Dickinson College Food Studies Certificate Program

Author: Food and Energy in Israel Tour Group (Page 2 of 5)

Sunday, Jan 12

We started off this action-packed day with a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem. Our tour guide, Jeremy, was excellent at showcasing the city’s ancient history. We were able to learn about the city’s rich past, while also seeing some of the world’s most important religious sites. From the top of a yeshiva (Jewish school of learning), we were able to get a comprehensive view of the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa mosque. Furthermore, we were able to see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is known to be site that Jesus was crucified.

After our tour we headed to Tel Aviv. Our first activity in this modern and vibrant city was a food tour of the Carmel Shuk (market). This was a great opportunity to try some of the diverse foods Israel has to offer. I personally really enjoyed trying the local fish and fruit drinks.

After our quick nosh at the Carmel Shuk, we got a tour of Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. It is the second largest bus station in the world but it is mostly vacant. Today it serves as the commercial center for many of Israel’s ethnic minorities. However, most of the station is filled with street art and there is also a sizable bat colony living in the loading area. In the station’s basement one can find an abandoned movie theater that we got to explore. One of the other features within the station, was a small room that contained Israel’s largest Yiddish books collection.

Food & Energy in Israel Jan 8

We started our morning off with a lecture covering the history of Zionism. Our lesson began with biblical narratives and wound its way into modern history. In just a brief amount of time, our group was thoroughly saturated in a rather comprehensive review of the emergence and evolution of Zionism.

Following our morning lecture, we took a tour of the Arava Institute’s off-grid village, which serves as a hub for both student research and commercial technology exposition. We explored accessible innovation in solar technology, as well as forms of earth-based agriculture. All the while, we learned about the cross-cultural challenges of implanting new technology in various communities.

After lunch, we gathered our dirty clothes for communal laundry, a staple in kibbutz life! For those of us who lose our socks even in small, personal loads, this was a small leap of faith J

Some of us elected to hike Electricity Mountain, which overlooks Kibbutz Ketura and is named for its proximity to the electrical lines. Once we summitted, we were greeted by five inquisitive ibexes.

In the afternoon, we learned about the Arava Insititute’s Peacebuilding Leadership Seminar (PLS). We heard about the importance of the seminar in allowing enriching student life, as well as some of the approaches to and challenges of moderating the seminars.

Finally, we rounded out our evening discussing the Kibbutz’s governing structure, as well as some of the challenges of living in a tight community.

Food and Energy In Israel Trip Day 6

On Friday, our group departed from Kibbutz Ketura. After a debrief of our time at the Kibbutz, we headed out to Neot Smadar for a two hour tour of a vegetarian Kibbutz that raised goats, grew vegetables, and had its own winery. We finished the tour with an amazing wine tasting! Each wine was a dessert wine, and one had 22 different spices in it symbolizing the 22 letters in the modern hebrew alphabet. With that grand finale, we got back in the bus for another quick road trip.
Our next destination was Mitzpe Ramon. Here, we did a private bread baking class hosted by a Jewish baker where we baked all different types of bread. Each person in our class learned how to roll, fold, and season bread to create different flavors and designs. We had created dozens of rolls by the time our dough was gone: some with sesame seeds, some with zatar and oil, some with sweet potatoes and baba ganoush! All of the different types were baked while we sat down for a lovely meal. The whole group had trouble moving after such a filling meal of breads, sauces, salads, jams, vegetables, and more. It was a highlight of the trip that nobody will be able to forget.
We sat down once again on the bus to travel towards Jerusalem where we would be staying for the night. The time on the bus was used by most of us to recover from our food comas, but we had forgotten that we had another large meal ahead of us! It was the night of our massive Shabbat dinner. In the spirit of Shabbat, we walked 40 minutes to a woman’s house who was kind enough to host our group. By the time our long walk was done, most of us were ready for some more food. We entered the woman’s house, and she walked us through the religious background of Shabbat. We were lucky to have such a knowledgable host who could share some of her stories and experiences with us. Following the religious rules of the holiday, we said the prayer over the bread and the wine and then shared a delicious meal. It consited of the Challah, soup, different salads, grape leaves, hummus, and baba ganoush as the starting dishes. For the main meal, we had an amazing onion flavored rice, salmon, and a vegan quiche with sundried tomato, tofu, and mushroom. The meal was topped off with an apple cobbler and some Ben and Jerrys vanilla ice cream on the side!
After our long day, we headed back to the hostel for a peaceful night of sleep! We had much to look forward to in the days ahead of us.

Food and Energy in Israel

Today, we had a jammed packed day! First thing, we took a tour of the date and experimental orchards run by Kibbutz Ketura. Our guide, Nadav, took us by Ketura’s algae plant. This business is a large source of income for the Kibbutz. Next, we crossed the street over into their date orchard. This is another significant source of income for the Kibbutz. Their tallest date palms are 35 years old and are able to withstand the desert climate and the salinated water they’re watered with. Each palm produces 140 kilos of dates per season. Multiply that by Ketura’s 10,000 individual palms and that equals 800 tons of dates harvested during a 2 month season! We also toured through their experimental orchards where they’re testing growing manula, neem, argon and balsam. 

After a nice lunch in the dining hall at Kibbutz Ketura, we hopped on the regional bus to the Arava Research and Development Center. There, we were given a tour of the research and work that they’ve been doing. This included growing a variety of different fruit and vegetable fields, as well as more date orchards. Our next stop was for ice cream in Yotvata from Israel’s largest dairy farm. It was so delicious! 

The final part of the day was taking the regional bus 45 minutes further south to the coastal city of Eilat. We enjoyed a tasty Israeli dinner at a place called Open Heart. Lots of pitas filled with falafel, Schwarma and Kebab were eaten. It was a very busy, but really fun day! 

Food and Energy in Israel Day 2

1/7/2020

Today, we went to Kibbutz Lotan, which is across the street from Kibbutz Ketura. Kibbutz Lotan has a huge focus on mud building and zero waste living, so they have incorporated their trash into mud sculptures. Our day with Mike, one of the original founders of the kibbutz, started with a tour of Kibbutz Lotan. Lotan is known for their funky mud architecture and delicious tea house, which we were lucky enough to experience. The mud dome houses were designed in unique ways to reflect the residents of each house, and they are more energy efficient than the standard structures on the Kibbutz. Mike also showed us the solar cookers and explained to us how they work in an engaging lecture. After that, we had a mini lesson on biogas where the group saw Lotan’s biogas digesters. Lotan is an eco-conscious kibbutz with composting toilets and vermiculture (worm-based compost) in their “Eco Kef” area which is a great time for hands-on opportunities.

One of the hands-on experiences at Lotan was mud brick building. We learned the formula and methodology of mud brick making through discussion and actually building bricks! Personally, I made 3 bricks and had a lot of fun, which I was not expecting. The best experience of the day was the Lotan Tea House, where we ate lunch. The chef was so nice and very accommodating with my dietary restrictions, and she made AMAZING food. We had warm bean and lentil soup, a crisp pistachio apple salad, a chilled barley and tomato salad, a scrumptious sun dried tomato spread on whole wheat bread as an appetizer. This was followed by gooey mozzarella zucchini quiche and an amazingly fluffy coconut and chocolate chip cake.  Overall, the day was action-packed and another great day in the Negev desert.

Sarah Parson

Food & Energy Trip to Israel 2020 – Day 1

Greetings readers!  In the fall semester of 2019, Jenn Halpin and I co-taught a course called Food and Energy in the USA and Israel.   We had a great classroom full of students from many disciplines, as the course was cross listed in Food Studies, Environmental Studies, International Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.   Of the 24 students in the course, nine adventuresome travelers signed up for a culminating experience in Israel for the next two weeks.  From today until January 19th each member of our group will provide daily updates on this blog on a rotating basis.

The curriculum for the fall course was a broad-spectrum comparative look at food and energy issues in both countries, ranging from Kosher and Halal foods, sustainable farming practices and water resources to hands-on lab exercises in solar and bioenergy production.   Also included for context was a deep dive into historical, contemporary and personal aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Each student wrote a research paper on a topic of their choosing.  Students on the current trip to Israel are here to gain first-hand exposure to food and energy material in-country and are tasked with furthering their investigations into the Israeli side of their paper topics.  Our tour, spanning the country from south to north, will include numerous sites of interest and contact with a wide variety of sources, from academic experts in the field to hands-on practitioners of the food and energy trades.

Today is our first full day in Israel.  Our trip thus far has been smooth sailing.  All students who flew in as a group met on time at JFK airport, and our ten-hour flight was happily uneventful.  After we cleared customs, two students who arrived early to visit family members in Israel (Amelia and Josh) met us at the Tel Aviv airport and we found our Israeli bus driver for a quick exit of the busy city.  About an hour south of Tel Aviv, we stopped for our first Israeli falafels at a highway rest stop.  Thankfully Josh and Amelia could read the menu! (The gas station falafels were fine – a good start to my personal quest for the perfect falafel sandwich – a baseline above which we can only improve.)  Following lunch we all passed out from jet lag for a few hours of bus ride and woke up in the Negev desert of southern Israel.  We fell asleep in a semi-arid but green landscape (it has been raining a lot in recent weeks up north) and came to in the brown and tans hills of the Arava valley, dotted here and there with date palm groves.  To the east we can see the dry hills of Jordan and from the south we can almost smell the ocean air of the Red Sea coast at Eilat.

Our home for the next four nights is Kibbutz Ketura, a wonderfully productive oasis in the desert.  Ketura is home to the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES), a Dickinson partner program in Israel.  The AIES offers undergraduate and graduate coursework in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, water management, ecology, and peace building, all with a trans-boundary focus.  The student mix at the AIES is 1/3 Israeli, 1/3 Palestinian and Jordanian, and 1/3 internationals from a variety of countries including the US.  The core goal of AIES curriculum is building trust among historically opposing parties in the Middle East through dialogue and solutions-based approaches to regionally shared resource issues.  In addition to a long-standing connection with Dickinson (several students from the College have studied abroad at the AIES), the program’s constructive approach to sustainability and conflict resolution fits perfectly with the offerings and philosophy of the College Farm.

Today was all about orientation, including a tour of Ketura with an introduction to Kibbutz life, lectures by experts in renewable energy and intercultural land-use issues, and three meals in the communal dining hall (lots of fresh salad, no deserts, plenty of tahini, very healthy!).  We are grounding ourselves in the desert among welcoming, interesting people.  It is exciting to hear their stories, to hear and see Hebrew all around us, and to immerse ourselves in a culture that is both foreign and familiar.  We are well housed, well fed, and all of the students in the group have great attitudes!  Happily, despite the unfortunate escalation in US-Iranian conflict that came to a head just prior to our departure, everything is calm and quiet in Israel and our hosts have reassured us that we can rest easy here in the Arava valley.

Thanks for reading!  Please stay tuned for more interesting and exciting posts each day.

Cheers

Matt Steiman (Co-Instructor and College Farm Co-Manager)

 

 

 

Cider Yeasts: An Exploration of Micro-environmental Terroir at Three Springs Fruit Farm

This Friday, students from Dickinson College’s Biology Department presented their semester research during a public poster symposium. As a part of my independent study for the Food Studies Certificate as well as my independent research with biology professor Dr. Dana J. Wohlbach, I designed and executed an analysis of naturally occurring yeast strains in Three Spring Fruit Farm‘s hard cider. At the conclusion of my study, I will provide the orchard with yeast population information in an effort to inform their cider production. My aim is to contribute to  Ben Wenk’s, owner and operator of Three Springs, aspiration to turn Adams County, PA into a cider destination and to perpetuate appreciation for local food and the concept of terroir or the taste of place.

Below is the poster I presented at Friday’s event. Please feel free to contact me with any inquiries or comments, my contact information is available in Dickinson College’s student directory. Additionally, I encourage you to read through the amazing research other students are conducting on campus and at partner institutions.

A Response to James McWilliams: Bringing Animal Welfare to 21st Century Agriculture

On October 1st, Dickinson College hosted Professor James McWilliams from Texas State University. Professor McWilliams critiqued conventional and alternative forms of livestock farming and offered his own solutions to the problems of animal welfare in contemporary agriculture. Below is a response written by one of the students in attendance, Keriann Pfleger ’17. Keriann is a Biology Major and student farmer, we hope you enjoy her commentary below…

By Keriann Pfleger

The most recent Clarke Forum in this years “Food” series was, “Bringing Animal Welfare to 21st Century Agriculture”. This was a talk led by James McWilliams, a professor of history at Texas State University. Being a student farmer and also an animal lover I was particularly excited for this talk. I had hoped it would discuss how to offer some of the best care possible for livestock but I was surprised at how different it was.

McWilliams began by discussing that he was, in fact, not vegan but constantly thinking and processing the morals, the deeper philosophical questions, behind meat. He mentioned that no matter how much we care for livestock we are still raising them for slaughter and how we give these animals some moral consideration but then kill them. At this point I felt I could relate to these statements, I recently became vegetarian and, though environmental reasons were a big part of my choice, these were things I considered. He touched briefly on the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, passing it off as old news. Then he began his seven narratives of animal agriculture.

At this point, I realized there really would not be a discussion of animal welfare techniques or management but I was open to hear what he had to say. His narratives were: slaughter, grass fed beef, DIY slaughter, pastured chicken and eggs, free range pigs, welfare labels, and welfare organizations. For each one he discussed the good and the bad, what it did well for animal welfare and what it could potentially do wrong. I thought this was an interesting way to look at these issues. I’m all for learning new, credible, information and using that to help myself make better choices. However, most of McWilliams’s research in support of his arguments was vague and superficial.

Many of his arguments involved the words “could” and “potentially” which seemed like a way to put something that isn’t really accurate on paper. He pulled a lot of statements from websites where people discussed caring for chickens on their farms or in their backyards.  The quotes he used to demonstrate that raising your own chicken doesn’t mean you are killing it humanely were from people who were slaughtering birds for the first time. At first this was very thought provoking because it was paired with graphic quotes about botched butchering. But in the question and answer session, a student brought up to him that many of the quotes he pulled were from people slaughtering for the first time and he agreed it’s possible that people could do better with education.

McWilliams also made comments about chickens being subject to predation, a big issue in poultry production. Here he argued that chickens on farms without outdoor access would hypothetically be safer. I thought that was a strange statement to make. He then suggested that humans would not be able improve, learn from failed attempts to raise birds. For example, they would keep letting foxes predate their livestock and not think to make an adjustment to the pen or raisers would keep botching their chicken slaughters and fail to learn from their mistakes. I don’t agree with his argument, it puts very little faith in human’s intelligence.

As he wrapped up his talk, McWilliams spoke about the future of meat. He suggested turning to meat alternatives like, bugs, oyster farms, lab meat, roadkill. I was not satisfied with his conclusionI did enjoy hearing the various sides of narratives I often see as one sided, but the information shown to me seemed fitting for a Facebook argument, not a college lecture. I felt unsure of how to share the information I took away from the evening and even unsure if I should. I was happy I attended this event;it did get me thinking and made me more interested in doing my own research to better understand the consequences that what I eat has on animals and the environment alike.

Homecoming Weekend and Clarke Forum

Last week was a busy one here on campus! Over the Halloween weekend, parents and alumni visited the Dickinson College Farm as part of Homecoming and Parents’ Weekend events. The following Tuesday, Dickinson’s Clarke Forum welcomed Professor McWilliams as he lead a discussion about animal welfare in modern agriculture.

Homecoming Weekend (PC: Wesley Lickus)

James McWilliams’ Lecture

Alumna Wins Christine Wilson Award

By Cindy Baur

In my senior honors Anthropology thesis I critically analyze the local food movement in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and the surrounding area. My interest in the topic began during my sophomore year after taking a course called Nutritional Anthropology. My understanding of the local food movement developed further as I worked as a student farm worker at the Dickinson Farm during my sophomore year and continued while I participated in a food studies program in Perugia, Italy during my junior year.

I use my own ethnographic work, such as interviews with farmers, observations of Farmers on the Square board meetings, and participant observation at the farmers’ market, to understand the motivations of participating producers and consumers in Central Pennsylvania. I argue that the local food movement is a response to a global, industrialized neoliberal food system. Consumers seek out a more personal alternative to anonymous industrially produced food by responding to a call to “vote” with their dollars. However, they are unsuccessful because they are acting within their individual capitalist identities. In addition, not all consumers have an equal opportunity to “vote” and the rhetoric often ignores certain components of food production, such as labor, adding to the elitism of the movement.

After graduation I submitted a shortened version of my thesis to be considered for the Christine Wilson Award, offered by the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. My thesis won the undergraduate prize for outstanding undergraduate research on nutrition, food studies and anthropology. In November I will attend the American Anthropological Association annual conference in Minneapolis, MN to accept the award in person.

Below is the introduction to Cindy’s thesis paper. If you would like to read more or discuss Cindy’s research, please contact baurc@dickinson.edu:

Every Wednesday all summer long the cement square in front of the First Presbyterian Church, located at the center of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, transforms into a bustling marketplace called Farmers on the Square (FOTS). The square becomes full of tents, shoppers, children, and dogs. Each unique tent houses colorful vegetables, fruits, flowers, and coolers full of chilled chicken, sausages, and other meat. The air smells of roasting garlic and burning wood, thanks to the Dickinson Farm’s pizza oven. Children run around on the lawn in front of the church, while their parents, who are often treated much more like friends, ask questions about the recent bout of rain they know flooded their farmers’ fields. Families return home, overstuffed market totes in hand, anxiously awaiting the bounty of the next week’s market. As a loyal supporter of FOTS, I delved into the market trying to understand first-hand how the local food movement plays out in a familiar context.

In this paper I will engage with existing literature about the local food movement in order to analyze how this alternative food movement functions within the context of Central Pennsylvania. First, I will describe the history of FOTS and other farmers’ markets that have existed in the area to provide historical context to the local food movement. Then, I will discuss the agrarian ideals we hold in the US and how those ideals influence Central Pennsylvania. I then interrogate the many interpretations of “local” including anthropologists’ use of terroir within the local food movement. In a similar vein, I apply the concept of terroir to this specific geographic region. Next, I describe the global, industrial food system, the local food movement, and neoliberalism. I argue that the local food movement is a response to a neoliberal economic system in which consumers demand an alternative market that is socially embedded, environmentally sound, and socially just. However, I believe that the local food movement is not

successful at meeting these goals because it simultaneously recreates and works within the neoliberal structures to which it is reacting. Like neoliberal policies, alternative food movements rely on individual actors to create change through their capitalist identities, such as “voting” with their dollars. However, this exacerbates inequalities and perpetuates and aura of exclusivity since not all consumers have equal opportunities to “vote.” Finally, I conclude that while the local food movement may not be successful at provoking change on its own, it is still an important and valuable tool for making change.

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