Update 2

I am planning to write my essay on the importance of local farms. My social science is education, dealing with knowing the negatives of industrialized farming, and knowing the positives of local farms.

My survey has 44 responses, so I feel really good about the information I have received and the amount of respondents. A little over half of the respondents said that they could not name any local farms in their area and the rest said that yes they could or named a farm. 70.5% said that they do not know where their food comes from. Also, 72.7% said that they were aware that industrialized farming has many negative aspects. This part of my survey surprised me because I was thinking that maybe people didn't realize that industrialized farming had so many flaws and negative aspects but turns out that people do know that and still continue to support them. Most people said that they buy the majority of their food at a grocery store (instead of a farmers market). I am now beginning to write my paper!

Update on Essay 4

I am planning to write my essay on the importance of local farms. My social science is education, dealing with knowing the negatives of industrialized farming, and knowing the positives of local farms. I am currently working on getting my survey up on the web, but some questions that I plan to use so far are; Can you name any local farms in your area? Do you know where your food comes from? Are you aware that industrialized farms have many negative aspects? I plan to have my survey up and rolling by tomorrow Tuesday, November 13. I am also going to discuss the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project in the essay since I have studied it some for past essays.

Indigenous Resistance

This article studies the issues of the Coast Salish people as they struggle to keep there culture alive in the home of British Columbia. They are being faced with problems concerning the goal of the government and school systems so assimilate them into the American culture. The government is using the school system as a way to force them into American ways and they are fighting hard to resist. The Coast Salish people are very fond of their traditions and culture and do not want to be assimilated into the school system by the American or Canadian government. The Salish people won't give up in the fight to save their culture and traditions! I don't think any one would want to compromise their culture to obey the government.

Food and Sustainability

I read an article on a website titled Cultures of Resistance. The article focused on issues with farming. The article discussed how until recently farming had not changed much for many years, but as a result of the laziness of Americans they have found other ways to do the jobs they once had such as fertilizing and tilling the soil. These alternatives are known as pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers, and also cheap fossil fuels. Although it was thought that these synthetic fertilizers and pesticides were only helping in agriculture they were actually polluting the crops and the food that many people eat. A greater problem on the sustainability end is the huge amounts of fossil fuel that are needed to keep industrialized farming going. At the end of the article it provides ways that one can contribute to getting rid of these aspects of farming or atleast trying to eliminate this out of their own lives. These ideas are eat local, eat organic, and eat less meat!

http://www.culturesofresistance.org/food-issues-food-and-sustainability

Fracking synthesis

In the Article “Keep on Fracking? Criticism grows, but Impact Not Clear” it is stated that the EPA has estimated that by 2035 non-conventional gas will supply 45 percent of the nation’s natural gas consumption.  Once again, this article provides information of the environmental side effects that come along with fracking; of course water contamination. States such as New Jersey have already placed a ban on fracking, and Pennsylvania is producing its own regulations, while other states have decided that jobs are more important than the environment. That brings up a new question in my mind. Are jobs or the environment more important? In my personal opinion the environment is much more important, because the environment is not something that can be reproduced or found elsewhere, it is what we live in. President Obama has worked to make some recommendations concerning fracking but as expected environmentalists feels that these recommendations are too soft and the oil executives feel that these suggestions are too harsh. Obama has made clear he wanted the shale gas industry to grow, but doesn’t want any harm to the environment. This obviously isn’t possible concerning fracking is contaminating water in more than one location. Since President Obama’s appointee to work on something must be done to make a definitive decision concerning fracking instead of a compromise.

http://www.sciencedirect.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/science/article/pii/S1040619011002302

Fracking

I recently studied the issue of fracking when writing my Essay 2. I was focusing on fracking specifically in North Carolina, but it seems that this issue is taking place all over the place. In this article Lustgarten points out that many of the previous points made concerning fracking are contradicted. Many of these points that stated that the fracking process was safe have been proven wrong. Supporters of fracking have tried to make points that hydrologic pressure would naturally force fluids down instead of up has been proven wrong because obviously environmental officials have now linked water pollution in central Wyoming to the drilling process. I was excited to read that since these findings, this could be a turning point in the national debate concerning water contamination and fracking. This could help to form how the country regulates and develops these resources across the Eastern Appalachian states which would include North Carolina. These new findings will definitely become a heated debate as congress works to regulate fracking. I am interested to see the outcome of Congress’ work. I found it interesting that residents began complaining of water contamination in the mid-1990s, as it got worse in 2004 and this information is just now making it to the news and being addressed by congress. I also found it interesting that these gas companies were supplying replacement drinking water to these residents; I feel like this was just a way to shut the residents up in order for them to continue fracking. Of course, executives in the in the gas company world are denying that any of this contamination could be their fault and they want to blame it on natural causes. I am not surprised that they will still not except what they are causing and try to fix it. These companies seem to be extremely selfish.  I also thought it was weird that EnCana would not give federal officials a detailed breakdown of each compound that is used underground. That in itself proves that he knows there are many issues with what the company is doing.

Richard Kahn

"As an example, instead of developing their environmental literacy (as is currently done) through explorative experiences of the zoo’s Wells Fargo Family Farm, a place according the zoo that can foster experiences for children “to explain and also to learn about how food gets from farms to tables” (http://www.mnzoo.com/animals/family_farm/index.asp), students could gain literacy into how to organize collectively in opposition to such practices and in how to demand answers from responsible parties as to why high-ranking executives of a leading corporate agribusiness like Cargill presently sit on the zoo’s Board of Directors."              Quote from "Towards Ecopedagogy" -Richard Kahn 

After reading this quote I think that Richard Kahn feels that this school is good in terms that it teaches students of their environment and excels their level of bioregional literacy or ecological literacy but he feels that maybe they could be taught in different ways. He points out that the students could learn how to organize against environmental issues and effectively make an argument against these people. In order to use the information they learn they must know how to act on the problems. I also think that in regular schools information such as this should be taught maybe not necessarily concerning the same context but students should be taught how to collectively organize as well as make arguments on any cause that they feel strongly about.