Food Supply and Distribution. How it Shapes a City.

[stephendare]

http://www.youtube.com/v/CLWRclarri0

Fascinating.   I wonder what a similar history of Jacksonville would look like?

[kellypope]

Hard to imagine it without Mandarin. I'd like to see a map of the Mandarin area where roads are perhaps less important than the farms, where the key is solely identifying what is growing, where, and how much of it. Your question makes me want to research this, in depth, for a good deal of time.

The first bit about how much land is used (read: wasted) to feed livestock is the only reason why I chose to be vegetarian. Animal rights has nothing to do with my choice, though I still don't approve of sport hunting or cruelty (including the cruelty of industrial livestock farms). At home, my family is slowly converting our property to suburban agriculture, growing kale and beans and tangerines, blueberries, limes, herbs, lettuce, and of course lots of flowers for the bees which have taken residence in a column by our front door.

I think the world is slowly starting to realize this imperative. I would be in a class called "Food, Politics, and Pleasure" were it not for the fact that enough people did not join the roster. SAIC and Chicago at large are becoming aware of this, with people like Nance Klehm (www.spontaneousvegetation.net), Ken Dunn (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/sep/23/science/chi-greenest-person-0923_qsep23), the ladies running the Jane Addams Hull House (SAIC alumna, http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/). There is a museum somewhere southward called the Smart Museum which will have an exhibition on food and the visual arts in 2011 I believe. Last one listed here: http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/upcoming.shtml

Jacksonville is slowly getting there. Slowly.