The Checkout: Grocery Nerds

Episode #13 Notes

1:00 - How did you come to study your unique mix of Geography and Healing Arts? Specifically around food an equity?

4:00- What does ‘embodied healing’ mean to you? How is your work specifically addressing traumas in the food system?

9:10 - How do corner stores figure into your research?

12:45 - How does racial surveillance in corner stores impact the health and well being of clack people, especially black youth?

15:45 - Emotional Slow Violence - can you define this for us?

18:00 - What are some of the shortcomings of focussing on healthy food availability without looking at this issue in a more multi-faceted manner?

22:30 - How do retail grocery locations play into gentrification?

26:45 - How are grocery stores not the solution to food insecurity and food apartheid?

32:30 - What can white folks with resources, influence, and power can do to address some of the issues we’ve discussed so far?

40:00 - Gardens. How are home gardens appealing and community-building in the black community?

43:15 - The role of holistic healing arts in gardening and food.

46:15 - Where does food sovereignty come into play?

50:00 - How do critical pedagogues play into food system work?

54:45 - What are some of the most influential books on you and your work?

Freedom Farmers, Dr. Monica White

Black Rice, Judith Carney

Weighing In, Julie Guthman

Afro-Vegan, Bryant Terry

Papers by Naya Jones

{Intervention} Corner Stores, Surveillance, and All Black Afterlives

{Article} Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience

{Virtual Exhibit} Dying to Eat? GIF Exhibit

{Article} A Review of Latino/Latinx Participants in Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research - With E. Cotter

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Episode #12 Notes

1:00 - How did you get into farming?

5:00 - How did you acquire land?

10:00 - How did you get involved with food access, nonprofits, and municipal boards?

14:30 - How do you describe the food system in and around Austin, TX?

19:00 - There is an emergence of non-white, non-hetero-normative farmers getting into farming. How do you see this changing the food system? Why do you think this is happening now?

24:00 - What’s fun and easy to grow in Central Texas? How do you decide what to grow?

35:00 - What’s on your bookshelf right now?

44:00 - How does agricultural subsidies affect food pricing and, in effect, food sovereignty?

45:00 - Lorig’s book on agriculture.

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Episode #10 Notes

1:00 - What is Bierwax?

6:30 - Vinyl bars in Tokyo: how do they operate?

9:30 - On spinning records whilst serving drinks.

12:15 - How did you get into craft brews with your background as an educator?

16:30 - How did you finance starting up your bar?

19:15 - What’s it like being a person of color in the bar and craft brew world?

20:45 - Is there a group or association supporting non-white folks in the craft brew space?

28:30 - What are your employment policies, especially during COVID?

35:40 - How has Bierwax been recieved by the beer and the hip hop community?

44:20 - What’s next for Bierwax?

46:45 - Who is your favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan?

50:40 - If you were stranded on an island, what keg would you have with you?

56:45 - What’s on your bookshelf?

Star Wars, Alphabet Squadron - Alexander Freed

Star Wars, Darth Plagueis

Black Reconstruction in America 1860 - 1880, W.E.B Du Bois

The Monster at our Door, Mike Davis

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Episode #9 Notes

0:45 - Tell us about food procurement.

4:15 - How did your experience at United Farm Workers help formulate and start your work in the Good Food Purchasing Program?

10:30 - What role did unions and community organizations play in starting the Good Food Purchasing Program?

20:30 - Could you describe the main pillars of purchasing standards under the Good Food Purchasing Program?

25:15 - How is procurement typically handled by large, public institutions? What is the norm here?

28:00 - What are examples of institutions that have embraced Good Food Purchasing practices, and what have the impacts been?

32:30 - How about school foods? What impact has the Good Food Purchasing Program had here?

35:00 - Have you received pushback from institutions food procurement policies with regards to increased prices and standards?

38:30 - How do you measure the impacts of the Good Food Purchasing Program?

44:30 - How does community activism and civic engagement play into GFPP activity on the ground?

49:00 - How has COVID-19 impacted the work of GFPP and of the institutions who participate?

55:00 - What GFPP implementation can look like a statewide or regional scale.

59:00 - How do you see GFPP standard evolving?

1:01 - Errol on Whole Foods and procurement. And was there any feedback from the private sector on GFPP standards?

1:08 - What’s on your bookshelf?

On Fire, Naomi Klein

Captain Underpants, Dav Pilkey

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel

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Episode #8 Notes

1:00 - How did you get interested in farming and what do you grow?

4:15 - What got you interested in politics?

7:00 - What makes Vermont politics unique, and what’s applicable to other states?

9:30 - Jobs. How do your policy ideas will ensure good paying jobs and living standards for Vermonters?

15:30 - Ag policy. What’s your policy on environmental sustainability and how has climate change impacted food production in your state?

21:45 - GMO’s. You’ve done a lot of work on GMO labelling. How does this fit into your policy platform, considering your state has such a large agricultural sector?

29:45 - Vermont is a largely white state. What would you do to protect migrant farm workers or domestic workers. How do you work to reduce racial bias and eliminate hate crimes?

34:45 - Healthcare. What’s the most sensible and cost effective healthcare policy and how would it be paid for?

37:30 - What does a resilient food system mean to you? And how are you working towards that?

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Episode #7 Notes

1:00 - How did you get interested in food and agriculture?

5:45 - Say what? Tom and Errol both organized to save NYC community gardens back in the day.

7:00 - Tom, you’ve actually managed a farm - tell us about that?

12:00 - How did you end up working at Mother Jones?

16:30 - What inspired you to start writing Perilous Bounty?

19:30 - Climate change. What is the severity of the risk to agricultural communities in California and the West Coast, specifically?

26:15 - The agricultural workers and communities in the Central Valley - how are they fighting to save their communities in the face of climate change?

30:30 - How much fruit, veg, and dairy as a percent of national supply is produced in California’s Central Valley?

32:30 - Midwest agriculture - what’s being produced in these world class soils, where does that product go, and how does this tie to soil loss and pesticide/fertilizer use?

38:00 - Overproduction of food, and how this is related to lower farm income and greater concentration of agribusiness. Tell us about that.

41:15 - Monsanto or The Resnick Empire: Who’s more evil? And, how has each company impacted ag policy to their betterment?

47:30 - Contrasting these companies, why hasn’t sustainable, regenerative farming taken-off?

51:30 - What do we need to fix in our food system to avoid collapse? What practices and policies should be implemented?

56:15 - What’s on your bookshelf?

Late Victorian Holocaust, Mike Davis

The Death of Ramon Gonzalez, Angus Wright

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

Food Politics, Marion Nestle

Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel

The Value of Nothing, Raj Patel

The Price of Peace, Zachary Carter

Perilous Bounty, Tom Philpott

The Monster at Our Door, Mike Davis

Ecology of Fear: Las Angelas and the Imagination of Disaster, Mike Davis

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Episode #6 Notes

1:00 - How did you get into farming?

4:00 - How has being a veteran influenced you as a farmer?

8:30 - What role did Farmshare Austin play in your development as a farmer?

10:30 - On Battle Ground to Breaking Ground program.

12:15 - What went well with your training through Farmshare Austin and what could be improved?

15:00 - As a Black woman who has deep roots in East Austin, what is the relationship between your family history and the land?

20:00 - How has the Black community in East Austin been treated when it comes to land ownership and food production opportunities?

22:15 - On gentrification in East Austin.

24:00 - What happened to the freedman’s communities and historic Black communities in Austin?

28:00 - The history of McKinney and Mueller in Austin.

29:00 - George Washington Carver - why is he one of the most influential agrarians ever?

34:30 - Black people have pioneered many of the sustainable practices we see today - why has this generally been overlooked by the local and Organic food movement?

37:30 - Why aren’t there more Black farmers here now in Central Texas?

44:00 - How does food apartheid influence your work for what you do?

47:30 - What can be done to help support Black farmers? What’s needed?

49:30 - What’d your favorite food to grow?

53:30 - What motivates you to continue doing this work?

56:45 - What’s on your bookshelf right now?

The Black Titan, Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner Hines

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

Our Kind of People, Lawrence Otis Graham

Mycorrhizal Planet, Michael Phillips

The Bible

Rebuilding the Foodshed, Philip Ackerman Leist

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Episode #4 Notes

0:30 - Why is the Foodchain Workers Alliance relevant today?

8:00 - Why haven’t unions traditionally focused on food service workers in the past? And how are the current worker-centered efforts really moving the needle in social movement organizing right now?

13:00 - Tell us about the HEAL Alliance.

19:30 - Let’s talk about the meat industry. Tell us about your campaign around this?

25:30 - Why is it important for BIPOC folks to take part in food system organizing?

27:45 - What is your vision for a fair and just food system?

29:00 - How do you balance out the fact that people were forced to work the land here vs. the fact that land was cleared out by violence and disease?

30:30 - What’s on your bookshelf?

Fight Back

Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins

Star Wars - Aftermath Trilogy, Life Debt, Chuck Wendig

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