Week Eight with Extension by Daniel Gustitis

 

We traveled to No Boundaries’ fresh market this week. They help serve one of several food deserts in Baltimore City with fresh (partly local) produce. Next to the market they also have a kitchen where they prepare meals and snacks, like fruit bowls and salads, with the help of employees and volunteers. 

This week we talked more about feeding a growing population, along with building a sustainable ecosystem for future generations.One aspect I thought was really interesting is the “yield gap”. The potential for production we leave behind because of poor practices, or a lack of resources (such as fertilizers and technologies) is a problem we need to solve when looking at how to feed close to 10 billion people. We have seen a lot of potential solutions, and while I do not see any of them as being the only solution, I see a culmination of them being the best way forward towards a solution that has the broadcast potential for universal application. If our solutions are able to apply the right techniques and technologies into unique situations, we can certainly close that yield gap, and bring our potential for a sustainable future closer to a reality

Another aspect of this problem we have talked about is food waste. From production to our homes, we generate a lot of food waste that has a huge impact on GHG emissions. Companies throw out food that doesn’t look good enough, and stores will throw away leftover food instead of looking to donate it. At home, we throw away tons of food that will go to a landfill, where those nutrients will never be reintroduced to our soils. This is one way I do my best to contribute to better practices. I compost as much of my food waste as possible, using it to recharge my garden soil. We talked about how in urban areas this may not be as practical with the possibility of rodents being attracted to your compost. As a way of combating that problem and adjusting solutions for different situations, we talked about more city managed resources for composting to help members of the community do their part in combating food waste.

After talking about the uniqueness of situations and how to apply solutions, we were enlightened by Dr. Moyle’s presentation on the ways people produce around the world. We talked about how the simplest things can be so much different when your resources and environment change. We saw the use of anaerobic digesters as an energy source where electricity was scarce or unreliable. We also saw how different something like a chicken enclosement may look in less developed areas, and how they are able to create these things with less than abundant resources.

These concepts and ideas can be applied to my experiences this week. Thursday, we went on a farm tour, looking at farms and potential community areas to not only help combat the problems we face, but to help build community and educate people on what we have and what we can have while shifting towards healthy, sustainable practices. There are many challenges in our communities, but we got to see a lot of good things happening. We saw No Boundaries supporting local urban agriculture and bringing that produce to the public in food deserts. We also got to work with Youth Works in building knowledge in students, and were able to see how they were working with local agriculture.