In the American children's classic Charlotte's Web, the little pig Wilbur discovers that his purpose on the farm is to be raised and killed for pork in the next months. Shocked by his fate, Wilbur seeks liberation from anyone who can help him. Charlotte, a cunning but loving barnyard spider, offers to help Wilbur escape from the table. He uses his network to give Wilbur a new place on the farm; not only is it tasty, but it is also amazing, radiant and humble. Charlotte makes Wilbur look like a pig with her web, and the humans in the story agree with her. The pig is not only taken away from the table, but is also awarded a medal at the county fair for its exceptional character (White, 1952). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The story of Charlotte's Web is a tender children's story and a work of fiction. However, there is a surprising reality captured in Charlotte's sticky threads. The complex food web we live in today has also disassociated us from the places, both geographical and existential, where our food comes from. We struggle to find our place in the world, partly because we have forgotten where the things we consume belong. Dissociating people from food is not only silly (as in the story mentioned above), but it also contributes to a host of social problems. Reconnecting with the food we eat will reestablish a sense of place not only in the food web, but in the world at large. It is imperative before exploring the social implications of food web dissociation that we define what this means, and so we will start at the beginning. The first strands of the human food web were woven together when the first humans began to eat. Small family groups of hunter-gatherers sought whatever was available for their sustenance. This is the most basic human food web. The first major innovation in this system occurred about 13,000 years ago, when Mesopotamian clans abandoned nomadic hunting and gathering towards more stable, stationary agriculture (Agricultural Chronology). A couple of thousand years later, goats, pigs, and sheep were domesticated, expanding the agricultural food web to considerable dietary variety. People planted, watered, weeded, and harvested their plant foods. They birthed, protected, nurtured, nourished and slaughtered their meat. This model has nourished humanity for several millennia. The next major development in the human food web occurred with the advent of complex, trade-based societies. As more and more people gathered in ancient cities, the idea of ​​trade between neighbors became the basis for the success of urban civilization. However, trade has also become the fundamental agent of dissociation between people and what they consume. As blacksmiths, potters, weavers, and traders became real places of society, the food web expanded to nourish them. Due to limitations in transporting and storing food, however, the level of dissociation remained relatively small for about 10,000 years. For example, on August 25, 1790, Martha Ballard prepared a meal of baked lamb with fresh vegetables and whole-grain rolls for her family. Augusta, Maine (Marta). It lived in the same basic food web that had existed for millennia; Martha's husband ran a grist mill for local farmers and she was the town midwife. These jobs provided a means to barter the lamb meal and wholemeal used in his meal with local farmers. The Ballard family also farmed twolarge backyard gardens for fresh fruit and vegetables and raised a dairy cow, chickens, turkeys and an occasional spring pig. Maintaining the health of these food sources required constant vigilance, and the Ballard children were often sent out to the bean field to squash pesky insects or to the chicken coop with a bowl of scraps for the chickens. This lifestyle has ingrained in the Ballard children a concrete awareness of where their lambs, fresh vegetables and wholemeal sandwiches come from. This experience was very similar to that of Fern, from Charlotte's Web, who at the age of seven had to face the sad reality of the fate of the little spring pigs (White, 1952). If the classical market system kept people fed and close to their food for over 10,000 years, what changed that drove people away from those backyard experiences? How did the human family take food as it really is – living plants and living animals that we consume to survive – and wove it to the edges of our food web? Ann Vileisis, writer and historian, explores this evolution of the human-food relationship in her book Kitchen Literacy (2008). Vileisis illustrates how several innovations in transportation technology, refrigeration, and large-scale agriculture have changed the way people eat in America. He recognizes that railroads, canals, and engines expanded the geography of the food web in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, expanding the average distance from farm to food from a fifteen-mile radius from the eater to fifteen hundred miles (page 37). Then, in the early 20th century, changing social expectations for women to be more educated, more cultured, and more devoted to their children further ostracized people from their food. Moms simply didn't have enough time to do housework and conform to new ideals of motherhood. At the turn of the century, most Americans were too busy pursuing the American Dream to worry about mundane things like preparing food. Adaptations in food production and marketing consolidated the ongoing cultural change. In the image above, a vendor prepares a cut of meat for his customer the same way all meat was prepared in the 18th century. The image below is a 1902 advertisement for Gustavus Swift's meat packing company. Swift revolutionized the meat processing industry by slaughtering cows in Chicago meatpacking plants and delivering steaks to any household in the continental United States. His shipping model replaced the antiquated idea of ​​sending live heifers into crowded, dangerous, and inefficient livestock trailers. As the images demonstrate, butchers of the past advertised their meat based on the animals from which it came. According to Vileisis, it was common practice for a customer to ask about the life, growth and disposition of the animals that the butcher prepared for sale. The practice of market surveying became obsolete in the 20th century, however, because people did not see the animals from which their meat came. Swift's business model offered less damaged meats at a cheaper price, so consumers eventually accepted its pre-cut, government-inspected, finely packaged cuts of beef. It was the wrapping, not the knife, that severed the thread between us and our flesh. The expansion of the food web has continued to this day, when the average tomato changes hands 8 times before ending up in our “homemade” sauce (B Cox, personal communication, c. 2005). Essays, books, documentaries, protest speeches and Supreme Court rulings were allwritten to address the myriad environmental, health, and business implications of our massive new food web, but I found in my research no conversation about what I believe to be a more disturbing consequence than popular tickets. How has eating dissociation contributed to a loss of sense of place in relation to things bigger than ourselves? Investigative journalist Michael Pollan recently discussed the role of food in bringing us into reality with Oprah on his show Supersoul Sunday (Winfrey). In this interview, Pollan reflected on a childhood experience in his grandfather's garden. “It was magical to me,” he commented, “that we could put these little things [seeds] in the ground and they could become plants and more!” Pollan explained that his wonder and charm fostered in him a sense of externality, rather than simply "me-me-me all the time." If most Americans don't experience those moments of self-realization and wonder: What kind of people are we becoming? Responses are often most evident in the extremes, and people with the most extreme dissociation from natural eating processes are those living in highly concentrated urban areas. Because poverty limits opportunities to travel to more rural places and experiences, inner-city populations are particularly cut off from reality by the current food network. Additionally, many of these crime-prone areas are referred to as “food deserts,” due to the risk of crime dissuading major food chains from investing in nearby stores (USDA). This in itself is an indication of the unstable social climate that exists in urban centres. If Pollan's experience with soil-born externality is true on a general scale, then gardening for inner-city populations will foster a sense of belonging to the external community in participants and curb violent crime. Gardening programs for inner-city youth are gaining traction toward that change. In Oakland, Navy veteran Kelly Carlisle organized the Acta Non Verba gardening program. Children and youth in inner-city Oakland can participate in growing their own fruits and vegetables to eat and sell extra produce to save money for their future. Carlisle was asked to start the garden when she returned to Oakland after active duty and found that her neighborhood had a 40 percent abandonment rate and was on the FBI's list of the ten most dangerous cities. She was a master gardener and found peace and identity in gardening. In his words, Carlisle wanted his garden to be "[a place] where young people could learn about nutrition, food, and themselves" (Carlisle). That dream has become reality. Since the garden's first season in 2011, hundreds of children (like Jarome, pictured here) have come to learn, work, play and eat together in the Acta Non Verba garden. Kelly Carlisle isn't the only one connecting people to their food. Will Allen, a former professional basketball player and businessman, also organized a gardening program to help children in his Milwaukee neighborhood find their place in the food web. “It's more than just putting a plant in the ground,” Allen says in a short documentary about his farming project, Growing Power. “The kids who come here are nervous. And they bounce off the walls. But as soon as I put a little dirt in their hands they calm down. So there is something very spiritual about touching the earth” (Winfrey). This calming, grounding effect is what Allen, Carlisle, and others hope will foster a stronger sense of self-importance and worth in children growing up indangerously underexposed neighborhoods. I have personally seen the power of helping people find a place of value through manufacturing. food. Forgotten Angels, a mental health rehabilitation center in Pearland, Texas, has seen the potential benefits of gardening for its residents. However, the work needed to get the project started was beyond their means, so the volunteer organization I was with in the city organized a series of work days to clear fields, build planters, transport soil and mulch and carry out a series of other heavy work. Once the foundation was laid, residents with various mental and cognitive disabilities were given the opportunity to grow food which they then sold at the local farmers' market. I've never seen anyone more excited to talk about peas than Chris, a resident with hydrocephalus. "I wait!" One Week said, brandishing his planter of newly sprouted pea plants. “They grow!” As my group returned week after week, I could see Chris growing along with his peas. He was able to share something of value that he had helped create. His communication has become more understandable and proactive. He learned the very practical skill of turning on and off the garden water hose. And as Will Allen described, Chris found extraordinary peace when he could spend time in the ground with his peas. Officer Kathleen Green also started a garden as part of a rehabilitation program - only her office is at the Eastern Correctional Institution of Maryland, the state prison. If anyone lost their sense of place in society, it would be the prisoners. After sentencing, they are punitively plucked from their dark webs of criminal life and thrown into the prison system with no strings attached, no support, and no place to belong. Imprisonment could be seen as cruel; Agent Green prefers to think of it as a new beginning. “These guys have probably never seen something grow out of the ground,” he explained in an interview with the Washington Post. “This is powerful stuff for them” (Roselwald, 2015). Prisoners can repay their debt to the state with the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor, and the opportunity to do so generates a feeling of appreciation for the officers who allow them to work in the prison garden. Their new connections are founded not in criminality, but in civility. New threads of cooperation, work, humility, interdependence, respect and legality begin to replace the old webs of crime. Inmates are able to weave a new and improved social network by discovering the food web they have always been a part of. As has been illustrated, food dissociation contributes to several important problems. A simple solution to these problems is to promote the opportunity for people to grow their own food from the real, living plants and animals that their food comes from. Now, to the critics who see this proposal and cry that people could never produce enough food on a small scale to provide for themselves, you are absolutely right. In a society with such highly developed business systems and urban culture, proposing that everyone should grow their own lettuce and raise their own Chicken McNuggets is irrational and inapplicable. There is not enough real estate in Manhattan to feed Manhattan, nor are there enough New York minutes in a New Yorker's life for full-time farming. This is not the proposal of this document. People don't need to be self-sufficient to have enough familiar experiences with food to change them. The guys at Acta Non Verba don't provide everything for themselves2-064