"In Slow Food's assessment, it is territory .... that is most immediately threatened by industrial agriculture and the monocultures it encourages." In Stephen Schneider's article Good, Clean, Fair: The Rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement, territory is defined as a combination of factors, both natural and human. For example, lobster is popular in the gastronomic culture of Maine because of it's availability, a natural factor. In a weird combination of regional culture and industrial monoculture, I remember stopping at a rest stop on an interstate in New England to find lobster rolls on the menu at the McDonald's. I don't know if they still offer the specialty among their otherwise homogeneous options; this was over a decade ago on a Boy Scout trip. But it made such an impression on me that I still remember. Like, who drives all the way to Maine only to try the lobster at a McDonald's?

Another memory from my travels is the prevalence of Greek and Turkish restaurants in the Nashville area. I would liken it to the presence of an Italian place in every strip mall in South Jersey (right next to the Wawa). This is an example of a territory defined not by natural factors, but by human ones. I'm not familiar with the history of Nashville, but I imagine it saw a great number of Greek and Turkish immigrants at one time.

I also wanted to comment on the idea of school vegetable gardens. I really can't think of a better use of school time than to plant and maintain a garden. Aside from demonstrating the value of hard work in a tangible product, it promotes teamwork and provides limitless opportunities for science and nutrition instruction. Even art classes could utilize the garden to teach the importance of close observation. If my oral history research group hadn't already decided on a topic, I would have loved to explore school vegetable gardens in action.

That said, after reading this article I thought of another research question for our project on the opening of a new farmers market: How do you see the farmers market as helping to preserve the local food culture of South Jersey and Medford specifically?

The transparency demanded of our research in Writing, Research, and Technology is an example of the kind of work advocated by Pinnegar and Daynes in their chapter "Locating Narrative Inquiry Historically." They discuss the benefits of narrative inquiry and qualitative research over numbers and quantitative research. Of numbers as raw data, they write that “There is little textual evidence that allows the audience to determine whether the research was simply designed to impose the worldview of the researcher on what was researched.” By conducting research based in narrative inquiry, researchers do not eliminate their biases. Rather, they have the opportunity to make them clear to readers in a unique way.

First, by using original sources and first person accounts, data can be constructed from the ground up, after it has been collected. This differs from quantitative research where systems for gathering data must be designed before data collection, and they may not serve the data in the most effective way.

Second, in transparent qualitative research, a more thorough examination of the “how” and “why” can be conducted using a fuller range of communication channels. Numbers as data restrict researchers to correlating patterns, but qualitative research may record movement and tone in a way that can transcend researcher bias.

Our group oral history project continues to make progress. Yesterday, I contacted Sarah Kirby from the Kirby Brothers Store. This is what I wrote:

Hi, I'm a long-time Medford resident and student at Rowan University. My research group is looking to record an "oral history" on a food-related topic. Our goal is to produce a documentary-style informative video about starting a farmers market. Since you are starting a whole new market, we would love to discuss this with you. We would only need an hour of your time to conduct an informal on-camera interview. We're looking to do this in the next week. We'll be publishing our research online, so it could even have the incidental effect of promoting your business. Let me know if this is something you would be interested in doing or if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Michael Youngkin

She promptly agreed to do the interview and we scheduled it for 6pm this Thursday! I also contacted a friend who studied film in college to see if he would be interested in helping us shoot the video. He has a really nice digital video SLR. We'll see about that.

And finally, this article was posted yesterday on the website of the local paper, The Central Record. It has basic information about the farm market, which isn't opening until May 20, outside the scope of our research. But we will have plenty to cover on the preparation before opening.

Our group met yesterday in class to solidify our research goals. We decided to pursue the idea I first suggested in this blog, interviewing Sarah Kirby to find out what goes into opening a new farmer's market. A behind the scenes look, if you will. We also decided that it would be helpful to think of our audience as people living in an area without access to a farmer's market who want to know more about starting one. This could lead to a simply informative project, or it could drift into the realm of persuading people to shop at farmer's markets. This is where we will let the research lead us.

Today, I will attempt to contact Sarah Kirby to set up a date for an interview. My group members have already come up with some good questions (here and here) in addition to the ones I posted here.

The other thing we decided was to present our findings in a documentary format. While I have the necessary equiptment, I would love to be able to use a better camera. Rowan's Campus Movie Fest is next week, which could help us to that end. The program allows students to borrow cameras and laptops to make short films to enter in a competition. While they require that entries be less than five minutes, we could create one version from our raw footage to enter in the competition. Alternatively, I have a friend who owns a DSLR video camera that shoots beautiful images. I am waiting to hear back to see if he would be interested in helping us shoot.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I'll be working with Darren Gaunt, Dave Lucas, and Stephanie "this was supposed to be my wedding" Bowser. Each has done some great work for the class, and I'm lucky to be working with them on the oral history project. On their websites, you will find their own blogs about our project, as well as some of their fantastic work in our class. I can't wait to start shooting some video as a team!

This morning, it came to me. The perfect idea for our oral history project! A prominent business owner with a long history in my hometown is starting up a farmers market on Main Street. Sarah Kirby has decided that every Saturday morning, her lot at Kirby Brothers Feed Store should come alive with merchants and shoppers, all within the shadow of the local Shop Rite. In Medford, the name Kirby is what Ben Franklin is to Philadelphia. There's the old Kirby's Mill, and now even an elementary school named after the family. Just last year, Sarah Kirby lost her father. It seems like now she is putting her effort into feeding Medford mouths with the food of local farmers, in a town on the edge of agrarian Burlington County. While I have never met Ms. Kirby, my father knows her and I am sure securing an interview would be no problem. My first impulse is to ask her how to put together a farmer's market. As a research question, this could lead to a very informative project.

I came up with some possible interview questions:
-Why have you decided to do this?
-How are you preparing?
-Who do you expect to shop here?
-What are your biggest concerns?
-In what ways has this been more challenging than you expected?
-What has been the biggest obstacle?
-How would you define sucess?
-What do you hope is the end result?

Additional aspects of the project could include a brief examination of the environment and culture: available food stores, shopping habits of citizens, income level, etc. Another interesting angle could be examining the potential effects of the proximity of Shop Rite, both on the new farmer's market and on Shop Rite itself. Regular Shop Rite customers could be "street interviewed."

In grade school, we were taught that quantitative research uses numbers while qualitative research uses words. The assigned reading discusses qualitative research more thoroughly. Where quantitative research seeks to discover objective truths that can be generalized, qualitative research investigates specific situations that can shed light on social phenomena. In qualitative research, context plays a role. In fact, observation of the environment can lead to a more complete understanding of the subject.

One of the main methods of qualitative research is interviewing. Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. My tendency is to conduct semi-structured interviews because I believe they balance the needs of the researcher with potential contributions of the subject. In the assigned reading, Beverley Hancock writes about a procedure she calls "constant comparative analysis" whereby "any interesting findings are incorporated into the next interview." Without having a name for this process, I have used it many times, most recently when I interviewed professionals for a documentary about nontraditional media.

For my group's collaborative project, we will be using interviews to examine a specific subgroup of the population. The project will have a local focus, and the climate of the area--where people live and shop--will necessarily play a role in the examination of the data. Qualitative research will help us achieve these goals.

In class, we watched the documentary Food Inc. These are my thoughts on three discussion questions.

1. What do you think about Oprah being sued for saying she wasn't sure if she wanted to continue eating hamburgers, as described in the film? What do you think about a law that prevents you from saying something negative about a particular food item?
I think this is a blatant violation of first amendment rights. It's amazing to me that the beef industry has so much political weight that it can squelch free speech. Libel laws once protected newspapers. In the case of The New York Times vs. Sullivan, courts ruled that proof of actual malice must be shown for defamed public figures to collect damages. Even though what the Times printed wasn't entirely true, the courts decided that Sullivan did not receive the same protection as private citizens. This precedent allowed newspapers to be the critical watchdogs necessary in our democracy. Now, it seems like companies are receiving the same protections as private citizens. ("Corporations are people") I think that of all industries, the food industry should be held to the highest standards. Besides, Oprah was describing her feelings, an opinion. There was no call to action. I don't care how many people watch Oprah, how was this even a case?

2. There is plenty of research showing that healthful food makes people feel better, have more energy, and stay well. Do you think if more people knew about this research, they would make different food choices? Why or why not?
Research about the harmful affects of cigarettes has been widely available for over 50 years. Still, millions smoke. While hot dogs and soda might not be as addictive as cigarettes, they are certainly cheaper. I think that by and large, people go for the better deal and are fooled by advertising daily. I used to work at Target, and we put up "As Advertised" signs that showed a price no lower than the regular price; still, people stocked up. Yes, down the road, they will pay for poor choices with medical pills, prescription costs, and even earlier death. But the majority of people seem pretty impulsive and short-sighted. Additionally, at least two generations of cultural tradition may be hard to disrupt with a collection of academic research. After all, what is the Fourth of July with out a hamburger off the grill, right?

3. In the film, author Michael Pollan says, "We've skewed our food system to the bad calories, and it's not an accident." What does he mean by this?
Corn is heavily subsidized. Corn products are in just about every processed food. Pollan discusses this more in-depth in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. During the Great Depression, a system was established whereby the government would offer loans for farmers who kept their commodity crops off the market when prices were low. Since people always have to eat, fluctuating prices do not affect demand as in other industries. Supply is also different; unpredictable weather events affect crop yields from year to year. For these reasons, he argues that the free market system will never work in agriculture. However, during the Nixon administration, new regulations allowed the government to purchase commodity crops outright and pay farmers the difference between the market price and a "target price." This system only encourages farmers to grow more corn, and sell it at any price, flooding the market and driving down prices. It's no wonder that foods of marginal nutritional value have been developed to utilize as many corn ingredients as possible.