Put those Kids to Work! (Solutions to Hunger, part 1)

The Green New Deal is a policy proposal initially born in the United States, but it's one I believe should be adopted the world over.  It is an economic stimulus package that would guarantee a Green job to every citizen; finally tying the economy to ecological reality.  I will be blogging and tweeting about how this kind of a package could be used to restore our crumbling ecological and social fabric.

Today I'm blogging about how the New Green Deal could be used to fund the creation of community gardens; solving childhood hunger and creating green educational spaces in schools.  

Hunger is something I think a lot about.  I went through enough financially tough times in my twenties to feel the spectre of food scarcity haunt me.  (Don't worry Mom, I got enough to eat).  But still, there were times when I was consumed with anxiety, wondering how I was going to both pay rent and nourish myself.  It was not always such an easy question to answer.  And as one of my even more broke friends wisely  noted, there's only so much lentils and rice and spinach you can eat before you begin to feel hungry for something more. 

When I lived in countries like Haiti, I got to see the effects of hunger first hand.  The kids just weren't tall enough for their ages; their hair crumbly and bleached blond from a lack of nutrition, their little bellies sticking out beneath tight ribs.  When I got back to Canada, I couldn't handle the abundance of food.  Grocery stores with so much variety, available 24-7 seemed like an unthinkable luxury compared to the once a week market and small corner stores that sustained me in Haiti.  Morally and psychologically, I objected.   For this and the reasons of conserving areable land for the future generations (cows eat more grains than what energy we are able to harvest from them with current factory farming methods) I became a vegetarian for four years.  I did stop when I became intolerant to dairy and gluten (a story for another, more personal blog) and currently I switch my meals between vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore as I try to listen carefully to what my body needs nutritionally while also being sensitive to the carrying capacity of the earth.  Again, I realize that these issues are complex-- but I believe it is a moral imperative to wrestle with these complex questions of how to live responsibly on the earth in these troubled times of global climate change associated as it is with fishery collapse, water shortages, crop failures, and famine.  

One lesson that stands out to me from my undergraduate comes from the late great Jane Jacobs: there is more than enough food on the earth to feed us all.  Even today, this is true.  The problem is not one of supply, but one of distribution.  In other words, we as citizens must call our governments into account for not feeding the hungry.  I find it especially egregious that in first world countries where we are swimming in excess food to the point that we waste more food than we eat, people are still suffering from hunger.  

I present to you: but one of many models for solving food insecurity.  This is a national, not international, model.

I believe all publicly funded schools in Canada, from grade schools to universities, should involve their students in school gardens.  This can and should be implemented as a hands-on part of the curriculum to learn from and study nature.  It could even involve a variety of different classes; the technology class builds the full-spectrum LED lights, the environmental science class plants the seeds and monitors them, the cooking class harvests the food, prepares and distributes it.  At higher levels of education, the more complex questions are studied.  It would be a form of spiral learning, wherein the basic principals of sowing, harvest, preparation, become more and more complex and nuanced as the education levels become higher.  

There are also many opportunities for community involvement.  The schools could involve senior's organisations, volunteer clubs, religious organizations, to coordinate the care of the gardens during the summers.  This would require hiring a coordinator, most likely, but think what could be done!  Holidays like labour day and civic holiday could be spent at harvest festivals, wherein the whole community comes together to preserve the food, whether by drying, smoking, or canning.  

I grew up in a church community where once a year, we'd make a big fire, and each contribute our own ingredients to a soup.  When you know that kind of communal generousity and commitment to one another's well-being, you just can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to make a better way of caring for each other.