Articles in Conversation

I chose two articles about different topics related to food with similar layouts that I believe reinforce one another. The first article I read was “How to feed the world without destroying the planet” by Stephen Leahy from National Geographic (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-to-feed-the-world-without-destroying-the-planet/). This article discussed the drastic changes farmers are needing to make in order to keep up with the booming population while also improving people’s diets and preserving the land we live on. It follows a bulleted/listed format like the second article I read, “I am a US cattle rancher. What do you want to know?” by Amelia Kent for The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/cattle-ranch-job-daily-life). The second article I read discussed the everyday life, struggles, and experiences of ranching while referencing the circumstances of the food industry.

Photo from tompkinscortland.edu

Both of these articles brought awareness to how much consumers affect the food industry and, not only, the wage of farmers and ranchers, but also the well being of the earth and the people that tend it. While the first article focused on the environmental side of farming, ranching, and the overall food industry, the second provides the perspective of a hardworking rancher. I believe these balance each other very well and provide a wholistic perspective of food production and consumption. I saw this most in the first article when Leahy quoted Danielle Nierenberg saying, “Many of these [ concrete messages and useful ideas] are things we can do now to move to sustainable food production and things that will create more jobs and economic growth.” and in the second article when Kent writes, “[Ranchers] don’t have an annual salary given that our farm income is entirely derived from the commodity market.”

Love Your Farmers

My PSA 🙂

Through my PSA I was trying to communicate how under-gratified farmers and ranchers are. People have become completely unaware of how their meals come to be. I want people to be more grateful and aware of food production and agriculture because I believe it is a pivotal part of society. A lot of articles I read, especially one from the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/02/why-farmers-only-get-7-8-cents-of-every-dollar-americans-spend-on-food/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4a5d82a0606c), helped me flesh out my ideas. They also helped me formulate new ones by presenting facts such as how much of our everyday products are byproducts of food produced by farmers and ranchers. I really liked creating this project as a video PSA. I researched a topic I am very interested in and, through this, I was able to use media I created and combine it with informational components to present a creative video. I am a perfectionist when it comes to projects like this, so it was hard for me to stop tweaking it. But, I had a lot of fun playing with different techniques and media. This project helped me explore video work and editing which I really enjoyed. I think I did a pretty good job at presenting a convincing argument because I used surprising statistics and combined them with impactful visuals. I also related my PSA back to my life through a personal connection with farming, which I believe strengthened my argument.