You Are Where You Eat

The eastern boundary of my Minneapolis neighborhood is formed by the Mississippi River, while the western edge follows a line of industrial buildings along Hiawatha Avenue. Some of the buildings are in use, some are vacant, but one grain elevator in particular, with broken windows and a faded wheat stalk painted on its side, catches my attention each time I pass by.

My house in Ghana was on the edge of the village, between the road, the clinic, and the neighbors’ steeply sloping farm fields. Local livestock – cows, goats, chickens – frequented my yard for grazing, but one rooster in particular, with curly feathers and a jerking, frenetic stride, caught my attention each time he trotted by.

What do these two images have in common? How can a grain elevator in a Midwestern American city be connected to a rooster roaming through a West African village? They both share an important place in my mind. I see the elevator daily, and I once interacted daily with free-ranging African livestock. Both images present a source of food: one an anesthetized, defunct food-processing building; the other a living animal and potential meal.

The wheat-stalk-painted grain elevator on Hiawatha Avenue is no longer in use, but it sits directly across the street from a functioning flourmill. When the weather turns warm in the springtime, I open up the house to the night air and hear the sounds of the flourmill drift through my bedroom window. Like the background hum of a highway, I hear the steady grind of wheat into flour, plants into food, and the clanking of rail cars carrying away the finished product. While some of that flour will be distributed to local food businesses, the company that owns the mill also sends its grain worldwide. Will this flour join other milled grains in the bags of USAID staple flour provided to refugees and people living with AIDS in developing countries?

In the village in Ghana, I lived in direct association with the animals and plants that would become my food. The plantain and papaya trees growing outside my door, the animals that frequented my yard, all were my daily companions and they fed me directly. A chicken would be roaming and grazing one day, and the next it was dead and eaten. This close relationship with my food enlarged my consciousness of what I take from the earth and showed me the direct consequences of my consumption.

Back in America, I notice sharply the long separation between me and my food. Wheat is grown somewhere in the Midwestern region, it is trucked and ground and packaged, and flour ends up on the shelf at a big chain grocery store. There is a real disconnect between food and consumer, created by the miles of transportation and layers of packaging that lie between us. In Ghana I knew what I ate intimately enough to give it a name – I affectionately called that flashy rooster “Fabs.” Here in America, the only relationship I have with my food is the act of buying it. You are what you eat, the saying goes, but if I don’t know what I eat, do I know what I am?

I sense something wrong with our relationship to our food in America, and the broken grain elevator at the edge of my neighborhood is a physical reminder of this disconnect. Locally grown grain was once processed here for local distribution, but the old mill is no longer in use, and the newer mill sends its flour far away. The people living closest to the flourmill are not being fed by what comes out of it, and I think this does us a disservice. When we ship our grain far away and we import processed foods, we not only waste precious resources, but we miss an opportunity to connect to the food with which we meet our most basic needs. Producing our own food could give us a sense of self-sufficiency, purpose and pride in this 21^st century that has been buffeted with social and economic instability.

For my part, I will continue to be the connection between my two far away homes and their differing food systems. I want them to share an important place not just in my mind, but in my actions. Having once grown my own vegetables in Ghana, I am producing more and more of my own food now that I own a home in Minneapolis – chilies, basil, cilantro, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, peppers and greens – all in the back yard of my city lot. Using what I learned in Ghana, I will increase my self-sufficiency, create a sense of food security, and cultivate a stronger connection to this land that ultimately feeds us all.

-- Kendra Cuthbertson