So far this summer, I’ve been working on outlining my project and trying to dig deeper into the core ideas and subjects that I’m researching. More specifically, I want to narrow my initial proposal to have a more focused and comprehensive example of a community. Something that I’ve been struggling to balance is narrowing down my research questions while also connecting them to much broader themes of food insecurity/systems, late-stage capitalism, community care/health, etc.
This past week, I also started my apprenticeship at Harlem Grown! It’s been amazing to learn the organization’s processes, be in nature, and actively help things grow. I’ve also realized I’d like to center my time here for my research project. At the beginning of summer, I intended to bring in both Harlem Grown and another organization based in the Bay Area. This gets back to some of my initial research ideas around the individual and the collective, and I think I’ll be able to explore these more effectively by looking at one organization. Not only am I learning a ton about farming, but I also get to see and interact with a lot of the community each day.
Cherry picking! This tree is located on the original Harlem Grown site.
I’ve also been reading Raj Patel and Rupa Marya’s “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.” This book has been truly fascinating to me, especially when I can apply the other research I’m doing on New York food systems to greater health crises. The authors specifically focus on how COVID-19 was a huge indicator of the disparities in health due to racial capitalism and class divides and how health is very much centered around racial capitalism and is beyond an individual’s control. Job stress, debt, economic disparity, lack of food access, adequate/affordable healthcare, growing politics, and social tensions disintegrate community well-being and health. Access to affordable and healthy food can only go so far when institutional and historical disparities exist. My work at Harlem Grown definitely confirms this, as I can see how many different issues there are to address and understand when it comes to food access.
In the next few weeks, I want to continue researching and organizing my thoughts. I’ve also scheduled interviews with a couple of people at Harlem Grown.
One of the hydroponic greenhouses located at Harlem Grown