Sunday, October 11, 2009

"In the Belly of the Beast": Live-Blogging the 13th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference - Day 1

I'm in Iowa - "the belly of the beast," which two speakers have already called it as this three-day conference gets underway. Iowa produces more corn, more soy, and more hogs than any state in the union - the vast majority grown with "industrial" methods. And yet I'm here with 600 people who are passionate professionals connected to the sustainable food movement... giving us an opportunity to better understand what we're up against and perhaps start more dialog with that monolith, as well as enabling us to see what efforts Iowans are making to return to a state of food self-sufficiency in this wonderful growing climate. It's called "From Commodity to Community: Food Politics and Projects in the Heartland"


Why am I here? Well, I'm not entirely sure yet. Ostensibly, I'm here because PolyCultures is part of the 1st Annual CFSC Film Festival, screening tomorrow during lunch. So I'll be presenting that and leading discussion afterward - and I'm promoting the screening by handing out b-cards customized to this event to everyone I'm able to chat with here:

I'm planning to show our brand-new 56-minute, PBS-oriented cut tomorrow - which will have its Cleveland premiere on October 23rd. It's exciting having that - plus two ~27-minute spin-offs and a new YouTube video on food deserts - to roll out. It's breathing some new life into the ever-evolving project.

I'll be blogging throughout my time here, using this trip-blog as a vehicle to share the many exciting things that been happening with the movie and - as I'm finding here - that are happening in the area of sustainable food.

P.S. Here's a little photojournal of my trip from Ohio to Iowa:

Posted by David Pearl at 9:55 AM

1 comment:

  1. TrinaOctober 11, 2009 at 3:47 PM

    2 things:

    1. I kind of laughed/snorted when I saw your card... I mean, having seen a couple of its predecessors. Quite the sexy stick figure.

    2. In second grade, my family traveled to Iowa, and I remember the trip looking pretty much the same.

    3. I was feeling proud of myself for having actually stuck to the number of things I said I would, but then I felt obligated to point it out, and that became #3.

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