In the list of system conditions that we learned and I’ve shared with you, system condition number four has always struck me as being the worst. System condition number four states that in a sustainable society people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. I’ve seen first hand how people across the globe are treated – from those in my own city who need food stamp assistance and can’t receive the help due to budget cuts to those all the way in Chengdu, Sichuan China, where I saw the biggest gap in disparity between the super rich and those who have absolutely nothing. It astounds me to know that my neighbor in China owned five luxury cars, while the lady down the street had no shelter and not enough money for even a steamed dumpling without asking for assistance from strangers.
My internship at Rise Up Farms is helping people meet their needs by providing access to healthy foods. In Indiana, 1 in 4 people are food insecure, meaning they don’t have access to healthy foods even though we are the world’s richest nation. Just think: one billion people in the world are overweight or obese, while another one billion people are literally starving. How can we fix this? Again, small change is what makes big change. For those who can’t afford to buy a half or full share, we offer work shares. If you agree to come in four hours every week, you get the equivalent of a half share. In addition to this, you also learn how to grow your food, something that is becoming a lost skill partly due to our reliance on pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides that literally grow for us. Crop rotation is nearly nonexistent in a sea of monoculture. Also, most of our food in this industrialized food system is not local by any means and undermines people’s ability to meet their needs by paying them a pittance and exposing them to such harmful chemicals.
Eco-apartheid, described by Van Jones in “Bridging the Green” as a “situation in which you have ecological haves and have-nots.” He gives the example of people in San Francisco Bay who can easily afford solar panels, organic food from Whole Foods, and hybrid-electric cars. On the other hand, you have people from the Southside of Chicago who don’t even know where to find a grocery store and shop in gas stations using their SNAP benefits, one of the biggest scams and most unhealthy way to eat (as described in “Absence of grocery stores plague South Side” from Chi Town Daily News, July, 2009).
I’m thankful that I can be a part of a community that realizes how broken our food system has become, and especially excited that I can be part of the solution and not the problem. Since studying sustainability and our food system, I’ve been lucky enough to share with two classes full of students at a Title I school who never knew they could use SNAP benefits at the Farmer’s Market and even the Purple Porch Co-Op.
I do this type of work all the time. It takes me one day to install the new
electric service which includes driving ground rods,
installing the service drop, installing the meter socket, running the
lines into the house to the service panel, installing the service panel.
The next day is spent attaching the gang boxes where all the outlets and switches will go, running the lines to the gang boxes
and labeling everything. Then I take a break until the drywall goes up
and when I come back it takes me one day to put in all the outlets, switches and light fixtures.
So that is three days for electrical work. But you have to figure in time for
inspections which can take an extra day sometimes if I don’t schedule them properly. For plumbing it depends on whether I use PEX or copper for the supply lines. (I never use CPVC.) On a house of this size, assuming two baths, one kitchen, water heater, one hose bibb, dishwasher and washing machine. I can do it in pex in two days for rough in and one day for final connections. In copper I would guess three days for rough in and one for final connections.