Happy Marion Nestle Appreciation Weekend! 16 February 2007 12:15 pm
Posted by Tracy in : Marion Nestle,WFFC,agriculture,books,fangirl,geekery,school,sustainability , trackbackToday there’s not a lot a lot going on in my brain besides excitement about the fact that I’m going to see talks by Marion Nestle at OSU tonight and tomorrow at the Small Farms Conference. I realize that this makes me a giant geek, but what else is new? As I just wrote the professor for my sustainable agriculture class (because of course I’ll be writing a field report on the conference):
The one-day conference is about how small farms can market their products directly to consumers, and (according to the brochure I downloaded anyway) is aimed at farmers, farmer’s market managers, food retailers, restaurant owners, community members and leaders, agriculture professionals, community food policy advocates, and students. I plan to attend the keynote address by Dr. Marion Nestle (“What to Eat: Personal Responsibility vs. Social Responsibility”) and followup discussion, as well as the sessions on “Organizing Community Support for Local Agriculture” (moderated by Lynne Fessenden of the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, where I also volunteer) and “Soil Fertility Management” by Dan Sullivan of the OSU Extension program. I’m curious as to how the latter will relate to our class discussion of soil management, and the other sessions, as well as the capnote (by a market researcher about consumer trends related to agricultural products), should if nothing else be a good way to get me thinking about the political economy issues we’re about to start discussing in the following weeks of class. My report will summarize and comment on each of these sessions as they relate to our class, but I look forward to being surprised by whatever else I’m inspired to write in response to this excursion.
See? I’m a colossal geek. Now I face such very important questions as: which of her books do I ask Dr. Nestle to sign? I own Food Politics and What to Eat, and both are excellent.
Dear readers, which book should I have signed? Food Politics is a history and analysis of U.S. government involvement in the regulation and promotion of different foods, ostensibly for reasons of public health and nutrition but of course there’s big business money involved, too. What to Eat (the more recent book) critiques the nutrition and politics of the contents of a typical supermarket, aisle by aisle. Tonight and Saturday’s talks obviously relate more directly to What to Eat, but Food Politics — born in large part out of Dr. Nestle’s professional experiences as editor of the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, and the bureaucratic nightmare surrounding the creation of the USDA Food Pyramid — is no less made of pure awesome. What’s really important is that both of these books, in addition to being full of important information, are amazingly fun to read. If Dr. Nestle is anywhere near as good a speaker as she is a writer, then I am going to have a most excellent weekend indeed. (Also, my gracious hostess Allison has promised to take me on a culinary tour of the City of Lights, and I suspect there may be tea involved.) Yay and yay!
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Liz
