Polly Dyer – Seattle • Entered by Penelope Peterson on May 13, 2024
GOB Book Club
January 11, 2024 – January 11, 2024
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | 6 |
| Post Admin hours | 0 |
| Activity Hours | 2 |
| Participants | 1 |
| Total Hours | 8 |
Key Issue: Doesn’t apply
Activity Type: Education & Outreach (tabling, films & lectures, regional B-walks/works)
Key Partners: Polly Dyer Seattle Broads and a few Broads from other states
Short Description of Activity
For this evening’s discussion, we had read, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman. I had prepared the following questions to pose during the discussion:
1. When humans first invented agriculture, how was food grown?
2. Over the years, the way food is grown has undergone massive changes. What was behind these changes? Why did they occur?
3. Bittman has a chapter called “the farm as factory.” What does he mean by this? What are some examples of “the farm as a factory?”
4. What was your perception of America’s food industry before reading this book? What did you learn from this book? Has it altered your views of the way food is acquired and consumed?
5. Does Bittman think our food system is just? Why or why not?
If not, what would a just food system look like?
6. In 1999, over 70 percent of Federal Farm Bill subsidies went for just two commodity crops: corn and soybeans. These supports promote industrial-scale production, not small diversified farms, and in fact create an environment for competition in which subsidized producers get help crowding the little guys out of business. Why do you think the government has given so little support for limited pesticide use, environmentally sound growing practices, and sustainable techniques? What are the implications for the food supply? How might this change in the coming decades?
7. What group do we have to thank for the first school breakfast program?
The Black Panthers started a free breakfast program that fed thousands of children in Chicago, and then expanded to other cities as well.
8. What role does the media and advertising play in determining what Americans eat? What are some examples?
9. What is agroecology? What is the goal of agroecology?
10. In what ways, if any, have you changed your eating habits since reading this book? If you have not yet changed, how would you like to eat differently in 2024?
11. In the concluding chapter, Bittman tries to answer the question of what we might do going forward. What does Bittman suggest?
12. Do you have a question you would like to ask the rest of the group or a favorite passage from the book that you would like to share?
Reflection/Evaluation
Ten Broads participated in our discussion of this book via Zoom. It was a thought-provoking discussion. In the course of it, Nora Langan mentioned that the Farm Bill should be coming up before Congress, and we should be on the lookout for it as the Bill has important implications for agriculture, crop growth, and food production. As this discussion took place at the beginning of the year in January, it also caused some of us to rethink our eating habits and how we might want to modify them in the coming year.