Welcome to "Provenance: A conversation about how we eat"! On this site, we will explore the many dimensions of the food and agricultural system upon which billions of people depend for nourishment every day. That system is in a state of transition as we question how to weigh the human and environmental health trade-offs, economic costs, social effects, and nutritional benefits of the food we eat.
Provenance will be a place for a multitude of voices from the global food landscape to come through, for anyone who wants to have a stronger connection to the farmers and producers, food processors, cooks, policy makers, food companies, and hungry people that are a part of this diverse agricultural ecosystem. It will be a place to understand where we are now, consider where we need to go, and generate new ideas about how we can get there. I hope you will join me!
About Me
- Elizabeth McVay Greene
- Brooklyn, New York, United States
- Elizabeth McVay Greene is a graduate student at MIT Sloan School of Management, where she focuses on interactive tools that facilitate healthier food and agricultural systems. She has worked with start-ups in the organic space, as well as multinational food and agribusiness companies, and has spent two summers in India, developing multi-stakeholder sustainable agriculture projects. She is a founder of the MIT Food and Agriculture Collaborative, a cross-departmental group of students, faculty, and staff whose research and interests lie in this field. Originally from Minneapolis and a devoted Brooklyn resident, Elizabeth graduated from Columbia University and spent four years financing community development and affordable housing projects before returning to school. Her commitment to food springs from a long-held love of the land and concern about human beings’ ability to sustain themselves and their environment for generations to come.
Greetings, Elizabeth! Thank you for initiating this conversation. I look forward to hearing and learning from the expanding network. For starters, I'll throw out the questions that most perplex me when making food selections these days:
ReplyDelete1. What is the true energy net cost of local vs. nonlocal (e.g., transcontinental and transoceanic) when inputs and per unit transportation costs are fully accounted for?
2. How can we learn more about the sources of the meats we consume? I'm not a vegetarian and don't expect to become one, but I'd like to know about the PROVENANCE of the meats I consume.
Any reliable information or referrals would be most welcome.
Kita
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ReplyDeleteHello Elizabeth, As I wrote in your SXSW 2010 panel entry on this topic, the panel which was so wisely accepted, your Provenance concepts and the tools of the Internet can go far towards allowing developing countries to, at long last, boot-strap their agriculturally-based economies. Great blog!
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