This past summer, Nora Chovanec and Kate Berson combined their passions for farming, environmental issues, food security, and poverty alleviation in a documentary photography and oral history capstone project that brought them to the farms in Mexico and the United States.
Both participants in Tisch College’s Citizenship and Public Service (CPS) Scholars program, Chovanec is a senior entering her final year in the combined-degree Tufts/SMFA program, while Berson graduated last May.
Chovanec was interested in creating a capstone project that fused her love of photography with the world of farming. With this concept in mind, she reached out to CPS Scholar alumna Berson, whose interest in food security and experience conducting oral history work in El Salvador was a perfect match for the project. Berson raised her own funds to participate in the trip.
After exploring a few different ideas, the two decided to focus their project specifically on corn, one of the most widely grown crops in the Americas.
As Chovanec explained, the development of the people of North, Central, and South America was founded on corn, a crop that continues to be a staple food now found all around the world. Today, corn is also one of the major crops used in the production of biomass fuel, ethanol, which has consequently rapidly driven the price of corn higher, and thus the price of food higher, than ever before.
“But while corn is one of the most essential crops for life on this planet, we wondered how much most people know about those who plant, grow, harvest, and disperse it,” Chovanec said.
Interested in learning more about this issue, Chovanec and Berson developed a project that sought to find common ground within one of the largest food and fuel production industries in the Americas.
“We chose to focus our project on Mexico and the United States not only because these two countries are the greatest corn producers in the world, but because in our current globalized society, we simply cannot afford to overlook those who are impacted by humanity's consumption habits,” Chovanec explained.
The development of their project was also guided by former Friedman School of Nutrition Professor Kathleen Merrigan, who now serves as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, along with National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition Director Aimee Witteman, and SMFA Professors Eulogio Guzman and Amber Tourlentes.
Together, they traveled to the Mexican states of Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, and Mexico and the American states of Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Throughout their journey, they focused their research on issues related to land, machinery, and government money, three topics that they believe will be at the center of the future of farming in the United States and Mexico.
They explored why American farmers hold much more land than Mexican farmers, and why American family farms are dying off because it is too hard to compete with corporations that farm thousands and thousands of acres.
They also learned about how difficult it is for young people in the United States to go into farming when most farms often have over a million dollars wrapped up in machinery. This situation is very different in Mexico, where because farming is mostly done by hand, younger people have a better chance at becoming successful farmers.
Chovanec also pointed out that both Mexican and American farmers often talked about government subsidies, but in two divergent ways. While Mexican farmers attributed a lot of their hardships to economic uncertainty and a lack of government subsidies, most farmers in the US felt that the government was too involved in their livelihood.
Chovanec said that while the farming industry is surrounded by several complicated issues, she learned how important it is to remember that there are people at the heart of all of these areas of discussion.
“The best part about spending the summer traveling all over southern Mexico and the Midwest US was meeting so many amazing people who were so ready and willing to share their opinions, thoughts, questions, life stories, and family histories,” she said. “We hope that through this project we are able to not only expose the ties within this complicated industry, but put a face and find common ground within one of the largest food and fuel production industries of the Americas.”
Chovanec and Berson's work was covered in Nebraska's Norfolk Daily News, and more information about the project will be available online at www.norachovanec.com.
Many CPS Scholars pursued a wide range of projects over the summer. Including:
Alice Tin, ’10, public clinic in Nicaragua
“This summer, I experienced the realities of what it means to be ‘resource poor.’ I was working at a public clinic in Nicaragua staffed by one doctor and two nurses with custody of five communities (some 4,000 people). The provider:patient ratio was quite staggering... on top of the fact that we did not always have the medicines needed. We did not have acetaminophen for a good month and a half, which is sobering, considering fever is one of the most common afflictions in the community. However, even in the face of such daunting odds, the people of Las Salinas, Nicaragua carried on their business, so even when I was really discouraged by all these obstacles, I followed their example and made the best of the resources that we could access and did not dwell on the things that we lacked. This capstone has fortified my organizational skills, concepts of working with communities and given me concrete field experience which has, and will continue to enrich my education as I enter my final year at Tufts and as I pursue my Masters in Public Health.”
Khudejha Asghar, ‘10, Palestine Summer Encounter
“Being in the West Bank has been, in short, mind-blowing. I have seen, experienced, and learned so much over the past two months. I really enjoyed all of the experiences available through Palestine Summer Encounter (PSE) — volunteering with an organization in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, taking Arabic classes, and meeting with organizations in the West Bank and Israel working for peace. One class, called Nonviolence, encouraged me to put myself in the shoes of various parties, such as Israeli soldiers, Palestinian civilians, and internationals. Another Israeli-Palestinian organization called the Alternative Information Center organized lectures and events weekly as well, and going to these has been an enriching and informative experience.”
Jenn Bollenbacher, ’10, McCormick Foundation
“I'm interning at the McCormick Foundation, specifically working with Citizenship and Journalism, 2 of their grantmaking programs. I've written a couple of articles for their blog, and spent a lot of time doing research and organizing a database of other foundations and/or corporations in the Chicago area. I've also helped them to start an informal "network" of civic engagement organizations in Chicago. We found that McCormick funds a lot of really great and interesting organizations that could benefit and learn from one another, but they don't always communicate or know that each other exists. We're modeling this network off of a Youth Media network that Journalism started a few years back. We've already sent out an interest survey and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Also, the Journalism program is on the tail-end of one of their funding cycles, so I've helped out by doing 1-2 write-ups of organizations requesting funding. Doing all of that has been a huge learning opportunity for me, since my previous work at small nonprofits only dealt with the ‘asking’ side of grants, and not the ‘giving’ side.”
Jane Song, '10, family oral history
“I had the opportunity to speak to my grandmother about her early life and childhood...this allowed me to really get to know her and our family history. I traveled to Japan to see the city where she grew up. I even got to see her old elementary school! My grandma was born in 1928 and her city was bombed during the war.”
