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The mission of the Land and Sea Slow Food is to support and advocate for clean, fair, healthy and sustainable agriculture. Besides, it supports the local farmers and the producers, through emphasizing on direct support to the emerging farmers as well as the farmworkers, with the understanding that local foods produced sustainably are; good for the health, suitable for a robust local economy and good for our mother earth. Land and Sea has for a long time created and sponsored many projects in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. Land and Sea started small, but now it has developed and grown bigger, being much effective while at the same time have continued to build a network of support at the grassroots level (Feldman, Kingfisher & Sundborg, 2011). Land and Sea has also helped in linking the people who are willing to support the farmers with farmers. Also, it connects the resources for farmers with farmers through the use of the Land and Sea web page as well as the one-on-one introductions. Through this, the Land and Sea movement have earned a lot of trust from the local producers, and this has been made possible by their presence in the field.
Land and Sea is always open and welcoming to new members. However, it does not insist on the members to participate. The primary focus is finding like-minded and passionate individuals who are ready and willing to share the Slow Food mission, working with them as well as building it in that direction. Mostly, the members make the decision to engage in the Slow Food mission, and the Land and Sea are happy to work with individuals who have better ideas, and the movement is dedicated to helping the members. The direct action by the movement helps in filling a need in the community, and this has been the major strength of Land and Sea. The quote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” by Margret Mead has always been a source of inspiration to the movement and has as well provided Land and Sea’s work affirmation.
Just like any other movement, policymaking is very significant for Land and Sea. However, there are hands-on-work at the ground level that has been able to effect actual positive change even before the policymakers has made any visible progress, and this helps in driving the changes in policymaking. However, Land and Sea movement do encourage and as well support sound policymaking through sharing of the movement’s mission and suggestions with the local and the national policymakers. The movement has been effective in San Juan Island with the actual work in the field and has developed virtual and physical links. Besides, it has vowed to keep track of the progress to evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts, with aims of improving the services in line with the movement’s mission and serving the community, in the response of working for good clean and fair food production (Schneider, 2008).
The Land and Sea movement strongly believe that the local economy is strengthened by the local, sustainable farmers and producers (Starr, 2010). The producers can provide rewarding jobs for young people, and this plays a crucial role in strengthening the families with more local opportunities for meaningful work, learning and income. Land and Sea chapter in the bid of supporting the international mission of the Slow Food movement for good, clean and fair food advocates for fairness in the treatment of the farmworkers as well as supporting reasonable labor prices, fair wages and clear support for the emerging farmers. In this assignment, these are the major research procedure that has been used to investigate Washington’s Land and Sea movement in San Juan Island in attempt to seeking information regarding good, clean and fair food.
The Land and Sea movement have various characteristics, activities and community relationships. An essential part of the activities conducted by the movement is working with young populations in the community. Also, the movement introduces young people to a variety of skills that are associated with growing and producing food, particularly on San Juan Island. All children in the community are welcomed to food production. The main characteristics of the movement are not limited, as its work is not limited to a particular task. The tasks include knowing the local children and their possible interests and potential. The movement also makes the introduction to farm skills and conducts producer visits; they also conduct intern placement and thus helps the student gain knowledge on slow food.
Other than the production of the local food, the Slow Food movement in San Juan Island also helps in cooking the skills of the local foods, enabling the local communities to rely on individually produced foods rather than on fast foods (Vitiello et al. 2015). Besides teaching the cooking skills, the Slow Food movement also works with the local bakers, chefs, cheese makers and fishermen, learning in regards to the hands-on food preparation. The movement also specializes in making demonstrations to the producers in relation to the best ways of improving food productivity through sustainable methods. Since the Land and Sea movement is based on an island, it specializes in fishing skills and the seafood preparation as they are the most common in the region. Most of the slow food movement in the various states of the United States is characterized by the type of food produced by the locals, and this leads to emphasizing on locally produced food commodities.
References
Feldman, M., Kingfisher, A., & Sundborg, C. (2011). Cultivating a Food Movement: Slow Food USA’s Role in Moving Society Towards Sustainability.
Schneider, S. (2008). Good, clean, fair: The rhetoric of the slow food movement. College English, 70(4), 384-402.
Starr, A. (2010). Local food: a social movement?. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 10(6), 479-490.
Vitiello, D., Grisso, J. A., Whiteside, K. L., & Fischman, R. (2015). From commodity surplus to food justice: food banks and local agriculture in the United States. Agriculture and Human Values, 32(3), 419-430.
