coming from the standpoint that meaningful human connection can only be formed through the

reciprocity of interactions, I committed to spending more time with each participant than just during their

interviews. This consisted of everything from digging in the dirt for hours at project sites and getting to

know other volunteers to attending slow food events and sharing meals with the community. While at

these sites I learned that many students have entered these projects before, looking for answers, but

none have been interested in truly learning from the community. Learn is all I did. I discovered how simple

worm composting can be, watched an expert engage children in the concept of growing food, got proven

wrong on a planting method, dug up bricks from a parking-lot, and learned the Dutch words necessary for

agricultural pursuits. I breathed fresh air and got my hands dirty in order to connect with the hands and

faces actually making a difference in this movement.

I approached each interview with the curiosity of an oral historian and the knowledge of an

ethnographer. Ultimately, my approach to simultaneously engage with these women’s projects and lived

experiences will explore how a woman’s sense of self, and her representation of herself, is established

through her food practices. I wanted to understand how each woman got involved in her current project

through engaging with her lived experiences around food and feeding and eating. What I soon discovered,

however, is that my interviewees are more than just community leaders; many of them were mothers,

with full time jobs, responsible for getting food on the table for their families in addition to the projects I

was curious about. A conversation reflecting on the entirety of their life was a luxury all of my


interviewees simply could not afford. As a result I focused my interview questions towards a topical life

history structure. Each interviewee still reflected upon the important aspects of their life that brought

them to where they are today, although I directed my interviews towards each woman’s opinion of the

food movement and specifically their project within it.

Theoretical Framework Like women’s studies, the emerging field of food studies is interdisciplinary and includes attention to the daily lives of ordinary people.

- Arlene Avakian

The scientific disciplines of nutrition, economics, and agronomy have studied how food shapes

and reflects human values. In order to shift from the scientific standpoint towards recognizing ethical

social rules, studies analyze cooking and feeding from a gendered perspective. This research places

women at the center of the family meal since most food - production, acquisition, processing,

preparation, and serving – indicates women’s work transmits cultural codes about food. Although men

historically, and anecdotally still often do, hold the purse strings and dominate food choice preferences,

women majorly do the purchasing. Conversely, most food work outside of the home is not within the

woman’s sphere. This research seeks to address how the physical cultivation, the commercial preparation,

and the formation of community through food affects the positioning of women.

Extrapolating from feminist food theories that have been applied to women’s position in the

kitchen and role as family nurturer establish the base for analyzing women’s relationship to food in the

public sphere. Penny Van Esterik encourages academics to shift towards a discussion of active agency. She

argues that by providing women with the right to feed their families, not just assigning role of nurturer, we

can acknowledge women’s social and political positioning within the food system. The power of nurturer

is undervalued, but the power as cultivator is unexamined. I question whether Van Esterik’s theory on

“the right to feed” can be applied to today’s food movement and the shift towards seeking healthy, fairly

produced food. All existing bodies of literature focus on this role of feeding; therefore, I am curious about


how food arrives at the table. I will examine how women’s classical positioning as gatekeepers to the food

system can create a paradigm shift when applied to their current positioning within the public sphere.

Integrating gendered food ideologies with a theorized feminist food praxis model, I will establish a

framework to examine women’s experiences in today’s food movement.

In order to analyze women’s experiences, we must first understand the theories and variables that

contributed to the feminist food praxis model. Theorists have used feminist, social exchange, and

standpoint theory to contextualize gender within the social formation of food practices. Although the

academic discussion of food and foodways began in the 1940s with M.F.K Fisher connecting the sensual to

an otherwise ordinary eating experience, the academic discipline of food studies did not develop until the

1980s. Laura Shapiro illuminated how the history of food could connect with the history of women. Carole

M. Counihan first connected food studies with women’s studies in a theoretical framework when

expressing her belief that food practices are both “constructive and reflective of gender construction.”

(Avakian and Haber, 2006, p. 8) Counihan focused on viewing food as a means to create interdependent

relationships between men and women, challenging the presence of power in the home. She argued that

women’s identity derives from an influential private life as nurturer in the domestic realm.

McIntosh and Zey’s social exchange theory – where all human relationships are formed through

cost benefit negotiation – relates directly to Counihan’s perception that women “feed others in return for

love, favors, good behavior and the power that comes from being needed.” (Counihan, 1988, p. 48) Here

we can see predominating, if indirect, power that a partner or child has over a woman’s food decisions.

Wanting to please, women rarely prioritize their needs or desires when making a food related decision.

McIntosh and Zey would further extrapolate that this form of power stems from the socialization that

men and women are influential in separate spheres. These power differences provide each gender with

the ability to exercise coercion and manipulation while producing different outcomes. McIntosh and Zey

use social exchange theory to argue that power revolves around money rather than household acts,


stating that women with a higher income have greater control over family food choices. We will return to

this theory when looking forward at my proposed research where urban farms have the opportunity to

overcome these power relations.

Marjorie DeVault views activities in the home in a manner similar to that of Counihan. She

recognizes that “food preparation is work that defines the family” and indicates that work cannot be

separated from leisure. (Avakian and Haber, 2006, p. 9) Feminists recognize that the home is often the site

of women’s work, coining the term “the second shift” when discussing the invisible work of women

maintaining the house and the family. Devault’s studies in the 1990s can be complemented by Van

Esterik’s current food praxis model blurring the work-leisure divide by considering the way an act is

performed. The expectation for women to feed their families is a simultaneous burden and source of

pleasure. Whereas DeVault argued that women often deny their domestic tasks as work, Van Esterik

acknowledges that it is the way a task is performed, not the task itself, which defines her work. Therefore,

feminist food theory considers the way in which the act of feeding - producing, processing, preparing, and

serving - is performed.

Performance theory applied to food systems exemplifies the relevance of identity through agency.

Van Esterik contributes that a social actor makes individual actions within the food system while the

collective system simultaneously acts on the individual. This perspective recognizes the relationship

between agency and structure as integral to a woman’s understanding of her own identity. Due to the

social construction of women’s expectation to feed her family, she has power as nurturer, which

contributes to her sense of self. Food insecurities that result in a woman’s inability to feed her family can

be detrimental to her concept as an independent provider. Standpoint theory – all perspectives are

shaped by individual experiences – is relevant to the positioning of identity within food studies.

Van Esterik analyzes women’s identity from their point as provider whereas Probyn examines

women’s perspective as consumer. Both theorists explore the influence that eating has on a woman’s


perception of self, but Probyn approaches eating as a way to refigure the woman’s identity. She connects

“knowing the self and caring of the other” in order to articulate who the individual is through what they

eat. (Probyn, 2000, p. 70) Each standpoint has a unique contribution to the food studies praxis. Woman as

feeder creates identity through power; woman as consumer creates identity through pleasure. The

perspective of woman as cultivator merges the two standpoints. Growing her own food for the sake of

health and pleasure allows a woman to be both feeder and consumer.

Only with these theories and variables can we question why men often dominate food decisions

when women are held responsible for enacting the food practices. Finally, we are able to examine the

notion that women control the flow of food. Most important to this study is the theory of women as

gatekeepers to the food system. The culturally constructed concept of women as mediators between

production and consumption critically shapes the flow of food in to the home. McIntosh and Zey

contextualize the gatekeeper concept within feminist food studies; their study simultaneously

acknowledges women as chief decision makers regarding food while casting doubt on previously theorized

domestic power.

Even though women tend to purchase, store, prepare, and serve the meals, men ultimately

control family food decisions due to their economic position. This is where social exchange theory,

implying that if women earned more money they would be better situated, could come in to play.

McIntosh and Zey examine the nature of family power – authority, coercion, and influence – within food

choices. Since issues of power, especially within the realm of domesticity, are largely resource based, I

propose a new theoretical framework. Why does purchasing dictate the production of food in the home?

In 1943 Lewin introduced the concept of woman as gatekeeper and subscribed to the belief that we can

“discover why people eat what they eat if we learn how food comes to the table.” Patriarchal control of

economic resources implied that women maintained all channels of the food system except for monetary


income and for gardening. Production of food was in no way at their disposal. Now decades later the

physical production - cultivation of the land through gardening - is an option.

By applying feminist theory to the notion of women as gatekeepers, we can develop a new

feminist food praxis model that applies to women’s role in the public sphere as cultivators of food and

influential producers within the food system. Not much research has been done in the field of feminist

food studies for fear of reducing women’s work to the domestic sphere. Focusing on the women’s

influence on the physical production of food, it is essential to make use of the non-dualistic principle.

Food simultaneously victimizes and empowers women. Women are both vulnerable and powerful within

food practices since they are constantly fluctuating between productive and reproductive work, public

and private spaces, and formal and informal economies. The task of feeding cannot be reduced to a

private act of social reproduction. However, it is more than this task of feeding which binds women within

a dualistic model. Theories from ecofeminism note that women’s daily actions have a connection to the

environment – shared history of oppression by a patriarchal and colonialist society – which is often

ignored. Others consider women’s position as homemaker and mother to be what connects them so

closely to nature, leading to the understanding that human relationships with each other and with nature

should be nurtured separately from exploitative power dynamics.

Examining all of these dichotomies indicates that a new feminist food praxis must not be limited

to such a binary framework. Instead, we can use Van Esterik’s non-reductionist model of cooking, feeding,

and eating as a metaphor for interdependence. Van Esterik proposes a paradigm shift towards reflexivity –

recognizing how individual food choices affect other food systems – in order to understand reciprocity and

intimacy. These terms do not need to be viewed within the classically defined “natural” division of labor,

but can instead be associated with the empowered gatekeeper model.

Examining food systems on the whole overturns monetary influence within social exchange

theory by including the role of cultivation. Women who produce their own food have the power to depart


from the dichotomy of feeder or consumer. The role of nurturer remains prevalent regardless of a

woman’s position within the food system but establishes a sense of interdependence by valuing health

and pleasure. Such spaces as urban farms and community gardens should be examined through the

feminist food praxis lens. Women clearly have power that extends past the domestic sphere, including the

power to eliminate hunger, reproduce bodies, and ensure sustainability. (Van Esterik, 1999, p. 160) How

can these abilities be put to use?

Feminist food praxis informs my research by combining gatekeeper and identity theories. I

extrapolate from Lupton’s post structural approach to the construction of food identity. Her perception of

the food discourse provides a theoretical approach to the age-old saying “we are what we eat.” Post

structuralism focuses on an individual’s subjectivity, therefore Lupton views “food and eating [as] intensely

emotional experiences that are intertwined with embodied sensations and strong feelings.” (1996: 36) We

must create a new frame for power over identity for women to utilize their power within the greater food

system. I propose we establish that we are how we eat by applying standpoint theory to the

interdependence existent within a gatekeeper model. This model deconstructs the dichotomies between

producer and consumer, domestic nurturer and receiver of pleasure to ultimately erode the stereotypical

perception of women’s place within the food system. The feminist theoretical framework acknowledges

that the food system remains gendered but that knowledge can be used to improve an individual’s

relationship to food and in turn their quality of life.

Self-Representation Each woman whom I interviewed shared with me a part of herself. They engaged me in their

projects, illustrated their inherent beliefs and worked with me to discover the origin of their ideals. As I

got deeper in my research I realized the different types of local food system change I wanted to highlight

and discovered themes I was hoping my interviewees would uncover. But, that would have defeated the


purpose of an ethnographic study. The more I learned the more questions I had; the longer we talked the

longer I wish we had. The hour each interview took can in no way be a summation of these women’s

contributions to social change through food. Few of them saw their work as part of a movement, and

none thought they were the catalyst for transforming today’s food system. And yet, each one of my

interviews is a change maker in her own respect and is making a deeply lasting impact in the health of

their community.

*** In The Netherlands, I chose each of these women for their distinct contributions to Holland’s local

food system. After a conversation with Annett van Hoorn – director of Eetbaar Amsterdam, the online

medium working to help projects collaborate – I began to get a glimpse into the lives of the women I

wanted to learn from. Annett graciously invited me in to her home to share in a family dinner because she

had no other moment to spare for an interview. While I could not include our conversation in my official

research, her enthusiasm, contacts, and knowledge framed the rest of my project.

Each woman I spoke with had incredibly limited time because of how invested she is not only in

her project, but in the way she leads an environmentally and food conscious life. No one viewed

themselves as an activist, in fact that was the very last thing they wanted to be. I had to overcome my

assumptions of researching a food movement: making changes in the food system is simply a part of these

women’s lives because they want everyone to recognize the importance of healthy food. They have big

goals and visions for what this change means. Knowing who they want to ultimately reach within their

communities, many of these women are dissatisfied by who is currently involved. And yet, they are not

women to compromise for something less than what they know is possible.

Through just a few hours of planting in Eetbaar Park I observed Rachelle Eerhart’s attempt to

balance getting her work done and talking to her visitors; we then unearthed the reason for that struggle

in our interview. Over the course of two months I got to know Natascha Hagenbeek while working in her

garden I Can Change The World With My Two Hands. It is there that I have watched community being


built: volunteers return week after week to talk with new friends and see if their seeds sprouted and

children taste herbs for the first time and enthusiastically take them home to their families. But, even with

these successes Natascha is limited by what she can accomplish herself. “I don’t have much time to

dream.” She stated, as if it were a simple matter of fact. “No time to think about what would be the next

goal. I’m not that character, I don’t think before doing. This project requires that you just do do do.”

Although none of my other interviewees expressed the sentiment in such a direct manner, I could tell it

was in the back of their minds.

When I asked each of them what is the next step there was always a pause filled with tension.

Their individual projects are not going to alter the food system in ways they dream is the best solution.

They know they need each other’s projects, but for that they need more time and resources and support.

For these reasons, it is only just that I present the full stories of each woman who took time they did not

have to tell me about their life.

*** Natascha Hagenbeek, director of I Can Change the World With My Two Hands, grapples with joining her

two worlds of needing an urban life style and having a love for fashion. Her new approach is to

incorporate gardening in to both her artistic and everyday life. “It’s not so strange” she notes, “because

nature has the strongest beauty within, and fashion, if you leave the superficial things out, is also

beautiful. It has to do with identity and it can be really about beauty.” ICCTWWMTH is becoming a space

for volunteers, gardeners, and curious community members to find beauty in their identity.

Natascha, a 42 year old artist and trend researcher, spent her childhood in a flat in Amersfort. Although the neighborhood was fairly poor and full of concrete, Natascha was able to grow up surrounded by many different cultures. Access to nature was limited, but her Indonesian Father was a skilled forager so she and her sister both got in touch with the outdoors through him. He taught them to climb apple trees and shake down the ripe ones which they then would store in refurbished freezers in their attic. And when the summer months were right they would share in hours of berry picking. Her Mother would use some of what they found to cook, and would occasionally cook Indonesian food for her father, but for the most part dinners were not diverse. The family didn’t have the ability to make everything from scratch or with the freshest of ingredients, but Natascha remembers her mother focusing on healthy food as much as possible.


Her Mother moved from that neighborhood when Natascha was 15. The new neighborhood was less lively and engaging than where she had grown up, and after a year Natascha decided to move out. Living in Utrecht with her boyfriend at the time Natascha started in a fashion school. Having been determined to join the fashion world from the age of 12, Natascha was disappointed by the unnecessary stress that school forced upon her. Confusion built; she found her long held dreams of fashion suddenly superficial. Unsure of what to do next Natasha began exploring her options: she attended an art academy for teaching, went to India for four months, tried evening school, and sought out education in art research.

At the age of 23 Natascha met her current boyfriend Stephen at the squat, a community of people who occupy previously abandoned properties, which he had started. Initially lured by the artist’s studio he let her rent out, they soon started dating and together developed the squat’s all vegetarian restaurant. Although she only had a few months of cooking experience, the two of them made it work. The squat was appealing for her artistic needs: allowing her to experiment with space and get in to nature. Since childhood and foraging with her father, Natascha “always had the attraction to nature but needed the city as well. The loneliness of really being outside in nature was too scary” but the squat was close enough for her to access both. After three years of living there, and 15 years of being associated with the community, working with irresponsible individuals became too difficult.

In 2003 Natascha took a trip to New York City, where she was first exposed to Urban Farming. The concept of gardening in the city aligned perfectly with her desires: a city life with access to nature and an artistic lens of creativity with space. It was an idea she was excited to bring back to The Netherlands. After trying to get a “food from the hood” project started in the Bijlmer, Natascha moved to the Landlust neighborhood with her two children and realized that something in her new community needed to change. In 2008 the local government welcomed her proposal to improve the neighborhood, and the garden project “I Can Change the World with My Two Hands” was her solution.

Neighbors work side by side, either in their own beds which they can rent or in the central garden managed by Natascha, and together they share knowledge, make mistakes, and get to know nature. The people involved with their own beds seem to unconsciously like feeling connected with the neighborhood - they have a very independent life and a good life - but the garden puts them more at ease in this back street neighborhood. Those who work in the shared beds are more idealistic and have more connection to the goal and the purpose. And it’s working. People are starting to see each other on the street more, to talk and feel safe with each other.

I have seen Natascha’s artistic side emerge from under all the compost; her vision guides all the weekly volunteers who are planting without any greater sense of purpose. She likes having the ability to direct the project but welcomes input from all participants, emphasizing that she knows just as much as the rest of us. This sense of learning from doing opens up the paths of communication in the garden, letting everyone’s voice be included. But at the end of the day Natascha is still the woman behind it all, and there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes.

Rachelle Eerhart, chair-woman of Eetbaar Park, shares in the struggle for an urban life with the remedies

of nature. More difficult than finding this balance, however, is the personal disconnect between her

individualistic personality and her quest to establish community through gardening. Rachelle talks of the

inherent value to learning where food comes from and appreciating the work that goes in to it, she

speaks of the ability home cooked food has to connect people, but she is not one to naturally seek out


the help of others that comes with establishing human connection. Rachelle notes that she must “adjust

her patterns” in order to cultivate the change she envisions.

Rachelle grew up in the country side of Holland with two younger sisters, a merchant for a father, and a mother who was queen of volunteer work. As a young girl, chasing after boys, she was blissfully unaware of nature. Rachelle reflects “I was never touched by nature in my younger years,” and there was never any conscious talk of sustainability. Even more surprising, when looking at her current life style, is that she never had any interest in food growing up: “We just ate.” But, that all began to change when she went to the University of Leiden and started feeding herself. She wasn’t very good at it and learned most of what she knows from her housemates. Those two men must have been budding chefs because they had the right tools, Rachelle laughed, “You never realize how important good knives are until you start to use them.” They shared with Rachelle one of her most prominent cooking lessons: never cook from a packet. And so to this day she never does. Learning to cook led Rachelle to connect with her food, but it was really the process of learning to grow that food which changed everything. Immediately out of University Rachelle began a job, which had nothing to do with her studies, in a big company with endless opportunities. Joined by other young graduates eager not to leave University life, the company was full of various clubs and activities. Curious, Rachelle joined one for sustainability. The more involved she got the more she realized “I don’t know anything about growing food,” and thought “let’s learn about that.” She enrolled in a permaculture course through FoodPrint, an organization that helped start Eetbar Park where she works now. The program invited artists and designers to develop appealing proposals on how food can shape culture by connecting entrepreneurs, farmers, food experts and the public. Although Rachelle continues to insist that she is not a permaculture expert, it is this concept that permeates all her actions. “I never used to think in systems,” she explains “I never saw the world as being interconnected, but now that I do I think I like that world view. And once you start looking at the world like that you can start to apply it to everything you do.” More important than the physical cultivating skills, Rachelle learned the importance of interacting with people: “I have always done my own thing, but I have now become embedded” in the system. To practice both the tangible and philosophical permaculture skills, Rachelle began her own garden. There was an old, typically Dutch, house occupied by artists just a few blocks from her home in Den Haag. Despite the funny looks she was given after asking to cultivate their land, she got hold of the patch of earth in front of the property. It was a really special place because of the social aspect, because people would stop to chat. Yes, one boy asked if she was digging the neighborhood’s new graveyard, but the point was that they were talking. When renovators took over the land she moved to Eetbar Park, an edible garden where participants get to engage with examples of humans as a part of nature. Rachelle had first witnessed this garden in action while taking her permaculture course, and saw the value in the project. As the community started to feel disconnected and turn away from it, she got involved and focused on including the community in the park. She wants to create the demand to know where food comes from, and to do that she hopes community members will start by just coming by the park to see what’s happening and have a conversation. Over the course of our interview Rachelle vocalized her inherent preference for solitude: independently making choices and observing everything around her. Asking for advice, reaching out for the soul purpose of connection, does not appear to be her style. But, the more that Rachelle works in Eetbaar Park and gets to know her neighbors who stop by, the more she recognizes the importance and relevance of her own mission. In essence, gardening means “becoming healthy by doing something that


connects you to a bigger picture.” As Rachelle becomes a part of that bigger picture she is prepared with the tools to engage others in what it means for them to become healthier through connection with nature and with each other.

Janneke van der Heyden believes that the best way to make a difference in today’s food system is by

creating awareness of it through slow food, shared stories, and connecting people around collective

values. She wishes that Rachelle would recognize the work she does in Eetbar Park as part of the slow

food movement, but knows that naming the movement is less important than following its ideals. After

all, she has been practicing the value of slow food her whole life, before the naming of it ever existed.

Janneke was born in 1945 in Utrecht. As a child of the post war generation, she remembers a life of simplicity. Although there was never any extra food in the house her mother always assured that Janneke and her younger siblings got all the vitamins they needed, if even through the dreaded liver cod oil. In this way she recollects that even at that time food was not always healthy when it came in to the house, they always had to supplement something. But once the family moved to Silvolde it was a different story. There a sense of the old Dutch culture with street markets and food specialists. “We were connected with the farmers around,” Janneke mused. “They brought us potatoes, one bag for the whole winter you could hardly lift it. We had good cheese too coming from the western part of the Netherlands.”

As a teenager in the “flower power” era during the 1960s, Janneke was exposed to contrasting environmental messages. The pesticide DDT became popular and her family, along with the rest of the world, consumed the poison as easily as they did milk and water. She explains it was used on everything, from toilet cleaning to tooth brushing, but was unknown to be a poison that remains stored in fat cells. At the same time she attended summer camp in southern France: the essence of returning to nature. Reminiscing on her time in the Ardèche, she explains her sensual interaction with what she can now name slow food: “if you remember the taste of a good peach, and we called this a wild peach, when it hangs there and its 35 degrees it already starts dripping and you sit under that tree… you will never forget it.”

Janneke already had developed her own passion for good food by the time she met her husband Jan, but he fueled their life style of pursuing really good food. Jan had spent much of his adult life teaching himself to cook. Together Jan and Janneke discovered new cuisines and styles of cooking. They created a cooking group with sixteen friends and once every few months would create an elaborate sixteen course dinner. They would go to great means for good, authentic, fulfilling food. Everyone in the group came from different backgrounds - some were farmers or hunters, others just appreciated great tastes - but all were idealistic that food is both survival and pleasure.

In the 1980’s in the Netherlands hormones were quickly becoming a larger problem: the moment Janneke saw a cow whose udders were scraping the ground she knew there was something she had to do. As the rest of the country started to learn what was going on the government required all fields to be cleared. “It was a very tearful period” Janneke recounted mournfully as she described how her friends who were farmers, or even just had pet chickens, urgently traveled to Belgium or Germany to keep their animals from being killed. She was among the many people who stopped trusting the industrially produced food.


Around this time Slow Food was beginning to develop in Italy, and Jan learned about the movement in 1995. Jan brought home the idea of fundamental rights to the pleasure of good food and responsibilities to protect the tradition and culture that makes pleasure possible. They started the Netherland’s convivium and Janneke initiated “Slow on Sunday.” Every few months Janneke would gather strangers in her home for a leisurely Sunday meal: some would cook, some would set up, and others would just come to eat. At first people were not so fond of knowing the story behind their food, those conversations come organically. But, the more they participated the more the movement grew.

By 2004 Janneke felt confident enough in her Slow Food convivium that she could ask “Where does the world need me?” There were many environmental issues that she saw needing her help. Although she detests the global fish industry, her heart fell to working with bees. “Bees represent what slow food is trying to do: autonomic and self-supporting. They depend on each other, they can change their interactions, they can guide each other and take really care of each other; it’s quite a human way of society.” So now Janneke focuses her energy on spreading awareness – about food, bees health, and human connection – when and wherever she can.

Caroline van den Bemt also works to create awareness of daily food culture in The Netherlands and does

so by contributing to the fun within food. She recognizes that the issues within our food system are big,

but that the solutions can be simple. Caroline’s approach to making change is by building awareness and

getting the young people involved. Children are never allowed to play with their food, but with Caroline’s

organization HappieFood everyone is able to engage all their senses in order to understand where our

food comes from, where it goes, and why it’s important in our lives.

Caroline grew up during the Netherland’s last movement to “get back to nature.” As a child of the 1960s living near her aunt and uncle’s farm, she was always surrounded by access to nature and fresh food. Caroline reflects upon how her mom “makes good food out of simple ingredients;” an approach Caroline has put to practice in her own life’s work.

In 1990 Caroline graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven where she studied environmental design for public spaces. After working as a designer for several years she missed interacting with the public. So, in 1993 Caroline had a new idea to bring many of her passions together: she started a cookery club for children ages 6-12 in her local community center. Inspired by the American chef and author Alice Waters’ simple style of making each dish a party, Caroline instituted a 10 lesson series. Children got to learn in a chef’s own restaurant everything from the flavors of different ingredients to the creation of their own menu.

For many years Caroline worked additional jobs in nearby restaurants in order to give these children better courses, but by the time she was 29 discovered that she needed more education. It was time to take a cooking course of her own. The course she enrolled in, Restaurantkok, was primarily filled with young Turkish men, instilling in Caroline a love for the way different cultures approach their meals. “Their way of sharing simple food,” she reflected. “I was touched by how hospitable they are.”

Her budding curiosity in various cuisines took Caroline to Paris to improve her own cooking style. Simple food took on a new meaning when starting at the market and choosing the best product. Later on she worked at cooking magazine “Delicious” and wrote the children’s recipes and tasting sections followed by another cooking school: de Laurier. It was there that Caroline developed her own course for


children to come and learn both tasting and cooking. When she sees children are scared she explains to them that “Tasting is a kind of sport. It’s not your tongue only, it’s your nose. It’s not about liking or not liking, it’s about being curious.”

Caroline’s ability to make tasting a game culminated in a study she conducted between two primary school classes in different neighborhoods around Haarlem. A famous chef was tasked with creating five ways to make white asparagus, and to get the kids to eat it. The two groups of children were from opposing socio-economic backgrounds, but all the children preferred the taste of the asparagus more when it was presented to them in a friendly manner. Caroline came to recognize she could reach any child through the common ground of food. Most importantly she wanted these kids to know that food does not have to be complicated and that there is “someone in their neighborhood who is caring about their food.” She wants the kids to ask “where does their food come from and what work is in it.”

In 2007 in response to all this growing knowledge Caroline began her current project: HappieFood. The program develops educational food settings within her own community. She puts her belief that sharing in honest and delicious food – around a table, or a picnic cloth, or anything that brings people together – in to practice and claims it will result in the happiness of both body and mind. This is something that both producers and consumers can share in by approaching a food product from a new perspective or developing mutual understanding for the stories that accompany all sides of the food system.

Therefore, by 2006 when her own son started primary school, Caroline was well versed in teaching children about their connection to the food they eat. She asked the principal what their school was doing, and he told her to tell them what they should be doing. In 2008 when the government welcomed proposals for improving communities, she was encouraged by the number of other people thinking about similar issues. Her project Plezier in Eten was too small for the government funding, but she came to realize effective community projects must derive from their own community efforts. So now Caroline artistically explores on how the people around her can engage in food collectively.

Ann Doherty, coordinator for City Plot, similarly values simplicity in creating a healthier, more connected

food system. At City Plot newcomers to experienced gardeners learn together in basic workshops which

ultimately benefit the growth of their local communities. Her own experience and focus on education –

gardening is something everyone can do – and communication – working together – contributes to the

growth of City Plot and changes in Holland’s food system. Ann has the vision for stimulating the ideals of

connection that Rachelle speaks of, and dreams that City Plot can be part of that platform.

Ann, originally from Boston, has been living in The Netherlands for the past 20 years. For her, sustainable food systems have always been in her blood. “I always wanted to be a farmer,” she reflects “that was always my dream, and when I was little I didn’t know how to reach that. It wasn’t a natural progression from where I grew up in the suburbs to becoming a farmer.” Her father maintained a small backyard kitchen garden where she and her siblings would help harvest for fun as kids, and in the summer they would visit the ranch where her mother grew up. Nature was something that just simply had to be a part of her life.

Ann started realizing there was a problem with the food system a long time ago from her parents, but it was at Carleton College where she started to develop her own understanding of the issues. After


earning her Masters in Political Science at New York University Ann traveled to The Netherlands for an environmental conference youth summit. It was there that Ann remembers recognizing that our food system was the issue that makes her the angriest. A farmer from Portugal spoke to the youth about the EU’s control on his farming and the detrimental effects it was having on his crops, his fields, and his family tradition. It was then that Ann realized the “knowledge that these people possess, within a couple generations, will be completely wiped out.”

After the conference Ann decided to stay in Holland writing funding proposals, which quickly turned itself into a communications job with Friends of the Earth International. Ann contributed to the dynamic program for 16 years, but at times the lack of policy change began to feel disempowering. She was able to connect people doing great work for the Earth, but she wasn’t seeing any of those results in her own neighborhood. Especially once Ann started having kids, and realized that cement playgrounds was not where she wanted them to grow up. It was time to rediscover her childhood dream of being a farmer. Ann and a friend invested in a volkstuin plot in Amsterdam West, where her current project also resides. The more she started gardening the more she realized she didn’t know what she was doing, and attended on online Urban Farming course to “understand it and make it more systematic. Anyone can throw seeds in the ground and some of their food is going to grow up, but [Ann] wanted to really be able to produce food.”

Evidently, the environment and food have always been important to Ann, but it took a big leap of faith to switch from a policy level to the more hands on, bottom-up solution. There is still disconnect between the two but Ann is bridging that gap: “I grow food in the city and I teach people how to grow food in the city. This is not just a hobby, this is my work.” Through her Urban Farming classes and contacts from her job, Ann found the organization City Plot. The City Plot founders were interested in making the city greener and a nicer place to be by simplifying gardening. Ann’s timing to transition jobs could not have been more perfect, City Plot asked her to take over their communications role, which Ann took on enthusiastically. Through connecting with other gardens and advertising what City Plot had to offer, it became clear that learning to farm in the city was a dream held by many. The excitement and curiosity is there, but the hardest part is maintaining the momentum.

From working with Ann at City Plot’s garden I can vividly see the potential for connection. She rapidly switched from role of interviewee to mother to director to farmer, and did so with complete poise and control in each role. However, not everyone can be able to do that so easily, so City Plot’s mission to make a local food system simple and accessible is necessary to increase involvement.

***

In North Carolina the stories were a little different. These women did identify with the greater

movement that they were a part of. Not only did they want to be expanding and connecting to other local

projects, but they saw comparisons to movements happening across the United States. Some of these

differences certainly derive from the sheer size of the country and longer standing history with social

movements. However, it also showed a different relationship to food than in The Netherlands. The 2007

Census of Agriculture shows that women are running more farms and ranches, operating more land, and

producing a greater value of agricultural products than they were in 2002.


Not only were shifts in the gender breakdown of agricultural production happening in the United

States earlier than in The Netherlands, but because the US is such a large supplier of industrial food

globally, its citizens have been more in tune to the need for change for longer. Even small scale farmers

who do not directly identify as part of a political or social justice act, they are making their choice to farm

locally on more grounding than caring about where their own food comes from and how it tastes.

Of course these women too were busy and had limited time for interviews, but I found them

more receptive to receiving me. I already had connections within North Carolina to two of my

interviewees, at the Carolina Campus Community Garden and Coon Rock Farm, which made seeing this

political motive and building rapport easier than it was in The Netherlands. I also had the ability to

compare my own community gardening experiences to the ones I was learning about in a culturally

relatable context. All in all, although the interview process was very different, the conversations and

surprising discoveries were just as fruitful in both countries.

***

Claire Lorch focused her food journey around the quest for justice. She is the director and education

coordinator of Carolina Campus Community Garden (CCCG) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill. She works year round with University of North Carolina students and Chapel Hill community members

to cultivate thousands of produce to distribute to the University’s housekeeping staff. She strives for her

space to be a learning community for developing gardening skills, healthy living, social responsibility, and

interdisciplinary academic pursuits for all volunteers. She recognizes the deep injustice of the way the

University’s laborers are invisible, and sees the garden as a way to show a token of appreciation, recognize

their hard work, and indicate she believes they deserve more.

Claire was born in 1955 in a small suburban neighborhood of Miami, Florida with her parents and two sisters. She smiled remembering her typical family dinner and cringed a little knowing her mother would be horrified to hear the secrets of box potatoes and canned vegetables. Although she expressed a unique love for vegetables at a young age, Claire noted that none of her childhood meals were healthy in the way she strives for now. Little fruit was to be heard of, despite the fact that her grandmother kept a beautiful fruit orchard. She thinks fondly on this backyard, but was simply unfamiliar with such seemingly exotic fruits.


When it was time for college Claire knew that she wanted to get out, and trusted one of her favorite teacher’s suggestion to move to UNC Chapel Hill. Immersed in academics Claire muses that she wasn’t sure she would have known about or gotten involved in a project like CCCG when she was at Carolina. Those academics, however, were what introduced her to a sustainable based life. She wrote an argumentative paper for being a vegetarian her first year, and was hooked. Not only was her decision for health reasons, but the amount of money and land and feed that a carnivorous diet requires: it just made so much sense. Despite this collegiate approach, everyone else in her family thought she was nuts.

After meeting her now husband during junior year of college, they traveled in Europe and lived on a Kibbutz in Israel together between undergrad and graduate school. While on the Kibbutz Claire was exposed to living on the land – pruning apple trees and working as a vegetarian cook. She hadn’t done that much cooking at the time but it was a fun learning experience. When they moved back to the United States, where Claire studied social work at UNC, they were living with friends who had a backyard garden. Between her love of vegetables, her work on the Kibbutz, and now seeing a backyard garden, everything was starting to come together to incorporate an organic garden in their own lives and to feed their own family. She laughs that when her children were living at home it was impossible to get anyone to help in their backyard garden, but now CCCG is almost a family effort.

Claire began working for community education in pediatrics immediately out of Social Work school and stayed there for seventeen years and then became involved in teaching health professionals Spanish. Despite her training, it wasn’t until mentoring a girl in the community through Chapel Hill’s Blue Ribbon Mentor program that she began to truly see the deep rooted impact of poverty. During the economic recession Claire was talking with her boss at the health professional organization and learned that they were considering starting a food bank because so many employees were not making enough to sustain their families. Alice Ammerman, Director, Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, energetically chimed in that they should start a garden.

The light was sparked in Claire’s head and she was given the go-ahead: if she could make it happen they would support her. It wasn’t hard to find people who were interested in working with her to get the project started. The Carolina Garden Co-op was a group of knowledgeable students who had been growing food for themselves for years merged with Claire’s initiative in the spring of 2009. Early on in the development of CCCG the group decided to focus on providing food for the house keepers because on top of being the largest underpaid group of UNC staff, politics were not on their side. The university was eager to demonstrate their good will in response to some of the accusations around house keeper rights.

The garden began small with one distribution a week. Claire and her volunteers would harvest the night before and at 6am, before the house keepers went to work, she would hand out the produce. The more she got to know the housekeepers, as they became involved in the board meetings and got to know Claire and her family, the better CCCG was able to serve them. Every week people are just overjoyed to see her and incredibly appreciative of what CCCG offers. First and foremost, this produce saves the families money. Having access to fresh vegetables allows the housekeepers to feed their families more culturally appropriately and more healthily. But as time goes on Claire has learned that more than the money and the vegetables themselves, the most important part of this project is recognizing the housekeepers and the work that they do. They are an invisible workforce at this university, the least we can do is work hard to provide fresh food for them. Claire expresses that it is “a very small token that we recognize their hard work and that they deserve more.”

Over the past five years the garden has grown rapidly, even coming up on another new expansion the summer of 2015. By receiving increasing input from the housekeepers receiving the produce CCCG has increased to three distributions and a week and has developed a chef demonstration program. Howard Allen and other celebrity chefs provide semi-regular cooking classes to show new styles for preparing meals and a space for the volunteers and recipients to interact together. As the garden continues to grow Claire is looking forward to creating more children’s programs, having more staff help


her, and serving more housekeepers. Often they are challenged on why CCCG only serves the UNC housekeepers, that there are plenty of other staff who are paid equally unlivable wages and other people in the community who could benefit from this Garden. But, Claire stands strong in that it is written in her by-laws to serve the housekeepers, and there is still so much more she can do within this community. Every social movement has to start somewhere, and this is where she chose to begin.

Jamie DeMent, another UNC alum, helps to run Coon Rock farm in Hillsborough, NC. Similar to Claire, her

time at college dramatically shaped the way she looks at and works with food. However, Jamie also had a

strong influence of southern cooking and family, which was part of what brought her back to North

Carolina, back to her roots, after having moved to Washington, DC. Jamie and her partner Richard have a

much different approach and goal to their agricultural life than Claire does, but both work from a place of

love for the outdoors and with the goal of feeding others what will make them happy.

Jamie grew up in a rural tobacco farming community of Franklin County in eastern North Carolina where her family owned the town’s farm store. Through that she watched the entire farming and economic community dry up and die. The town, once thriving and prosperous, now has nothing left. Although she didn’t grow up picking tobacco, her uncle was a large scale industrial farmer. In the third grade a tornado ripped his chicken house to shreds, and while the community came together to pick up the pieces, the smell was strong enough to cut and stuck with her. “You get naturally horrible smells because you built a naturally horrible environment.” That smell sticks to your person and is “enough to cure you from ever eating meat ever again.” And as a self-righteous thirteen year old, she planned to do just that. But, as she grew and became more informed, her reasons and choices did too.

Jamie received the Morehead-Cain scholarship and began attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997. She studied Folklore within the American Studies department, and surprisingly ended up with an African American Studies major as well. Throughout her time at Carolina Jamie worked for a host of service related organizations. With access to sustainably produced meat, she began to make healthy food choices. Wellspring was a grocery store close to campus where she was able to purchase organic and local food. Once her options expanded, and she developed an ecological argument. Jamie laughed that she now doesn’t “want to live without bacon ever again.”

After graduation from UNC she was ready to get out. After moving to London and then trying out New York she still wasn’t sure what she was going to do until a serendipitous meeting in Washington DC. After having lunch with a UNC alum who had just started a campaign, she was offered a job within the hour. She ended up loving her work on Capitol Hill. Even there she was able to have a little garden (of three tomato plants) and enjoyed the city life, she knew that people – especially her – don’t stay on the Hill for life.

Without aspirations to be in politics forever she started looking for jobs closer to home. Jamie ended up moving back to North Carolina in a fundraising position for the state museum of natural sciences. At one of those fundraising events Jamie met Richard Holcomb, the newest board member who had six months prior bought Coon Rock Farm in the fall of 2004. He swooped in to her talking up another handsome gentleman with the time honored pick-up line of “I can get you good collard greens” and sealed the deal when he mentioned having to leave the party early because he had to kill chickens in the morning. For a while she continued going back and forth between Raleigh and Coon Rock, but never


wanted to leave the farm. At the time, she didn’t know that Coon Rock was fulfilling a yearning she’d had since leaving Franklin County, but farming quickly became her life. Richard and Jamie started Zely & Ritz, the first farm to table restaurant in Raleigh shortly thereafter. A few years down the road the farm was growing, and they sold the restaurant. Today they cultivate 55 acres – between the produce, meat animals, and dairy cows – and own Piedmont, a farm to table restaurant in Durham NC. They regularly employ UNC alum on the farm, host interns, and support their former employees in their own farm endeavors. One of those employees, Ann Soltan, is now in a partner position with them and is running their new organic home delivery service, Bella Bean. Bella Bean buys all the produce from another former employee, Brock Philips, who started his own farm after leaving Coon Rock. Bella Bean, and another new venture Heirloom Provisions, take the concept to local and organic to a very different level. Jamie recognizes that “Finally Southern is hot. It’s cool. It’s not backwoods anymore. We’re the hipsters.” She is ready to maximize on this nationwide search for southern goods by sourcing Coon Rock’s food, and food from other organizations they partner with, across the country. They are catalyzing a very new shift in food movements today.

When I arrived at Bull City Farm, Samantha was in the middle of giving a tour and asked if I wanted to wait

with the new born lambs. Yes please! We spent the rest of the interview talking as she gave me a tour of

her farm so I could meet all the animals. It was a beautiful day for farm life and a great way to see the

extent of the work that they do. Similar to Jamie, Samantha works with her husband to maintain Bull City

Farm, but she also has three kids who help as well. As a smaller farm with the mission of self-sustaining

and education rather than supplying, Samantha has a very different approach to her life style than Jamie

and Claire both. She has dreams for the farm to grow, but in the meantime is happy with it being part of

her family’s lifestyle.

Samantha was born in England and spent much of her child hood there. With an amazing cook for a mother, even though her family had no interest in farming itself, Sam grew up with the mentality that you cook everything from scratch. Her parents jokingly apologize for not raising her on a farm, but everything worked out in the end. Most of Sam’s childhood was filled with good food because her mother, unique for her generation, loved to cook. Even after moving to the United States her mom ensured that the family didn’t eat packaged food. Throughout her childhood, and to this day, Sam always prefers to be outside. After graduating from High School Samantha knew that she wanted to be a vet and went to college with that plan in mind. Samantha met her husband Scott while working together at a road side zoo in Natural Bridge Virginia. She got her crash course in taking care of large animals, nearly got killed a few times, but loved what she was learning. It was not an ideal place to work, so the two of them thought that maybe one day they would start their own zoo. But when she returned to her studies at Virginia Tech these goals shifted. Sam became involved in genetic research and thought that was what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing.


She and her husband moved to North Carolina for Sam to work in a genetics lab at Duke University. The projects were engaging and the lab was beautiful, but after four years Sam realized that she had no interest in doing any sort of research. It was good to get out of her system and to remember her desire to be outside. The couple had been dreaming of starting a farm since they started their life together, and it became a reality when they bought their current property to Rougemont, NC. As they began to have children they moved away from using the land for zoological animals (although they still have their parrots) and towards feeding their kids. By 2009 their small homestead began shift from a dream to a small working farm.

When Samantha left her job at the genetics lab, the human genome hadn’t yet been mapped and so she jokes that she is no longer employable in anything other than what she’s doing right now. But it was a worthy sacrifice. She expressed: “I made a decision to go down a different route.” That route being one of valuing family and self-sufficiency. She continued, “I think anyone who decides to stay home with their kids does that.” Their life in Rougemont began as Sam homeschooling the kids and keeping some chickens, a steer for themselves. They never discussed Sam not being the one to run their homestead farm, it just made sense. Slowly over the years it morphed in to the educational and productive farm that it is today. Eventually, Sam and Scott hope for the farm to be a full time position for the both of them.

Even though it is just Sam in charge of the farm right now, the whole family pitches in. “Part of what we were trying to teach them,” Sam explains, “was a level of responsibility. And that you have to work hard.” Her oldest daughter has fallen in love with agriculture, currently starting her own flower business and planning to attend NC State next year for sustainable agriculture. Her middle child wants nothing to do with farming once he moves off on his own, but does feel bad for any child who didn’t get to grow up on a farm. And the youngest, Sam expects, will take over the family farm. Sam is grateful that Scott shares her desire for this to be a family run farm, especially as she experiences push back from her male farmer neighbors. Her laugh masks frustration when stating that “they all want to tell me exactly what to do and I don’t do anything right.”

Sam started the educational programming from the very beginning, her kids were home schooled and so Bull City Farm became a central point to get the home school groups out in to the country. The tours began to grow in popularity, and Sam started getting school groups from all over Durham. She definitely saw a difference in kids’ knowledge of the natural world – one child asked her if chocolate milk came from a Buff Orpington chicken – and has loved being the source of that knowledge. Now she has even expanded in to cultural heritage programing for children and adults alike, and hopes to see agritourism expand as a source of their income over the next several years. They have purchased new land for many of these expansions to happen. Sam dreams of new equipment, getting pigs, starting a creamery and the list goes on. She could care less what the house they build will look like and is most excited to design her new barn. Bull City Farm will become a consistent place for education, relaxation, and delicious food in the years to come.

Hilary Nichols is one of the many impactful women working at Seeds in Durham. As a landscape

architecture by training, Hilary is new to the edible gardening scene. Seeds an urban sanctuary focused on

promoting principles and practice of sustainable agriculture, organic gardening, food security and

environmental steward ship. It teaches respect for life, for the earth and for each other through gardening

and growing food. Hilary is committed to collaboratively honoring human work and creativity, while


maintaining sound ecological practices through permaculture. Her personal motto is one to heed by: Take

care of the Earth. Take care of the People. Share the Surplus.

Growing up in Pilot Mountain North Carolina sparked Hilary’s interest in nature’s landscapes. Although she moved around a lot as a child, her mom “always had a piece of land to grow food to eat at the table.” This importance of growing food in the back yard extended in to Hilary’s fond childhood memories. “I remember her using her old panty hose to tie up the tomatoes so it was soft string to use. I remember the onions were the thick ones with the big hollow space in the middle. I remember things like that.” But, her creativity really blossomed with the cut flower garden she kept next to her mom’s produce. Hilary would grow a variety of flowers to sell to her elderly neighbors and would press them in to dried flower bookmarks. Clearly, her entrepreneurial garden ventures began at an early age. By the time she started college at North Carolina State University, Hilary was confident in her passions. He began by majoring in Landscape architecture, but after a year discovered it was splitting up her two loves: art and gardening. In order to get away to the drawing board and back in to hands on work she switch to getting a duel degree in both Horticulture and Art and Design. Throughout undergrad Hilary explored the field of public horticulture. Her internships with JC Raulston arboretum, Longwood gardens, and Disney world proved that she wanted to include her more creative side in her work. But jobs in botanical gardens are few and far between so she found herself working for a landscaping company, with a brief yearlong break to intern at the Kew garden in London. People tended to find her positions unique, and would not hide their surprise at her ability to drive a landscaping tractor. Eventually Hilary received her dream position working in display horticulture for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Despite the big name and incredible information she was learning, Hilary needed a change. Attending a conference in Atlanta for the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) became interested in what that type of space could offer. She switched to work at a native plant nursery and engaged schools and business in designing what their garden should look like. But the NC research triangle was calling her back home, so when she moved to Durham and learned about Seeds, it seemed like an opportune moment to try her hand at the community garden model. Now having been Seed’s garden manager for two years, Hilary has already implemented many positive changes to the landscape. Her main goal is to create both a beautiful and functional space by keeping Seeds’ edible mission alive. Everything they grow should either be edible, or be supporting an edible plant. She’s constantly juggling many different jobs, but she loves to learn and do a lot at once. One of the first things she did was take an “unused piece of land outside of Seeds and turn it in to a welcome matt.” This way, every person in the partially low in come, partially gentrified neighborhood where they reside can feel welcomed to participate. She has also initiated a “serve and grow” garden plot to provide homeless women living at the Durham Rescue Mission an opportunity to take ownership over their own choices and simultaneously produce something delicious to share in. Seeds is an outdoor classroom in every sense, constantly growing and changing with the community involved. Hilary asked all the stakeholders at Seeds to dream what the best possible version of the garden would look like. Pulling back from her roots, Hilary together with an NC State Permaculture course, is beginning to create just that.

*** Each of these women illustrates their desire for a healthy, cyclical food system in all aspects of

their work. The urban life style is one that the Dutch women cannot renounce, which inspires them to

merge nature with city even more. While the outdoors and farming might be something that they are


passionate about having access to, it is the city which provides them with ease, connection, and

independence. It is that independence which most notably drives everything else. As awareness for their

work grows, they desire to connect with each other’s work. But, can their mentality of independence,

often conflated with individualism, provide enough motivation for community building?

In North Carolina, the need for remaining urban was less present. A more sprawled community in

general, the female farmers found a successful balance between having removed farm land and still

feeling connected to their local city. In a way, this allows them and their families to have the best of both

worlds, but does this make access to fresh, sustainable food for all an even harder feat to overcome? Is

the American women’s implementation of collaborative efforts a productive difference that counteracts

challenges presented by a greater distance between production site and distribution recipients?

Making change in the food system derived from their personal pleasure of good food and their

desire to take control of what that means. We see this fully illustrate the idea that we are how we eat.

Their commitment to good food flowed over in to a healthy life style. These women are pioneers in their

field and are active doers. In order to discover how these women’s lived experience of their ideals the

food system can be put in to expanding practice we must examine how their participation in domesticity

and environmental sustainability impacts their community interaction.

Discussion It’s a beautiful world and we live in paradise because The Netherlands has everything, but we have the

most spoilt water in all of Western Europe, we have the most spoilt grounds from all Western Europe, and

at the same time we are in the middle of a food crisis.

- Janneke van der Heyden

Examining Lewin’s proposal that we can discover why people eat what they eat if we learn how

food comes to the table, I propose that if those people themselves know how food comes to the table we

can sustain a healthier, more sustainable food system. Since food shapes and reflects human values, we


must maximize on personal well-being to focus foodways practices towards healthy consumption,

community connection and ultimately environmental sustainability.

Commercial food production exploits and dominates the environment, paralleling the oppression

of women within their role as consumer and feeder. Urban Farming practices similarly reflect this

patriarchal system. In The Netherlands men are invested in large scale projects – super market roofs,

green houses, aquaponics – aiming to feed the whole city. We see a similar breakdown in the United

States, where according to the USDA census in 2007, only 30.2% of farm operators, including small scale

farms but discounting urban farms and community gardens, were women (Hoppe, 2013). Included in that

percentage were farms where the woman was the secondary operator and the land itself was under the

name and legal standing of a man. Once we begin to examine the structures of other large scale urban

agricultural revolutions, gendered issues cannot be isolated to the farming components and begin to get

conflated with non-profit versus business work. Therefore, for the sake of this paper, my observations will

remain as the influential catalyst in my research although I do not seek to prove the gender discrepancies

around employment in the agricultural sector.

Woman’s role as nurturer and her connection to nature, however, establishes a position of

influence within their community’s local food system. Women are held accountable for feeding the family;

that is an undeniable reality still present within both modern-day Dutch and American society. Ann

Doherty explains that this responsibility is often the inspiration for women to grow their own food: “The

food system is such a mess that they want to take control back and feed their family in a healthy way.” The

smaller scale, community based gardening endeavors therefore are more popular among women.

Identifying the importance of working together, they are interested in foodways work which will help

them and their families in any small way. Collaboration appeared to be a challenge for all of my

interviewees, despite their constant acknowledgement of its benefits. The women leaders I interviewed


recognize their role within the system: their role as nurturer has the power to improve foodways among

families and communities which in turn will change the greater approach to food systems on the whole.

A twist on domesticity [The leaders] are mostly women with kids who are just power houses and amazing women who know this needs to happen, it´s right in their community so they know, but they also need to make money and are balancing a job that´s actually putting the food on the table.

- Ann Doherty

Cooking and eating recollect deep personal connections to childhood, travel, important moments

in an individual’s life etc. But to women, it also implies a realm of domesticity. Traditionally, cooking was

passed down from mother to daughter. Women held the secrets to cooking seasonally and eating well

balanced meals. These truths are why feminists have skirted the food conversation for so long. “We all

wanted to enter the workforce,” Rachelle Eerhart explains, “but what was the cost?”

It is important that women desired independence, left the house and sought professions outside

the realm of domesticity. No theorist implies that the solution to today’s food problems is sending women

back in to the kitchen; the environmental issues are too big and the patriarchal system is too corrupt for

that to make an ounce of difference. Women have limited resources and decision-making power within

the food industry and food policy sectors, but continue to play a critical role in foodways. Food has been

the source of both victimization and empowerment of women for centuries.

Counihan perceives that women feed others because of the power that comes from being needed

and the pleasure that comes from receiving love. Although acting for the sake of being loved is not limited

to women, this perception is what maintains the power structures at play. If accepted as the main reason

for feeding and nurturing, women are depicted as passive. Receiving love because she gives love is not a

negative component of women reclaiming their role as nurturer, but it creates a far more pessimistic

approach to food systems than illustrated within either Dutch or American societies.


Each of the women that I interviewed held positions of power both in and outside their home and

appeared confident in self-love and interpersonal relationships. But undoubtedly, women are the

gatekeepers to food; they carry the mental and manual labor of food provision on a daily basis. DeVault

acknowledges that food work involves physical, mental, and caring labor through the process of shopping,

cooking meals, serving food, planning meals, worrying about nutrition, and arranging suitable time for the

family. Basic interactions with my interviewees depicted the relevance of these overlapping and time

consuming roles. “We all have to eat” I told one woman as we scheduled an interview over a meal. Yet

another was preparing a meal for her daughter, her daughter’s friend, and her husband as we chatted

about the Dutch garden systems. I cannot separate my interviewees out of this underlying domestic role

of mother and nurturer, regardless of how conscious they are of the situation.

Samantha embodies this inherent interconnectedness between work and domestic tasks as her

farm is one that was created to put food on the table and simultaneously serves as a form of income.

Although these tasks are inextricably tied, Sam made a choice to explicitly bringing these two worlds

together. She recognizes that it was a unique and somewhat risky choice; “I made a decision to go down a

different route. I think anyone who decides to stay home with their kids does that.” Financially, her family

is looking at the bottom line every month and she laughed as I recorded the interview on my iPhone that

her children have to life without current technologies. I promised they weren’t missing much. But,

regardless of the sacrifices she made to do so her decision proves to be worthwhile.

The conversations I had with my interviewees reside within DeVault’s furthered theory about a

work-leisure divide and Van Esterik’s efforts to blur that line through the concept of performativity. These

women are foodies: they love good healthy food, they enjoy growing it and cooking it and feeding it to

people, and they recognize its burden but also see it as a pleasure. Each woman remembers their mother

focusing on food in some way throughout their childhood. Janneke remembers the distinct connection

her mother had to various farmers and the effort she put in to getting all the right nutrients. Ann laughed


about eating carob chips and other alternative food that comes with overly-exuberant food conscious

parents. Jamie explained her childhood as growing up “in a family that feeds people” and “in a world that

food is central.” She elaborated, “It can’t just be dumping a packet in a bowl. It’s time honored recipes and

food traditions and it’s incredibly important to everyone in my family. They’re going to want you to sit

down and eat, and have three servings after you’ve had your first plate.”

On the other end of the spectrum Caroline, Natascha, Rachelle and Claire all recollect simple

meals, but healthy and filling meals none-the-less. They all cringed a little when I asked how their

childhood relationship with food affected how they ate today, because they didn’t want to insult their

parent’s cooking or choices. But as they talked, it became clear that even if they did not grow up with

foodies for parents, a backyard garden, and time honored recipes, they still had a very unique story that

got them to where they are today. Simply liking vegetables more than anyone else in her family was

enough to get Claire thinking about what else there was to food. It became clear that everyone’s personal

history with food was more than their childhood versus now; it was every meal, newspaper article,

conversation, and new taste that brought them to where they are today. Each of these women’s

experiences with food contributed to their current values. Each also had their own personal moment of

realization: when food tastes good and feels good it is good for the body, mind and soul.

Cooking becomes a joy when seeking that perfect balance of what food can do for you and for

those whom you feed it to. The inherent quality of the food affects the way an individual embodies what

that dish has to offer. Much of the food that people eat today is full of empty calories, and even the

healthy food we eat is devoid of nutrients. Therefore taking ownership over what we put in to our bodies,

and what mothers feed their children, becomes a powerful act. Van Esterik discusses women’s inherent

right to feed. Most existing research on women and food focuses on what happens behind closed doors,

and makes overly generalized assumptions about women performing domestic tasks. Recognizing the

distinct importance of each decision diminishes the burden within cooking. Rather than just examining


the role of feeding, Van Esterik’s theory on “the right to feed” can be applied to today’s food movement

and the shift towards seeking healthy, fairly produced food. It looks at how food comes to the table and

the critical role that woman play in that process.

Ann discovered the joy in cooking when her oldest son began to learn about gardening as part of

The Netherlands’s school curriculum in year four. Until that year he refused to taste new things and was

always very skeptical about food. This is not a surprise with what we know about children. Trying new

food past the age of three and before their taste buds fully develop decreases their likelihood of liking it.

Many American families solve this problem with a bottle of Heinz ketchup, but that doesn’t get at the root

of the problem. Masking fresh vegetables with condiments will not encourage the child to discover what

the vegetable can actually be (Gladwell, 2004). But in that garden Ann’s son began to see “the connection

between the food he was eating and growing. He’d come home with all kinds of bizarre things and ask

‘can we cook this?’ and he’d eat it. This was the story of all the kids in the garden.”

These are exactly the type of success stories that Caroline strives for in her work, and the kind of

root change we want to be seeing across the board. Caroline connects children to more than just the

vegetable itself, but to the individuals who put in the work to grow those vegetables, produce the cheese,

and grind the mill. “Where do your roots come from,” Caroline stresses, “Not just the carrots but your

roots. That’s also what’s in your food.” Children have never been able to make this connection before

because food regularly goes straight from the store in to the cart in to the refrigerator and on to their

plate; their mothers rarely having time to let them participate in the process. But, when the system

becomes tangible it also becomes accessible and digestible.

Hilary mused about how the children and youth at Seeds participate in the food process. From

the Seedlings (first through fifth graders) to the DIG (Durham Inner-city Gardeners) high-school youth,

each one experiences food differently. She makes every work day at the garden be a space to establish

community around gardening efforts and question “why do we do what we do?” Especially with the


children involved, she sees tangibility leading to a lasting impact. “I hope they take squishing the hairy

caterpillars and playing with their food as a heritage that they’re beginning to build and acquire.”

Ann went from constantly being challenged by putting good food in her son’s mouth to having the

opportunity to cook with him and taste new vegetables together. Cooking became an adventure that they

could share and that brought them closer. Sadly, not all children have this opportunity, either in their

home or through other programs. Samantha believes that simply, “parents don’t think to teach it, because

it’s not there.” She recognizes it’s a loss that today’s generation doesn’t have access to the same kind of

things children in years past learned. When it comes to the basic nutrients we put in our bodies and

where they come from, there’s no expectation to know it. “When you think about raising children you

would never think of not teaching them how to read, but you really need to teach them how bread is

made and they’re just life skills.” Imagine what programming like Caroline’s or at Seeds, or in the Dutch

primary schools could do if every child had the opportunity to connect with the source of their food!

The physical connection between a person and food before consuming it also fostered a physical

connection between those they consumed it with. As Rachelle explains, “growing food is a really easy way

for people to talk to each other.” There is something immediate to connect over – a simple question to

ask, a menial suggestion, a basic comment on the weather – that could seem pointless anywhere else but

in a garden sparks conversation. “It’s a soothing environment where they can be themselves,” Claire

explains, “They leave with more than they came, whatever that happens to be for them: whether that’s

satisfaction or physical exhaustion, or sunshine. It just gives people what they need.”

Cultivating food as the means for nurturing provides women with tools to diminish the binary

between work and pleasure. DeVault emphasizes the power divide present within identity politics around

food. However, the concept of cultivator provides an alternative to the classic role of provider. A woman’s

identity can no longer be conflated with her domestic role as nurturer, but can now be observed through

her efforts to take control of the way food comes to her table. Whereas DeVault argued that work cannot


be separated from leisure, we saw that line beginning to blur through my interviewee’s relationship with

cooking. With growing the food, these women enact Van Esterik’s model of performativity. There does not

have to be a binary between work and leisure, nor does one have to be hidden within the other. Instead,

the way these women perform the act of growing their own food is with joy, excitement, and knowledge:

key components towards being self-empowered.

Establishing this connection allows eating to become a completely different experience. Food

does not have to restrict women to the kitchen, instead they are able to have a bigger role in nurturing. In

order for food to nurture it has to become more than just sustenance. Cooking becomes a place of pride

and connection, not just a domestic expectation. Women are able to take pride in what they grow, how

they produce it, and where it goes. The main thing, Caroline explains, is “the experience people get in

food.” This experience can begin in the ground or around the table, but the key is sharing in it.

Community around food changes the way it is perceived. Everything tastes better when you cook

it yourself, but it feels better when you grow it yourself. “Eating is a completely different experience than

before,” Rachelle admits. She was speaking directly to how the experience changed when she started

producing her own food. But, that personal production could not be separated from the knowledge of

effort that goes in to producing everything else that she cannot. Rachelle immediately followed her

comment on the experience of growing and cooking and eating with a lesson she learned while in Japan:

“they say ‘itadakimasu’ which means saying a word of thank you to every piece of effort that was put in to

bringing this on your plate. It’s just a moment of respect to value all the effort, the whole system behind

it.” Growing your own food creates a unique awareness of the rest of the cycle, which is what each

interviewee emphasizes as a solution to the problems within the food system.

What Janneke found attractive in the world of slow food was valuing that whole system and

knowing where that experience of sharing came from. Her compatriots in the movement all know there is

something wrong with the food system and all want to do something to fix it. The beautiful part of it,


however, is that sitting together around a table and sharing in a meal can be one of the small steps

towards fixing the system. “One of the centerpieces of this world,” Janneke mused “is that hope is always

there.” She reiterated that regardless of the current state of things – perhaps extrapolated to domestic

pressures or environmental destruction – “if you are in greatest despair, there is always hope.”

Evidently, the domestic experience of these women cannot be separated from the rest of their

work and ideals within foodways. This realization allows us to move further away from the dualistic view

of women as oppressed domestic provider versus pleasured consumer. We can make use of ecofeminism

non-dualistic principles by focusing on my interviewee’s influence over the physical cultivation of their

food and enjoyment behind cooking and eating together. At first glance, their work could look similar to

historical expectations, but in reality, in modern day living, their work defines innovative progress.

Samantha lamented how the small farm industry is still very male dominated. “You can be a

woman raising goats and raising sheep and having chickens and doing vegetables and nobody will bat an

eye. You get in to cows and all of a sudden it’s a whole different world and they don’t like women to do it.”

She is constantly getting unsolicited advice from the men who deliver her hay or other farmers in her

neighborhood. They question her choice of grass fed cows and her insistence on selling directly to

consumer. She does things differently, not because she’s a woman but because she knows that the moral

attitude she wants to farm with. Samantha makes these farming choices in part because it’s what she’s

feeding her own family, and that must be good for them, but also because she has a biological background

and also wants to do what’s good for the earth. This follows eco-feminist theory, but also recognizes the

many intersecting roles that Samantha must play in her daily life. She’s more than just a farmer, a mother,

an entrepreneur, the list goes. All of my interviewees are these things, all at once, and so much more.

For example, Jamie grew up with three generations of women constantly cooking and feeding

people, and teaching her how to do the same. She fondly remembers long weekend afternoons at her

grandmother’s house who “had the main kitchen and then she had the canning kitchen. It was in her


basement and it was where in our family on Saturday or Sunday afternoons all the women in the family,

and my poor grandfather whose job was to sit in the corner and shell peas, would come together and if

that week it was butter beans then you’d shell butterbeans, you’re blanching them, and you’re putting

them in bags to freeze. It was an all hands on board even four year old children with a job. Everyone came

together in that tiny little space in my grandmother’s basement to preserve things.” And they were

preserving more than butterbeans. Now in her position at Coon Rock Farm, Jamie continues to feed

everyone and bring them together around a kitchen sink. She absolutely loves cooking a big family meal

for her staff once a week. It brings them together as more than just farmers who work together, but it

creates a community on the farm and around food. She might be the fourth generation of DeMent

women to make canning and cooking part of her life’s work, but Jamie does it with purpose, love, and in

the public eye. Our societies need to see the powerful choices female farmers are making.

This positioning – powerful women making the choice to reclaim domestic tasks as part of their

job, part of their personal life, and part of the greater community – restructures our notions of power.

Women partake in the consensual relationships of food systems by reclaiming their position as nurturer.

This movement creates an interconnected community: women to their local food communities,

consumers to female gatekeepers, and individual eaters to each other. The essence of ecofeminism is

reflected within these relationships between woman and nature and can therefore in turn be applied to

shifting the role of nurturer in to the power of cultivator.

The inseparable relationship between cooking and community relate directly to the lifestyle these

women commit to. Their lives are inexplicably intertwined: food relates to family and community, cooking

relates to work but also happiness, their individual projects relate to each other. These relationships can

be most perfectly summarized by Rachelle’s task for all young people: “Learn to cook because food

connects people. If you’re a good cook everyone will want to come to your party. If you’re a good cook

then you want to have good stuff in your dishes, maybe grow it yourself, maybe value the farmer who


grows it for you more, and you want people to take time to eat it. Organize dinner parties, sit together and

talk, and don’t be afraid of taking up the challenge to change your routines and see that everything is not

as it is. We cannot change everything but we can change the way we look at the world, and there are

some ways of looking at the world that are better than others and not for the world itself but for you as a

person.”

Permaculture as a way of life When I took a permaculture course the diversity I encountered was very welcoming. It was very good for

me. You can feel embedded in a natural system, but to feel embedded in a social system is what everyone

eventually wants. Gardening is what you do together and gardening is the means by which you enter that

group, and then the group is welcoming.

- Rachelle Eerhart

Much of today’s population is not taking care of the environment; every selfish act against nature

quickens the rate with which the health of the Earth is declining. There are endless issues in our

environment, and twice as many reasons for what caused each of those problems. According to Janneke,

“Food communities in the Netherlands are almost destroyed by our very outgoing economies [of]

thinking.” She is right in noting that communities around food are practically non-existent, and that many

of the reasons behind this destruction is the Dutch focus on economic gain. But in reality, food is a part of

every issue. The loss of biodiversity in food production, the use of DDT and pesticides on plants, the

injection of hormones in animals all contribute to climate change, deforestation, water pollution, land

erosion, and even the loss of culture.

As Ann felt in her position at Friends of the Earth International, these issues can quickly become

overwhelming. The global food system is in disarray because it is dominated by corporate and state power.

Capitalistic thinking in a globalized economy presents serious detriments for agrifood systems. In addition,

there is a rising lack of access to healthy food because pesticides and single crop systems cause a loss of

nutrient value in the produce. Such a public health crisis is a huge cost for the government. Changing


policy on the large scale is one approach to addressing the issues in today’s unsustainable food system,

but it is not the only approach. All of my interviewees agreed that our unsustainable food system derives

in part from not knowing how food grows and not knowing who grew it.

Sustainability means that something can endure over time, and in order to do so that thing must

exist within a system that remains diverse and productive. Each of my interviewees reconciles

environmental sustainability with all other aspects of their life: family, art, food. To me, it seems like they

participate past the layer of sustainability, and fulfill a lifestyle of resiliency: “A resilient system is one that

can withstand change or challenge and still serve the communities that depend on it” (Shea, 2013, p. 54).

They recognize that the goal of creating a healthy planet also has to do with community and connection.

Rachelle explains that sustainability is about three things: “It’s about connecting to yourself, and it’s

connecting with other people and it’s connecting with the system. And connection is of course the central

word in that because we’re all atoms functioning in the system that’s interconnected.”

This concept of connection surfaced in every interview, and was often also reflected in

conversation around cycles. The cyclical nature with which we approach our daily lives, with which we

approach our food, and with which we treat the earth points directly at the practice of permaculture.

Today, when people hear the word permaculture they assume a specific style of farming. In terms of

growing vegetables permaculture implies that we can have higher yields simply by mimicking the cycles of

nature. A reaction to food insecurity in the 1970s created the desire for self-reliance. This desire

continues to manifest both in attitude and practical application; it encompasses anything from cultivating

to recycling to simply observing. Most importantly when applied to urban farming, it acknowledges that

we can grow food just about anywhere. But permaculture means more than nature’s food production

cycles; it is a whole design system.

An underlying theme among each woman I spoke with, and potentially at the heart of this system

design, is that there’s not enough focus on where our food comes from. Samantha gave an example about


what participating in this kind of permaculture based life system can do, by explaining what her kids of

learned simply from growing spinach: “It’s not just learning about how to grow spinach, but you’re

learning about the natural world and you’re learning about plant biology. You can be taught those things,

but if you’ve already got that background it makes your life a lot easier.” By grounding our knowledge in

the roots of our food system, we can see connections to other part of the design.

Of the three basic principles of permaculture, two stand out as the most interconnected and

most alluded to in my interviews: take care of the earth because without a healthy earth people cannot

flourish, and take care of people because they are the access to those resources that allow us to flourish.

To each of my interviewees permaculture means more than mimicking nature while attempting to grow

food on their balconies. Instead, it means living in tune with the cycles of nature: applying the

interconnection they have observed to their own lifestyles. We therefore apply the non-reductionist, non-

dualistic model present within cooking, feeding, and eating to Van Esterik’s metaphor for

interdependence. The principle within ecofeminism – striving to deconstruct binaries – can be applied to

permaculture efforts. If everything is cyclical and connected, there can be no dualistic divide. Van Esterik

proposes a paradigm shift towards recognizing how individual food choices affect other food systems.

Build awareness: know where your food comes from in terms of both how it is grown and who grew it.

“On a macro level,” Jamie explains, “we’re offering sustainable products to people. We’re helping

keep families healthier, and not like eating a one hundred calorie pack kind of healthy, I mean like real

healthy. Like change the world kind of healthy.” Changing the world they are. Each of my interviewees’

projects aims to connect the recipients of their food to the food itself. Whether that is by chatting to

visitors to the farm, working side by side in the dirt, or teaching them how to chop a piece of produce,

they recognize education as a critical component to creating interconnected permaculture systems. Ann

explains that all of City Plot’s workshops are based in a permaculture approach as they are “trying to

make it so anybody can do this at home and are helping people do things with very few resources.” Each


small step like this makes a sustainable local food system accessible. Janneke describes her connection to

nature and other people as simply feeling a lot and therefore she wants “to create any awareness, to try

to educate everybody.” Yes, that is a lofty goal; but, with so many influential actors participating in this

paradigm shift it’s possible.

Ann, Caroline and Hillary focus specifically on education, but the other projects naturally

incorporate awareness building in to their daily motions of maintaining a garden or sharing a meal. When

Natascha found a long lost potato in the ground and replanted it with children in their own plot, those

kids learned what a potato looks like before it can be eaten and discovered part of nature’s surprising

process of growing it. When Rachelle took a minute out of her day to talk with a local young man about

his personal life, he learned that gardening is about more than the food produced but is also about the

community that is cultivated through that production. Understanding where food comes from maintains

many layers of interconnection. “The point is to get people thinking about it.” Ann says simply, “if you

know how it´s done you know that it´s a miraculous procedure.”

Each woman focuses outwardly to broaden the general public’s understanding of what it means

to respect the cycles of nature. However, participating fully in nature’s cycles and interpersonal

relationships require a level of self-awareness. This is where I saw a unique cultural divide. Not to say that

the Dutch women were not self aware and the American women were not independent, but the emphasis

on values varied. Western thought in general puts an emphasis on the self in competitive and hierarchical

ways, which in terms of environmental justice has devalued interconnectivity and shifted toward ferocious

individualism (Shea, 2013, p. 16). On a basic observation level, all of the Dutch women were running their

organizations mostly alone with a few exceptions: Ann had a team that worked under her and Rachelle

had a board that she sought advice from. Most of the American women not only had a group of

employees or volunteers that they led on a weekly basis, but also mentioned the important role their

partner or families played in their organization.


Van Esterik’s model of reflexivity can be applied to the desire for independence. Dutch society is

highly individualistic. These women come from that same standpoint within Dutch society. But, food as a

source of connection could be a stepping stone for what brings them together. Rachelle explicitly stated

“From a very young age I’ve always been this very independent girl, I’ve always done my own thing and

connecting with people has always been the harder part.” Yet, she also reflected that shifting her world

view towards human interaction has been the most rewarding part of her gardening experiences.

Standpoint theory recognizes, however, that each individual’s lived experience affects that person’s

interaction with the world around them. Being physical cultivators and creators of awareness provides

them with a unique perspective. These women can participate in Dutch individualism, they can also play a

role in woman’s identity as feeder and consumer, but most importantly they provide their own respective

standpoints developed through their personal relationships with Holland’s food system.

Permaculture requires awareness of this personal shift. This is a sentiment I have watched play

out in many of the gardens where I worked. Natascha also works from a very vision driven place. At the

garden many volunteers are working next to each other, but not together. Individual tasks keep them

reporting back to Natascha and only occasionally brainstorming together. But, when she begins to work

with the children on their beds, everything shifts. She has more energy, is less distracted, and invests her

whole attention in their education. Children make that step of connecting easier because they are less

biased and have fewer assumptions about what is being done. But, the shared experience of growing food

can also serve that role.

At Seeds, Hilary is trying to cultivate the ease and energy her kid gardeners have outside their

fence as well. “There’s a lot of people that wouldn’t come in and walk around the garden that are

interested enough to chat when they see you gardening outside the fence.” The physical barrier of a fence

really does hinder community and conversation. Individuals will walk past the garden, afraid to stop and

ask. Hilary could very easily get consumed in her endless daily tasks and look adverse to the world around


her. But by gardening outside the fence of seeds, right by the city roads, Hilary forces everyone outside

their individual bubbles. “They learn how to share with each other and not pick a green tomato because

they’re afraid someone’s going to get it when it turns red,” Hilary gives as an example of what can be done

in an open space.

Everyone has their independent place within the food system, but that position only exists

because of all the other individuals playing their own role within the same system. The cyclical sharing in

food experiences implies that awareness of self and system allows develops interpersonal connection.

Caroline encourages this process of getting to know yourself as a means to understanding foodways. She

asks, “How do you react [with] your environment? How do you feel yourself in your body? How are you

connected to the other person?” Answering each of these questions is a part of understanding the

production and reproduction of food practices.

Without knowing Caroline, without being asked these specific questions, Rachelle went through

the process of discovering the answers. Attempting to grow her first garden on the land of that

abandoned manor “was really a formative experience. It’s sort of spiritual,” she mused. “In our culture we

see ourselves as individual actors and the thing you belong to is your nuclear family. But we’re all

searching for something and by going through that process of connecting with nature in a really direct

sense, it gave me a stronger sense of home in the system.” This was outside the fence – partially because

there was no fence – and proves the effectiveness of open air being a way to establish community.

Branching away from acting on a strictly personal level opens up an individual to recognizing how

they play a role within the system. None of these women are expecting their projects to grow enough

food to feed all of Amsterdam or all of North Carolina; that is far from their purpose. Collectively,

however? – then, maybe. Jamie is adamant that these kinds of projects are playing an important role in

fixing the system and feeding the world. “Every time someone says you can’t feed the world this way? You

know what. You can. I’m sorry, the world fed itself. Our agricultural system has changed in the past sixty


years, not six hundred.” But she also knows it’s going to take a lot of education, and helping people

understand why they should buy local or support these types of projects. “Sixty years ago we were able to

feed ourselves with local and community based agriculture systems and we can do it again.” Their

individual projects, their life’s work, and the way that they interact with people on a daily basis boils down

to creating awareness.

Food has the ability to be that stepping stone towards awareness. Janneke determines that

achieving a sense of equilibrium within the food system – discovering “ecological, harmonical, natural,

respect of each other and of nature – are the components of a good life.” Planting the seed that sprouts

in to a plant you nurture which grows in to food that provides sustenance in your life which you learn to

cook in order to feed friends with whom you share in good conversation sitting around a dinner table is

the essence of a permaculture based life. This process completely revitalizes the role of nurturing and

feeding. When women have complete power over the whole process of getting food to the table they are

not restrained within the role of domesticity. The ability to take control over that they feed their families,

how they live their life, allows cooking and eating to become a source of empowerment and pleasure.

Conclusion This is the most critical struggle of our generation. We need control of our food, everybody needs that in all parts of the world. That´s the beauty of growing your own food: it´s so incredibly inspiring but it´s also a right.

- Ann Doherty

Women are initiating transformative projects across the globe, cultivating a shift in the way

people interact with their food and their community. Having grown up with mothers who dedicated time

and attention to the way that they ate relates my interviewees’ relationship with food to the lived

experience of many women who feel responsible for feeding a family. Each embarked on their own

personal journeys with food production and consumption which sparked the desire to create change on a


community scale. “My whole journey started with me wanting to have a better life,” Rachelle reflects,

“not me wanting to save the planet in a sort of eco activist or eco aesthetic way. The better life is around

the corner. That’s the beauty of this world, it’s filled with opportunities and people doing fun stuff and you

just have to have the inclination, the time, and the mindset to just go.”

Each of these women embrace the “just go” mind set. They are pioneers in their field, even if they

do not view themselves in that light. Although they are each very individual people with their own

agendas, they are able to shift their style of interaction when gardening with others. Because of their

focus on establishing community, these improvements in awareness around food begin in their own

neighborhoods. Claire explains that “every little bit helps. It’s a humungous problem and it can be

overwhelming at times to think about all the people who are not getting the food that they need to be

healthy. So any dent that you can make, whether it’s just bring food to your neighbor, I think it’s worth it,

it’s a start.”

All of these projects must work together for true community to form. The online platform Eetbar

Amsterdam is beginning to grow as a space for similar community gardening, urban farming, and other

food related projects to collaborate. This is necessary so new projects do not need to re-create the wheel

as they are trying to get started. Clearly, effective models exist and can be replicated or learned from.

Eetbar Amsterdam’s ability to support new projects, answer questions, indicates new courses or events

are beneficial, but it is not enough. Can the best results be found through an online forum?

Food, gardening, eating, are all very physical and sensual experiences. Replicating this type of a

community online will be difficult, not to mention deconstruct the personal community that has been

built. There is an essence of physical embodiment when each woman speaks about her project that I

cannot imagine a website being able to get such a passionate message across. The human interactions are

what inspire each of these leaders to do what they do: they are making direct impact on countless lives.

Hilary is excited by deepening these interactions and expanding the Seeds community. She is “still trying


to figure out how you make people who wander by involved in what it is that they’re experiencing as they

wander by.” But, that’s what makes gardening so great! Food brings people together, and helps them

understand their experience, no matter who they are.

I met Rachelle and Janneke at a Youth Food Movement dinner: surrounded by other young people

who desire knowing about their food and sharing meals with other like-minded people was the most

invigorating way to start my project. As previously indicated, each of these women are incredibly busy, but

everyone has to eat. I envision growing awareness of change in local food systems by establishing

interpersonal community connections between these projects. The solution is not online, but over shared

meals. If these projects are able to collaborate in the same physical space – to eat a meal together

produced from each other’s garden, to answer each other’s permaculture questions – the results will be

staggering. According to Claire, it’s the mission of CCCG – or any other one of these projects – that draws

people in, but once there, the garden “feeds people in different ways. For some people, it’s a real

community, a home away from home. For some people, they just feel really comfortable and accepted.”

Rachelle reminds us that the whole point of focusing on our food system is to become “healthy by

doing something that connects you to the bigger picture.” The bigger picture includes each of these

projects and dozens more that I was not able to participate in. Women have the power to teach their

children about where food comes from, to feed their families with what is right and to fuel their

communities. As proposed through the theoretical framework, it appears that growing her own food for

the sake of health and pleasure does indeed allow a woman to become empowered as both feeder and

consumer. Further, it enables her to reframe the power dynamic within her domestic role of nurturer as a

leadership role in community building. We will see sustainable change once all these initiative can share in

their lived experiences and developed knowledge about what their food is, how it is grown, and all the

work that goes in this interconnected system. These women have proven that a positive relationship with


food can be empowering, and will continue to overturn the burden-pleasure binary by cultivating lasting,

positive change within their local food systems.

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Appendix

Interview Guide: Personal History

Please introduce yourself

Describe a typical evening in your parents’ home when you were a child.

While you were growing up, who was in charge of feeding your family? What did a typical meal look like?

o Who made most of the decisions in your family when you were a child? How did this affect how you run your own family today?

o Where did your parents do their shopping? What do you remember about these trips?

Did you have any family traditions that revolved around food?

Describe for me your first kitchen.

What was your process for deciding what to do after high school? Who influenced your decision? o Did your parents want you or your siblings to follow a certain occupation? o What did you want to be when you grew up?

When did you first develop an interest in farming / food systems?

What has been the most influential component of determining your current career path?

Why do you do what you do? Why is your work important? Project specific

Who do you want your work to reach? o Who is left out of this new urban farming and local food trend? o Do you feel your work is valued? o Who uses and benefits from these spaces? o What more do you think could be accomplished?

What is most important to people in your community? o How has the community changed within your time here? o How would you like to see the community change?

What has been your greatest struggle in this movement? o Have you had to sacrifice anything for the success of your project?

Bigger picture

How has your work affected the way you eat or feed your family? The activities you you’re your family participate in?

How do you see your organization fitting in with the other projects in this area?

What do you think is the next step for the local food movement?

Is there anything that we’ve left out that you’d like to talk about?

Cultivating Change Women Transforming Local Food Systems

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