Ellen Parry Tyler
My blogs
Blogs I follow
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Location | Boston, MA, United States |
| Introduction | I am currently a master’s candidate in the Agriculture, Food and Environment program at Tufts University, and am particularly interested in adaptation to sea-level rise and climate change. One thing I have learned is that I am not alone in this quest. Everywhere now attitudes are beginning to shift as environmental concerns force people to recognize that we must be stewards of the land, and recent spikes in food prices are raising questions about what it means to have an equitable democratic society. Now, for the first time in our nation’s history, consumers, farmers, processors and distributors, big and small, are sitting down together in food policy councils and other community organizations to address how best to rebuild our food system around a shared vision of equitable access to healthy food. My own work within this movement has inspired me to see the potential of community organizing. It has also showed me that some food-systems issues are beyond the scope of what any individual civic group can hope to change. |
| Interests | My experience growing up in a farm and fishing village in Maine, and steadily moving towards more urban environments, has given me a unique vantage to understand the experience of rural communities and the interactions between urban and rural environments. As a child in Maine I learned about my place in the world as a participant in the cycle of life and death that sustains a community. Middle America acquainted me with industrial food production and I saw the culmination of generations of negligent economic policies and commoditization of food disassemble rural infrastructure and change the occupations and livelihoods of whole communities. Suburbia exposed the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity. In childhood I witnessed the extraction of wealth from the countryside coupled with the discredit of farming as a livelihood and winced as I saw the stewards of formerly productive land fail to adequately provide for their children, my peers. We heard the message from Washington to future farmers loud and clear: “Get big or get out.” |