Map Shanty

Presentation on walls of shanty:
• Images of food from around the world
• Maps of where food comes from
• Statistics: food on average travels over 1500 miles to get to your plate
• Average travel distance of food for people in other countries (vs. Americans/TC residents)
• Map out some common foods that we eat and everything that goes into getting it to our plate (packaging, transport, labor, fossil fuels, health, freshness, etc)
• What resources do we have within 100 miles of Mpls/St Paul? Could we do it? (locavore, macro-biotic?)
• Map of farms in the US (showing recent dramatic loss of farms) (also show percentage of organic/small farms vs. huge monocrop mega-farms)
• History of this area of the world (breadbasket) factories, grain mills, no longer used (and what they’re used for now). What resources have historically been exported from Minnesota, and what is now?
• Non-profits in the Twin Cities that are working with food (Youth Farm and Market Project and others)
• Spices and colonial history- map the spice trade
• People working in fields around the world (food production)
• Food transport (fair trade production commodity chain, conventional routes- where does the money go?)
• Fair trade/organic/cage free alternatives
• NY Times average weekly shopping trip + cost

Main Activity ideas:
• Have resources about where different kinds of food come from (miles from Twin Cities), have them make a map connecting these places to their home- where all of the ingredients come from and how far (involves a lot of research)
• For kids: map where they think different foods come from (with pictures!)
• Smell maps
• Making maps out of food
• Objects associated with a meal besides our food.
• Perishables (box of rice, can of tomatoes, cereal box, coffee beans) Look on label to see where these come from and find it on the map
• Big map: Where does this food come from?

Felt (cutouts of food images)
Tacks/Magnets and different colored yarn
Pictures of food on map- connect the dots- measure up to scale to see how far it’s come
Poster of meals grocery store foods/ or meals at different restaurants around TC (local, gourmet, fast food)
• People involved in the food chain- chain- production, transportation, distribution, consumption (pictures of each player in the food chain...and their salaries)

Supplemental (take with you) info:
• Lists of restaurants in the metro area that buy locally
• Lists of farmers markets, grocery stores that buy local products
• How to buy locally year round as much as possible?
• Recipes (from around the world? Using local/seasonal food?)
• Instructions to map where your breakfast/lunch/dinner comes from
• Read the labels at the grocery store! Where does the food you usually buy come from?

Questions for other food people:
• Do we want to focus on food around the world, or where our food comes from, or something else?
• I had trouble finding good maps in my initial search- any ideas/resources?
• Need to make sure we’re not coming off too preachy...and make it kid-friendly!

Supplies/Costs:
Large map (draw or buy?)
Large paper
Drawing utensils
String/yarn
Corkboard + tacks?
Food (boxes/cans with labels)
Brochures/handouts with info to take home
Maps to put on walls/in map album
Food Chain
100 miles from TC
Local nonprofit food actors
Average cost/travel distance of food for others around the world
Percentage of daily income spent on food (graph)
Map of farms in the US (monoculture/organic)
Fair trade commodity chain vs. non-fair trade

** send me an email (crecknagel@gmail.com) if you want me to send you the images/statistics of money spent monthly on food for families around the world (plus the ny times article by michael pollan we talked about)

***we should set up a time to meet before the end of the month (or before dec. 20 b/c i'll be out of town after that) to finalize our activity and delegate research/material gathering. ideas? use meetingwizard.com? or meet before or after another shanty meeting?