“Eating is an agricultural act.” - Wendell Barry; The Pleasures of Eating

Eating is an Agricultural Act is a relational and ongoing project of eating in a way to reconnect with land. The title borrows from Wendell Barry, who urges readers to consider their eating as ecological, cultural and political acts. Barry insists that eating is no neutral act, and requires our collective commitment to being in right relationship to where our food comes from, curious how it gets to us, and aware of all the implications of this food meeting our plates.

The ways in which, the reasons behind, and the ingredients we use to feed ourselves all tell a much deeper story beyond how foods keep our bodies alive and well. And although survival is story enough, it’s worth unpacking why we eat the foods we do. The word foodway emerged around World War II, when a group of sociologists tried to understand the eating habits of rural and working-class communities as diets shifted under the pressures of war. Today, foodways are understood as the cultures, habits, and patterns tied to eating. Understanding the foods we eat as part of a foodshed, helps us get clear in how food serves as much more than metabolic sustenance, but instead, offers us a way to make meaning, creatively caretake, and serves as a bid for connection.

Our foodways mirror our ecosystems. When we examine our eating habits, we see that our foods could never really be all that separate from the land, water, and cycles that sustain it. By grounding our foodways in place—knowing our local soils, waters, plants, and people—we remember that our food is inseparable from the living systems that sustain it. A foodshed can be understood as the system that brings food to our tables, much like a watershed is the system that carries water across the land.

This project draws on an emerging relationship with community-supported agriculture (CSA) and local foodsheds to create shared meals as platforms for dialogue, exchange, and ecological listening. As an ongoing practice, this project changes with the seasons and the foods at hand, inviting different iterations and forms each time I gather around a table.Though, there are a few questions that remain at the heart:

How can we support the planetary wellbeing while nourishing ourselves?

How do our choices around cooking and eating shape agricultural systems?

How do our local ecologies inform what ends up on our plates?

I hope to meditate on the above questions in the garden, in the kitchen, while walking both my home ecologies and in which I am a visitor, around the table, and in the studio. As such, Eating is an agricultural Act is as much of a project as it is a practice. Join me!