Amanda Cospito

Our project was about local and industrial farms and if local farms can one day produce the majority of food to the people instead of these big industries. I worked with Emily, Tricia, and Alison and they were wonderful to work with. My group members taught me how to use new genres and technology when conducting our project. Along with the new knowledge I learned from them, they were nice and respective. 
I really got to learn how to work with others collaboratively and to respect others writing styles. I was doubtful of my writing contributions but my members encouraged me in my writing. They helped me see that I can write well. This project was very insightful and educational along with fun working with these girls. 

I'm glad we were able to construct our piece together and I feel it turn out amazing. We all contributed our own styles to the project to convey the message we were trying to reach. I am very proud of my self and my group members for working so well and our final product. I hope everyone enjoys the final piece!!! Great job ladies!!! 

From speaking to the group early today, each of us aregoing to find two sources that involve our topic area which is: Eventually will local farm markets be able to provide the vast amount of food instead of these big industries? I found one source which is a website full of information about local farmers.  http://www.new-terra-natural-food.com/organic-food-delivery.html. This website explains how they run thiings on a farm, what CSA is and what they provide, how to run a farm and the cost that goes into it and also speaks about the industrialzed aspect and why organic food is good. The website also gave insight on other productive ways to produce quality food to the consumers during the produce off season.

    After going through the blog, Slow Food, I found many interesting articles to read but the one I am blogging about is, Denver Crop Mobs: Gathering Forces to Help Sustainable Farms. This blog was about hope this organization "crop mob" was created to help local farms of their everyday task and what it takes to have a farm. I thought this blog was great because it showed how other people in the community got involved to help local farms. I chose this blog because our group is focusing on local farms and want to gather as much information as possible to for our project, This article open a new insight to me that there are organizations out there to help local farms out with people especially chidlren to get involved in their local farms and be aware of the food they eat. 
    I honestly never was so excited to do a project unitl being assigned to do this one. I am really interested in the local farming and the food we eat. I think it's great that there are organizations out there willing to help these small farms and not the big corporations who are controlling what the people put into their mouths. It allows people to become aware of the produce being produced, the labor it takes to take care of these farms, and the nutritional and beneficial aspects of using local produce.

 http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/denver_crop
_mobs_gathering_forces_to_help_sustainable_farms1/

If you want to find out more about crop mob and the local organizations around you. Visit this website: http://cropmob.org/

Today's blog is about the excerpts on Collborative Writing in Composition Studies by Fontaine and Hunter. The first chapter talked about the concept of intertextuality, knowledge and language of collaboration, and learning how to become part of a conversation. The article concentrates a lot on the knowledge of the language and what we hear helpes us create new ideas. It looked at how to enter in a conversation that has already begun, how we make choices of what we say in conversations. and how this all plays a role in collabration. I know throug my expereince in my education we do a lot of activities that requires group work and collaboration with one another. We are taught to become a learning community and that we all help each other and learn from one another. I always felt that even though I am very independent when working with others I gain a new insight on things and a new knowledge of things I didnt know much of.
The third chapter of this excerpt focused on moving into a collaborative writing from being solo more on focusing on the cooperation on others when working together. This also plays a huge role in my education because I am very independent and like to do things independtly because of depending on others. Its hard to let go of the leadership when working with others because I want to achieve the highest but letting others take part of that control scares me because of grading. I do see the benefit of working with others because you can gain an insight on other skills, experience, and knowledge that is different from my own for my writing. I think its very important when collaborating is that everyone is together on things because some may think their collaborating when their writing their own pieces and just putting them together as a group.
This excerpt was very important to read due to collaborating with other students to conduct our project for writing, research, and technology. I do feel with our group that we work well and feed of of each person's knowledge and opinions. I don't know how our group will work out when collaborating together for this project so far it seems that we will fine but for me I am always hestiant because you need to depend on others when working together and having grades be part of this its very difficult for myself to let go. Will only have to wait and see how our assignment works out and see how we can work together to make this happen the most successfully.

FOOD INC 11-21-11

How can a farmers fight for themselves and for the people against corporate?

Monsanto declined to do an interview.

Clarence Thomas- Monsanto attorney

Prevent farmers to save their own seeds.

This is why we haven’t had a political debate over this food change.

Government has been dominated by industries.

Power against workers, famers, and consumers who are being kept in dark about the food they are eating.

Food needs to be labeled. – FDA wants no labeling on meat. Concern with labeling- creates unnecessary concern of the consumer. 

70 percent has some generic modified ingredient.

Labeling- not only want them not to know or against the law to criticize products.

People can say how they feel, they could be sued. Food industries have didn’t protections than other industries do.

Colorado- a felony can go to prison- veggie law.

Cheeseburger bill- hard to sue them

Socks to the system

Food prices go higher

Oil price go higher

World is ruining out of food, we have no reserves.

People are becoming sick

Walmart- made a decision to not include RBRT

To eat well cost more instead of eating badly- WE need changes of the policy!

People need to start demanding good quality food!!!!

1500 miles average meal travels from farms to the supermarket

More and more I watch this documentary, it shocks me to see what the consumers have to go through and what farmers are dealing with when up against the corporates. Our voice needs to be heard when it comes to food we are eating. This documentary was very informative to myself and will be a part of what I chose to buy in the markets and what do consider when eating food. Health risks are a major concern for me and I need to research how to find cheaper healthy food than considering processed food that could be harmful to our bodies!

Information: All this information I gathered while viewing the

47,000 products in a average supermarket

No seasons in supermarkets

Meat- no bones

No farm- more factories

Animals and Workers abused

Not just health at risk.

3-4 companies run meat production

Redesign chickens and farmers

Antibiotics in food for chickens to grow faster

Corporate control famers which famers aren’t making much money

Corn conquered world

Engineering food now 

Make high fructose corn syrup, semolina, and so many more and can feed to animals

Teaching fish how to eat corn as well

Cheap corn allows us to derive price of meat.

ACFP- concentrated animal feeding operation

Corn is really cheap and makes animals fat quickly.

E coli feed corn to cows and E coli bug evolves and a certain mutation occurs and appears. 

Our industrialization created a food that can hurt us. 

Make meat more accessible- industrializing the food helps bring cost down and fast production

·         Untended  consequences:  

E coli- spinach, apple juice, runoff from factory farms 

Leafy greens 

Agencies controlled by companies they should be discouraging

Food poisoning

Processing plants have become bigger and bigger- helps spread far and wide

Only 13 slaughter houses in the United States. More companies and corporate

USDA- didn’t have authority to shut down pants 

Reduces money to FDA

Lost control of system

Food safety

Son (Kevin)- died within twelve days due to e coli 

Eating three hamburgers before getting sick- saw blood through bowel movement, has e coli.

Kidneys began to fail, not allow drinking water, sponges allowed to dip and give him that, begged for water. 

Never recall meat until 16 days after son died 

Kevin’s Law- USDA gave back power to USDA to shut down plants that contain contaminated meat. 

Industry was more protective than her son. - motivated to become advocate. 

When it has a systematic problem to come up with high tech fixes to allow cattle to survive instead of seeing whats wrong. 

Meat cleansed with ammonia to get rid of e coli. 

Why is the food that isn’t good for use cheaper than the healthy food? 

Because those foods were heavily subsidized. 

 Engineering food- pushing evolution buttons 

 Sugar, salt 

1-3 Americans after 2000 were affected with diabetes 

Nobody is thinking of the consequences of the food. 

Largest slaughter house in the united states-  Tarheel, NC , Smithfield 

32,00 hogs are killed per day

Smithfield knows people can’t afford the right meat and they hold that over the people. 

Meat packer is like automobile packer- meat packers got bigger because of the needs of fast food companies – biggest meat production, cutting wages- but still do same task.

One of the most dangerous jobs of today.

Mexico market- cheap American corn

Natural product expo

Soy milk, organic food

 Environmentalist- business-  Gary- stoneyfield 

New Alchomy:  Preaching a new religion, development food alternatives, depending on sources to support that were dried up.        Started- 7 cow farm. Had to prove to be highly profitable0 number 3 yogurt brand and most profitable. Lilac ridge farm- a provider to Stonyfield

 Wal-Mart-  contains organic

Farm changes- who knows a famer?- their way of life has been revolutionized

From seed to supermarket

Monsanto Corporation- like Microsoft-   Round up,    9- percent of soybeans contain Monsanto’s patented gene.   Moe – seed cleaner

Seeds can be saved and cleaned to be planted again the following year. (There are no public seeds anymore)
     

Food Inc is a documentary that investigates what is involved in our food and how corporate plays a huge role in the food we eat. The movie examine how corporates are the ones who are really in charge of the farmers and farming that is going on due to the vast people in the United States. The documentary involves stories from many different people involved or affected by the food produced in the world. The documentary showed the audience what was going on inside slaughter houses, farms, and the homes of these animals in the horrible conditions that they live in. These animals are living in poor condiitons which later effect some of the food we eat and ends up causes a recall on the product. This documentary really showed me how the coroporate care about the fastest and cheapest way to feed the people rather than the quality of the food they produce. We are eating food that is being enginneered rather than eating food that is natural and how it should be on a food chain. Does the food chain in include the food stopping for treatment to be enhanced, medication, or engineered? This documentary really opened my eyes in what we put in our bodies and how we should be aware of what we eat if it can harm ourselves and harm the animals that are going through this.

Some possible research questions:
1.) Is there a cheaper way to provde healthier organic food?
2.) How are other countries controlling their farming and products being produced?
3.) Why are the food industries/coroporate making a huge amount of money while the famers are making not as nearly as much?
4.) Are there any benfits of engineering food besides providing food faster?
5.) What are the benefits of becoming vegetarium?
6.) Is fish getting enhanced as well? What are they doing to other products?
7.) How much meat should the average American eat in a year?
8.) Hw can you tell if the food that is labeled oragnic really organic and not the regular food?
9.) How many people have been affected by some kind of health issue from the food they eat?
10.) How many animals do we harm and kill from putting them in that environment and become sick or infected by disease?

Before reading this article, I was thinking about what Prof. Mangini mentioned in class which was the terms reflective and reflexive. When looking at these terms I believed that reflection meant to reflect on something, take i nconsider, or to ponder about. When thinking of the word, reflexive, to be flexible and to be able to adapt to change. However, after reading this article, However relexive means to be able to examine, dicover, and critigue one's work with another piece of work.
 
I feel through my writing arts program and my education program i have incoroprated reflexive inquiry through creating lesson plans for classes and the importance to teach the students "how". Through our writing we watn to reflect, evaluate dicover, and edit along with writing a lesson plan. On this article i am not quite sure if I completly understood the contetn or it went over my head.

In class we began to watch the documentary of Food Inc. I have seen it prior to this class and thought it was cruel, wrong, upsetting, and shocking. First thing is i'm not a big meat eater, so at least I felt a little better but this documentary really cautioned me in what I put into my mouth everday. It's true like the movie, we don't know what is actually going on with the food we eat, the process, or what is in the food. I hear from people who have seen this movie complaining about the people in the movie and what they are doing to the animals but at the same time their the consumers of the project. So pretty much the consumers load the gun but don't actually shoot the gun. It really upsetted me when I saw the workers throwing and stepping on to the chickens and the living conditions of those chickens and hear people are eating them after those chickens have been in an unsafe and unhealthy atmosphere.
Another shocker of mine of the movie is that famers actually don't make that much money for what the corporates are making them do. They acually are only making 18,000 dollars but the unkept and debt lead into 500,000 dollars.  I didn't relaize how much the upkeep is, and the debt these famers are in. Corporate has such a huge control oer these farmers. It seems to be that the corporates just care about the quanity and not the  quality of the food they produce. They don't care about the cruely, abuse, or harm they cause as long as the money is rolling in. Then you think of eating organic food but it cost much more and when people are struggling financially they are going to buy the cheaper so they can put food on the table. Many people also are in rush and complain they don't have time to cook and its more convient to pull up to Mcdonalds drive through and say " number 4 medium with a coke please. "
I don't know its amazing to see what we really don't know about the food we eat and i guess that's why my family has farms, and we grow our own vegetables and fruits. We are able to get fresh eggs right from the chicken and go fishing for fresh fish. i love to cook and especially cook meat for others who eat it but its scary to find out what is in our foods and all of the different diseases or problems it can cause because of the production now of food. Yes, my family eats meat and does eat meat from the super market but after viewing this movie now twice I know i want to raise my own children one day to eat organically and to grow their own vegetables, where we know what is in our food and what we are putting into our bodies. Not only do i not like the fact of what it can cause for humans but the cruelity of the animals. Animals shouldnt be injected with antibiotics to grow so fast, that's not part of the living cycle. I'm sorry but this movie is upsetting, cruel, and bothers me. Well this is my input as of now with this movie and its only the beginning. 

We had to read this short piece on what is oral history, and what I got out of the article is that oral history are interviews  that are either formal or informal and can be recorded on tape. I first believed that oral history was stories from other people from their oral languageknow with my family, my mom and grandparents will tell me stories about their lives and their parents lives and so on and its all through the oral language nothing is written done its just based off of their oral stories. I feel that informal oral history is when its not planned out or for a particular scenario rather htan a formal oral hisotry which is regardign a specific topic or a important topic  that has significance importance to humakind. After reading the article, I came to a better understanding of what oral history exactley is.  The article mentioned a lot about interviewing and interviews which plays a role in oral history but I think what people take in consideration is the reliability of have the conversation taped. The article mentions, " Unquestionably, most people throughout history have learned about the past through the spoken word", which I defiantly agree with. I feel we read this because of our upcoming assignment and the interviews we will be doing for the assignment.