Food, Life and Sustainability

I learned a lot on the our food intensive field trip.  There were a lot of things that were complicated, interesting, cool, mind-blowing. I gained a lot of knowledge about food, life and sustainability. There were a lot of things that I agreed with and disagreed with. I especially like how we started with politics and ended it at an organic farm.

I agreed with what Van Jones said about how to make changes in the U.S. I also like how he gave everyone the sad information about the country first and then he ended the speech by giving people hope for change. Moreover I feel that it is a fact when he said “if you want to make a change you have to make a move towards that to make it change”. Another place that we visited that I liked was Veritable Vegetable. I liked it because I learned a lot about labor. It was pretty shocking to me when I learned that the majority of the physical labor in their company is done by women, as I had previously believed that only men do that type of work. From my perspective I think it is unfair that people who do physical labor traditionally get paid less than people who work in an office. I think that this system should change.

My favorite of the trip, though, was James who gave a speech about American lifestyle and simple life. He talked about how we are consuming and wasting a lot of our resources. James believes that we should reclaim some of the ways we used to live back in the day and combine them with some of our best modern technology, which I strongly agree with. While it might not be possible or desirable to go back to how things were 100 years ago. I think we would all be happier living much simpler lives, which although difficult is not impossible. In order to live a simple life, one must surround oneself with people who live simple lives, which will in turn make it easier to live one's own life simply. I can relate to this because when I was in India I lived a very simple life and I was a very happy person. However, when I came to U.S. I always bought/consumed to keep myself happy which only gave me the fake happiness.