Graduate School Stole My Life

I feel like a fog has been lifted.

For the last two years, I've been in a graduate program at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and I'm realizing that I have a family and friends and hobbies that don't involve researching and writing long papers.  I graduated June 7th with a M.A. in International Development and a concentration in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security.  My time at Korbel was valuable, and I recommend the program to anyone interested in pursuing a career in international development.

Most importantly, I immersed myself in issues I care about and found other people who care as deeply about  finding solutions to absolute poverty, food insecurity, inequality of access to public goods like health care or education, and the list goes on.  I primarily focused my studies on international agricultural trade, U.S. agricultural policy, agricultural development in Africa, WTO agricultural trade policies, and agricultural policy at the national-level in several sub-Saharan African countries.  I also had the distinct pleasure to intern with an organization called The World Food Prize, an experience which further cemented my resolve to combat hunger at home and abroad.

My goal is to use this space as a place to talk about food issues, both in the United States and abroad, so be on the lookout for posts in the near future.

New Beginnings

Last Monday I moved to Denver into a house with 3 other graduate students to start my first quarter of graduate school at The University of Denver. I'm so excited about my program, and I'm sure you'll get to hear more policy and soap-boxy fun about development, agriculture, and the like in the coming weeks. I'm most struck today, though, by how much food has already served as a way to make friends in a new place. We've gone out for meals, we've had drinks, we've grilled out, and tonight I'm having people over who want to learn to make mac & cheese from scratch.

I know that food or eating isn't the focal point our social outings, but the necessity to eat and drink makes it much easier to gather and be merry with new friends.

What Does "Food Security" Mean?

"So what do you want to do after college?" This sentence haunted me during my last semester of undergraduate study, but it wasn't because I had no answer. I knew that I wanted to work on issues pertaining to food security and development, and preferred to study cases in the African Sahel. However, most of those concepts are lost on, say, my grandmother who is a Realtor or my brother who is going pro in keg tapping. (Sorry Nana and Marshall!) I dreaded questions about my future because I am terrible at condensing my interests and ultimate career goals. Eventually, I got better at stating my point, concisely. "I want to study food security issues in developing African countries in graduate school, and hope to apply my expertise in a non-governmental body or with an agency like USAID." However, my friends and family still expressed confusion over what I meant by "food security."

Although many scholars still quibble over exact definitions of the terms "food security" or "food insecurity," many agree that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization provides a solid definition.

"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Essentially, those working to curb instances of food insecurity focus on a myriad of issues ranging from the micro-level (issues like household nutrition, best practices for sustainable household farming) to macro-level issues (such as World Trade Organization tariff quotas on agricultural products). Food security is an on-going and complex issue tied in to economics, culture, national and international politics, geography- I could go on. Recently I've been interested in how one country's domestic agricultural policy affects agricultural output in another. (For instance, how does USDA subsidization of corn affect output or price of corn in Zimbabwe?) I'm also interested in the politics of famine (did you know that famine can happen when a surplus of food exists in a country?!) and the role of intergovernmental organizations in impacting global food policy.

Seems pretty dry, doesn't it? Oh well. Food has had such a profound impact in my life at a level much higher than simple nutritional subsistence. Food sustains us physically, of course, but food can be a spiritual thing. Food has the power to connect us to the earth, to our past, to the people in our lives, and to people we'll never know. I doubt I'll have the ability to instill this reverence about food in others, and that certainly isn't my goal. I simply hope to make some small positive effect on the life or lives of those who are hungry and unable to help themselves. We'll wait and see how that goes.