Ron Finley Biography

Across the Great State of California, we have begun to see a revolution in a way many have not seen in quite some time. No, I'm not referring to some great political or religious revolution. No, what I’m talking about is an agricultural revolution that concentrates of not only bringing back true fresh produce, but also educating the youth of the state about agriculture as well. You may ask yourself, who is in fact leading this revolution?

The short memoir “Rose Vegetables” was written by David James Duncan as an adult. At the age of eight, Duncan went to the Portland, Oregon Rose Festival. He writes of how this event seemed unreal and fake to him. At the end of the story, a group of horses at the festival became rambunctious and dangerous. Duncan writes of how a plain older man who looked out of place managed to calm the horses. After the man calmed the horses, he fainted from heat stroke. When the man fell to the ground, the horses were startled just enough to take a step forward, and roll the wagon through the man’s head.

When asked about the hunger problems in America one would imagine a homeless person asking and begging for food in the streets. However, what we fail to understand is that hunger is closer to us than what we think. A fellow co-worker or perhaps even the next door neighbor may be an example of someone who suffers from food insecurity. Food insecurity is when a person does not know when or where the next meal will come from. Food insecurity is most likely to develop in food deserts, a place where there is little to no fruits, vegetables and whole healthy foods. The documentary, A Place At The Table, is attempting to shed light on the argument that many Americans suffer from food insecurity because of low income and as result those individuals face various complications.

In Vietnam there must have been more land for farming than what they had in Cleveland. Although, Kim could have made excuses for the lack of land, she endeavored to connect with her father the only way she knew - with a strong will and determination to plant lima beans – to become a farmer as he had been.

In South Central, Los Angeles, there is a food epidemic taking place among the population. For miles and miles, the only easily attainable food source is fast food; causing the overconsumption of un-nutritious, greasy, and fattening food. This is the problem brought to the public’s attention by speaker Ron Finley in his Ted Talks speech, “A Guerilla Gardener in South Central L.A.” Finley explains how everywhere he looks in his native South Central, all he sees are fast food chains and Dialysis clinics opened due to the lack of nutritious food. Finley views the lack of a healthy food source as a serious problem, and brings up

Wendell Berry’s “Mad Farmer liberation Front” makes a strong argument for the simple life, preservation of nature, and individualism.

Considering the following statistics, it is clear why Hunger Free Colorado’s work is so important: Nearly 1 in 7 Coloradans struggled with hunger in 2013, facing times when there was not enough money to buy food for their families or themselves (Colman-Jenson, Gregory, & Singh, 2013). More than 1 in 5 Colorado households with children (22%) reported food hardship, facing financial challenges to put food on the table (Food Research and Action Center, 2013). More than 1 in 8 Coloradans lived in poverty, including 1 in 6 kids, during 2013 (Bishaw & Fontenot, 2014).

After realizing that all of the food and water consumed by their family was either piped, shipped, or driven to them in the middle of the desert, novelist Barbra Kingsolver and her family decided to pick up their lives and move from Tucson, Arizona to to her childhood home of tobacco and dairy farms in southern Appalachia. Kingsolver and her family intended to spend the next year living in a more connected way to their food and where it comes from, and this book is the result of that experience. Part journal, part academic inquest, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, tells the story of their project to live sustainably in a place “where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground” (p. 3). Their year would consist

The short story, Green, by Anne Enright, is about an organic farmer who now bears the fruit of her many years of devoted labour in organic produce. The story describes her emotions towards a woman named Gertie, a woman who criticized her organic vegetables when her business was poor, but orders the vegetables when her business is booming.

Families in cities rely on general stores and health food stores to obtain food products. A severe shortage of food throughout the country would raise potentially difficult questions for families. Where are they going to get food now that stores

All food should be available to all people. The concept of this is dwelled on in the article, “Food justice and Food retail in Los Angeles” by Mark Valliantos. Throughout the article, Valliantos maintains the notion that healthy food should be within everyone’s reach, yet inner cities are still suffering from shortages of fresh produce. To see this issue in action, Valliantos documented this reoccurring phenomenon in Los Angeles. The author gives a description of two areas within the city of Los Angeles, and how they are economically divided based on the amount of healthy produce one has at its disposal. He makes note of programs that already exist to help low income families receive healthy foods that they could not afford. He also

The piece titled ‘getting our future back on the rails – slowly’ is written by a member of The Grow Slow organisation who believes that the most convenient occupant for the land of the abandoned railway yards is a community garden. The author begins the article in a confined toned aiming to convince the reader that a community garden is the right choice and later transfers on to a more critical tone when talking about convenient foods. The author’s main arguments include firstly that community gardens are a global trend and that their community should be one to follow such a trend, secondly a community garden will be beneficial to everyone and is the most efficient option and lastly community gardening will bring the whole community

In order to further support low-income communities and improve this population’s health the federal government needs to not only continue with the supplemental food programs they’ve already put in place, but enhance them by considering the barriers and address them. The government can intervene by integrating other components to the programs that further support people and help eliminate the main barrier by providing them direct access to grocery stores and healthier options. In order for government resources to be more effective in areas where there are limited grocery store options in the community, the government could begin by providing transportation services in areas where grocery stores are limited or if any at all. Providing transportation to those who are receiving government resources like WIC and SNAP would allow families to exhaust

My experience researching for the biography project was a little hard, I say this because I had a difficult time finding a scientist who was underrepresented. I think that finding the subject of any of my previous projects have been the most difficult section on projects that I have completed. Luckily I found a website that had a list of mostly unknown scientist in the medical field. At first I was undecided on who to do my research on, one was African American and the other Cuban. Ernest Everett is known for his study on egg fertilization and the structure of the cell, but once I started researching Carlos Juan Finley I knew that he was going to be the focus of my project. What made me take this decision was that he is sometimes uncredited for being the first to connect mosquitoes to yellow fever.

With the help of my mother and father, I constructed a raised-bed vegetable garden, which we completed the third week of October. We placed it next to our house so that the garden would be hit with plenty of sunlight. We used four pieces of plywood and nailed them to make a rectangular shaped container, the box was four feet wide, eight feet long, and a little less than twenty inches tall. We filled the box with ten inches of soil and later planted our vegetables we bought at Home Depot. We bought leeks, Chinese cabbage, Cauliflower, Savoy cabbage, and Mustard greens. I decided to start a garden because I’ve always had an interest in food and where it comes from.