FERN’s Friday Feed: Ploughing through a pandemic
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Connecting a town in lockdown, one backyard garden at a time
The New York Times
“In the middle of March, as the coronavirus altered life all around us and revealed the fragility of our reliance on distant sources of food, my family was in a position many Americans outside the areas most afflicted came to know, watching with dread and sorrow as Covid-19 began sickening distant co-workers and friends,” writes C.J. Chivers. “We entered self-isolation before our nearest hospital announced treating an infection … An unfamiliar feeling of uselessness descended upon us: Unlike mail carriers, E.M.T.s or supermarket employees … we were members of a largely idled or remote collective, among the tens of millions without a clear or practical contribution to offer. We were lucky, and we knew it. We also wanted to convert the privilege of our good fortune to service, but we had no idea how.”
Shrimp farms have a major greenhouse-gas problem
The New Republic
The global shrimp trade has long been dogged by reports of slavery and other human rights abuses. Now there’s another ethical black mark on these operations. According to Our World in Data, farmed shrimp and prawns “follow only beef, coffee, and chocolate in non-methane greenhouse gas emissions,” writes Alicia Kennedy. “Yet they are rarely discussed in the same manner as beef, which is broadly acknowledged in food media and by environmentalists as a food to be consumed rarely and consciously.”
Battered by virus and xenophobia, Manhattan’s Chinatown finds its way
Eater
Veteran New York City food writer Robert Sietsema roamed Chinatown on April 6, and, as he writes, “found a vitality … that I had not expected. This was a Chinatown serving its residents, and not a place for destination diners and tourists. In particular, supermarkets, small groceries, bakeries, pharmacies, and hardware stores were open, some with long lines carefully observing social distancing, with the shoppers all wearing masks. The scene on Bayard Street was the most animated, with 57 Bayard Meat Market a popular spot; there were perhaps 25 shoppers waiting outside. Open nearby was the iconic Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, a beacon of hope, and next door the newish Hong Kong restaurant Kong Sihk Tong, where a man sat behind a podium in the front window, taking orders over the phone.”
The art and soul of serving food
Garden & Gun, Southern Foodways Alliance
“‘Everybody can be great,’ Martin Luther King Jr declared from an Atlanta pulpit in February of 1968, ‘because everybody can serve.’ In the wake of this crisis, Americans will ask hard questions about how we regard and treat those of us who serve,” writes John T. Edge. “Hospitals and restaurants will be ideal places to ground those questions. We will ask about doctors and nurses, forced to work in this moment without adequate protective equipment. And we will ask about waiters and cooks, who live to serve and who, too often, live without adequate social safety nets.”
The reality for farmworkers in these United States
The New York Times
“Many farmworkers don’t have health insurance and aren’t sure how to afford medical care or support families if we can’t work,” writes Alma Patty Tzalain. “If we get sick, what will happen to us? Will we be fired because we’re no longer useful to the farm and are now a threat to the business? Amid all of this, we hear that the Trump administration wants to lower farmworkers’ pay to help our employers. I wonder if these people in charge have ever worked a 12-hour shift in the burning heat inside a greenhouse. Or been exposed to deadly chemicals or worked with dangerous machines. I wonder if they have ever had a job that consists of repetitive manual labor, but had no access to health care. And all of this for wages that barely cover our bills.”