Blog 6 - Advisory Prep

These were plastic bulk bins I hand-washed two weeks ago while in the humid, hot backroom to the Arroyo Food Co-op...after rinsing them with eco-grade soap, I allowed them to air dry...

1. What has worked well for you concerning senior project this year?  What has made it a positive experience for you?   

- The thing that has most worked well for me during this senior project of mine has been my developing ability in making personal relationships with the people around me.  Doing so has not only enabled me to gather the information and first hand experience I need to isolate my definition of urban farming as my senior thesis, but has also instilled in me a habit of making friends with those of a profession of interest to me.  Making such connections in life will, as I predict, help me become situated in a career and become comfortable in what I has to offer me my pursuits in science and beyond.  I do hope the people I meet today will give me advice for my own future so that I may enter adulthood a sage and experience as a second party to another person’s trials and tribulations.  I love the idea of layering my successes atop the learnt life skills of others and having others - future younglings - layer their own moments of pride atop my future failures sure to come.  One example of how I have come to familiarize myself with this interspecies style of collaboration are my brief conversations with Nikki, Erin, and Kelly as I work in my mentorship at the Arroyo Food Co-op, and how they have made my working more enjoyable and less demanding than if I were an ignored shop-keeper hidden away while stocking shelves.  In being a part of the community surrounding the food revolution urban farming brings to the store, I have associated my mentorship as a positive experience.  I have come to appreciate being around people who are in the same position as me, bringing about a revived prominence for urban farming.  I have also come to appreciate how I am constantly around people who at any point in time can offer me advice for another direction in my senior project.

2. What are you finding difficult concerning senior project?  How can you adapt to make that portion work better for you?  How might the senior team help?

- The  most difficult challenge that has confronted me constantly throughout my senior project has been widening the scope of my exploration into urban farming to include how it can be physically analyzed and its relation to the earth.  To this end, I have been looking to intern at an urban farm and so learn the techniques necessary to farm effectively and thus make urban farming tethered as an idea to reality.  I desire so very much to see fruit and vegetables growing in trees and on vines, and to see how this grown bounty is brought into existence so that it may be placed on shelves like those I stack for consumption at the Arroyo Food Co-op.  To see the assembly line urban farming relies on is my goal, and I now only need to gather up the gumption involved in sending emails to unknown persons at novel workplaces rooted in the dirt.  Doing so I hope will lead me to another mentorship at either Savadoya Farm or Earthworks, which could actually provide me with my very own garden plot.  In this way, I will adapt by learning to be fearless with my ‘hunt’ for my questions in regards to how to define urban farming - a task necessary if I ever hope to think of an essential question!  The senior team will be essential if I intent to make sure that I am not being overly ambitious at any given point during my project’s trajectory, acting as a sort of reality check with a continued advisory prep sessions and hopefully individual conversations.  This team creed will act to settle another stimulus of my worries: my fear of not meeting certain criteria required for P grade consideration.

The bulk bins I adopted under my care were filled with bulk foods like those of beans and rice for a grand opening of a bulk food section at the Co-op this past Sunday...to announce the development of one such amenity and to increase revenue for the store's future endeavors (including that of a possible move to another location more so in the heart of Altadena

Blog 5 - Interview 1 Reflection

This photo mirroring the idea of self-reflecting in mentorship thus far is why I snapped its semi-portrait of the work I employ myself with around three times a week at the Arroyo Food Co-op...the apron I wear symbolizes my willingness to convey the message of the store to act as a liaison to local/quality ingredients provided by local urban farmers/kosher enterprises with similar ideals

Analyzing my interview with Joy Lam – manager and mentor at the ARROYO FOOD CO-OP…

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  Is there anything I would do differently for other interviews?

• Up until now, the most important thing I have learnt from partaking in a mentorship analyzing the sales aspect of urban farming and its lucrative tendencies was understanding how novel and convenient of an idea the trend indeed seemed to be.  My topic, unpacking organic and locally sourced goods onto shelves feeding both mouths and consumerism, seemed so relevant to the successes of the Arroyo Food Co-op that I right away assumed that it was inherently very economical, and only needed a farmer to tend its physical appearances in the ground.  After interviewing Joy Lam this past Tuesday though, I have learned an important lesson: that urban farming needs to be communicated in order to fully reach its potential in supporting livelihoods and a community.  In many urban cases, urban farming is seen as a mere ‘hippie’ movement towards “becoming one with the Earth as if humans are not already”.  The truth to the matter, is that humanity is as natural as any other organism on Earth, and, like other organisms, has a niche to compliment.  It is in this sense that farmers must convey to the general population the true definition of urban farming, and how it shall re-connect humans to this idealistic niche we have abused thus far with over-consumption of natural resources and speeding up the rate of organismal extinction.  In doing so, we as a society will come to reap environmental benefits through replacing barren yards with booming ecosystems and economical ones that will provide income and job profiles to individuals and communities.  This true sense of the term I have been researching is an abstract idea to many, and is many a time not related to how it can provide to real issues we face today, like food security and overpopulation of our world.  Through my first interview during my senior project, Joy revealed to me the effort that must go into relating people in the Pasadena/Altadena areas - where the store is located - with how urban farming and its liaison through the store best fits their interests.  She let me know the struggles she has had to face while running the store to this end, all of which were inflicted through a weakening supply of money.  As she said herself, the Co-op is burning its last reserve funds, stalling its growth and possible migration to another location for more publicity.  Even though the Co-op has plenty of members who pay an annual membership fee so they could shop for deals in its aisles, Joy cites how they do not treat the store as their neighborhood market that they can rely on for sustenance.  In retrospect, the public is not convinced that movements like the one for urban farming don’t have an expiration date.  They are likened to seasonal trends - sure to max out on novelty and not very realistic.  Joy uproots this notion by telling me the efforts of urban farmers and their vendors alike, and how realistic the experience urban farming provides truly is.  In fact, though she attended USC, she considers working at the Arroyo Food Co-op as her trade, with no pay needed.  I believe she is how each consumer should behave, trying to make an often un-sustainable business sustainable despite the unpredictable odds stacked against her.  My senior project spreading the word for these unsung revolutionaries only but helps the movement progress.
• In future interviews, I plan to ask more personal questions.  For example, I asked Joy how the financial state of her store was, but I didn’t ask what her source of strength was in upkeeping her hope for better times.  I also neglected to ask her about her sacrifice in choosing a career path that doesn’t match her career interest.  This change in direction will allow me to better tap into public opinion of urban farming, especially since this perspective changes from profession to profession.  I do like how I didn’t ask the questions given on the interview contract verbatim, but instead had a conversation incorporating all points I needed and wanted to address.    

2. Did I get additional resources and contacts?  What is the most useful?  Why?

• Joy started out the interview with asking me how I define ‘urban farming’.  I told her its vision is turning grayspace into green space, and how this transition from asphalt to tilled soil could benefit a community’s living and sustainability.  Joy then showed how she was disappointed with how people think so idealistically of urban farming as ‘garden-picking’, as she believes this perception hides the human element.  Indeed, urban farming needs to be established in order to be made a living from, as shown in how the store only accepts produce from homegrown farmers who have been licenced and regulated by the city.  The best way to find such vendors is through hunting them down at a farmer’s market, as she chuckles.  In this way, Joy told me to look at how the idea behind urban farming was born out of necessity in America, with the poor setting up community-based gardens from which to pick inexpensive produce during the Great Depression (especially during when the Dust Bowl hit the midwest and left he prices of fruits and vegetables inflated).  These humble origins of a  food revolution deemed ‘hipster’ are what must be remembered as we make the notion of self-sufficiency through locally sourced food more relevant to an everyday life habit for us all.  In this way, urban farming will gather the devotion, not only the interest, of a community and beyond.  Joy, in addition to this advice is seeing a necessary improvement to urban farming, also gave me a contact to an urban farmer in Altadena who owns his own backyard farm plot by the name of the Urban Homestead.  He is new to the business and so relates to my primitive exposure to the idea, except he is willing to devote a career to making it part of his personal life.  The next step that is most useful to me as I explore the implications of urban farming, as Joy hinted at, is to see firsthand the source of produce sold in the store.  Only then can I understand how my thesis affects a livelihood, the environment (and how this is a large selling point currently), and how its complexity behaves as the next step in the evolution of food production.  The step will be useful in retrieving a second mentorship as a farmhand on a actual urban farm to see the inspiration for this idea.
• Link to contact’s website (could be sueful as another interview): http://urbanhomestead.org
• Possible location of second mentor:

http://sarvodayafarms.com

3. What makes my interviewee qualified to help me?

• The interviewee is my primary mentor as of now and has been able to provide me with insight into how the idea of urban farming is in the process of being sold to the public.  By managing both the social media aspect and online catalog of the Arroyo Food Co-op store, she is frontrunner in the management of the store, supervising its daily purchases, political game, and business savviness.  By being honest in what she has experienced in regards to urban farming through the store, I have been able to use her wealth of information to define urban farming as something a bit less dreamlike and capable of being more institutional to society.  This hope for a more logical humanitarian duty for the movement in a community, in addition to its conservation bound premise, is tirelessly being made a possibility by backstage artists like Joy, who know the true interests of humanity in an idea lies in pocketbook interests and self-gain.  Joy’s struggles in helping to make this hope a reality, thus giving urban farming a lasting impression on the economy and harmony of civilization, made me realize the strain a transition to a different form of food security could have on livelihoods before any sort of potential is realized.  My next goal is to understand how urban farming has survived this long through its green roots backing and desirable idealisms.  Joy also opened my eyes to how a person with a set of interests in something so mainstream to many  - research at USC - can be convinced of an idea based on research behind its benefits.  Humans were programmed to care; first we must be shown why to care according to our human nature before urban farming can take root.

PROOFS (audio of interview):

Link to interview audio (including pauses for helping guests to the store)in its entirety:

(Soundcloud): https://soundcloud.com/robert-machuca-1/interview-one/s-JBYTg

This is a scanned copy of the interview verification form signed by my mentor Joy Lam to assure the viewer of the page that interview one of my senior project has been completed, with good reason!

Blog 4 - House Advisory Prep 1

This a shot I captured of myself in my usual garb at the Arroyo Food Co-op; where this apron, I am an ambassador of the public in charge of fulfilling their needs in regards to what urban farming is able to provide

Growing up, I have always been fascinated with learning about the inner workings of nature constantly at play around me, whether it has been through collecting pill bugs in seeing what food they like (and which led to quicker deaths) or looking aimlessly into the distance as oceanic waves washed ashore a pebbled beach.  Making these observations have most always been tethered by a reasoning, an explanation that sought to answer the ‘why’ in the things I saw and tried to apply to the personal growth of my personality.  Today, the same curiosity follows me into my senior project centered around raising the curtain of secrecy around urban farming - an abstract idea whose various methods and consequences (both positive and negative) are complex and thus very hard in being attributed to a fast-paced revolution.  Working at the Arroyo Food Co-op as an ambassador for locally produced products in urban landscapes and seeking out a farm at which to apply what little muscle strength I have in tilling soil, I have met this revolution first-hand, and have gotten the chance to question its mystery and capabilities more than once.  Being the scientist I grew up to embody, I shook a hand with an idea I had known nothing about because it related to something I like - ecology and conservation of environmental rhythms -, eventually becoming even more lost with its many faces and facets.  My interest in nature and my project’s complexity in being more than a grassroots, green-toting trend is why I am hoping to understand more about urban farming, so that I may know more about this solution to the rising issues of farmer empowerment, food sustainability, and preservation of ecosystems, the solution that tethers this new form of brain-candy for me.  Then, it was pillbugs, now it is applying my career interests in environmental analysis to a habit of exploring that has always eluded me.  Accomplishing a taste of that something I want to study later in life has better enabled me to succeed in that something, giving me qualities I need to survive it and a background story I need in order to understand it.

Like these bottles of Cadia sparking water imported from Italy, I am entering another dimension of community sustainability, in regards to economy and the environment, by dipping my mind into urban farming; how I will fit into this topic equipped with the related interest I have grown up knowing will be the funnest mystery to solve during my senior project

This past time during my mentorship at the Arroyo Food Co-op, I helped my mentor Joy pour soap from one of these barrels into a sample jug; while pumping the fluid out, I dripped some of it onto the floor and so cleaned the surrounding floor space with Joy's and towel's help (this has been one of the most personable interactions I have had with Joy and was a moment in which I truly felt like the apprentice to a trade)

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?

• For my first interview, I plan to juggle words with my primary mentor Joy Kam, who is currently the manager at the Arroyo Food Co-op.  This establishment is becoming more so a staple in residential Pasadena than a trend with an expiration date tagged to it.  As the Co-op’s goal is to profit from selling the produce of local vendors and kosher companies, such as those grounded in fair-trade ingredients, I plan to analyse the economic background to my senior project idea of urban farming.  Since realizing how grassroots farms in the thicket of Los Angeles fit into society, and thus its constant revolution around economic reward and stability, Joy can provide me with valuable information into how the Co-op is held afloat by memberships to the store, partnerships with local businesses, and buying goods in bulk.  In general, I wish to clearly see how a farm store can help support efforts of urban farmers and how it must be managed by a person like Joy in order to achieve such an idealistic mission statement.  Joy immigrated from China and only but recently began to fight for her store’s acceptance in a tightly regulated city, and so it would be quite interesting in specifically learning the struggles in maintaining a food revolution like that urban farming and how politics (like grabbing a permit for a certain initiative like outdoor movie showings or having a curbside garden free to the public's access) is heavily involved in protecting goals with law.

2.  Five questions will be assigned to all seniors to ask.  What additional questions do you plan to ask?  Ask open-ended questions.  What are open-ended questions? Click here!

FIVE QUESTIONS ASSIGNED:

1. I’m interested in studying urban farming. What can you tell me about it?
2. From your perspective, what could I study that would be significant to other people?
3. Who else would you recommend I talk to?
4. What kinds of places or activities do you recommend I do for the mentorship component?
5. What materials should I read in this field? Who else can I interview?

My touch to the interview:

1. How has immigrating to new country in the United States added to your experience in adequately establishing the Arroyo Food Co-op?
1. What obstacles did you face in transitioning from one way of life to another? Was anything learnt from such trials in your life to help you in your endeavors at the store?
2. What inspired you to tackle this aspect of urban farming? Did any childhood hobby spark this interest, if it is indeed one of yours?
2. How do you balance the amount you spend in buying products to stock the shelves with and the profit you accumulate so that you maintain a healthy business that can continue to grow?
1. What is your definition of ‘healthy’ in its context here in regards to the bigger picture of urban farming?
3. How have you and your store specifically supported local farmers in growing produce on their ‘home’ lots in the city legally and effectively?
4. Would you be able to describe the steps taken to order and develop a rapport with a company you plan to buy from?
5. In what unique ways has community support grown over the past years in favor of the Arroyo Food Co-op?
1. Have you changed the store’s mission statement to abide by any popular opinions?

This picture I quickly and stealthily took is of Joy's desk. right in front of the one I use to make tags for unnamed products and from where I retrieve the materials I need to fulfill my duties in ambassador to the store

This is a photo of my mentor Joy Kam, as featured on the Co-op's website...she is so very positive about her risky business venture in supporting a local community still being convinced by the idea and idealistics of urban farming, this being one of the reasons why I feel so comfortable in interviewing her for my first time in doing such a nerve-racking thing for my senior project

These drinks were one of the many goods I first had to find on the catalog of the store, and then write labels for them, complete with prices and readable titles (wording needed to be exact to this end so that customers would have more ease in buying them)

As I sit at the communal computer in the store's business sector, I often wonder the schedule of Joy and how she manipulates it to better her studies in urban farming and her own project with the Arroyo Food Co-op