If you attend, or ever did attend, Grinnell College, your inbox likely overflowed this weekend with emails from family members and friends from across the country. This weekend, in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, Jacqui Shine featured the tensions within the town of Grinnell, Iowa, home to both a progressive liberal arts school and the largest firearms manufacturer in the country. She highlighted how increased shootings throughout the nation have intensified the common, neighborly discourse between the two sides of the gun-control debate in town. As a Grinnell graduate myself, I reacted defensively towards my family members surprised email notifications: Of course! This is the story I’ve been trying to tell you whenever we talk about gun control! You need to read it in the New York Times to make it legitimate? Eventually, I was able to step off of my high horse, and kicking it into the corn fields, I began to think back on my experience navigating the various spheres of Grinnell, IA.
Ironically, in a sea of herbicide-doused corn and soybeans, I perceived the most evident merging of dissimilar political affiliations in the sphere of sustainable agriculture. On a Monday morning in late April 2018, I sat down with Melissa Dunham, co-owner of Grinnell Heritage Farm, the largest producer of organic carrots in the state of Iowa. Melissa is also the Executive Director of Local Foods Connection (LFC), a non-profit that removes the financial barrier to local food-access by connecting community members of limited financial means with local farmers, and providing these community members with CSA shares or farmers market credits. I got to know Melissa through my work with farmers in the Grinnell area, as well as by volunteering at a few of her LFC fundraising events. When I told Melissa about my traveling research project, she invited me to visit the farm for a practice interview, and in return, I offered to spend a few hours planting potatoes with her and her husband and co-farmer, Andy. That April morning, I found myself sitting on a rocking chair on the front porch of Melissa and Andy’s farmhouse.
In the summer of 2017, the Dunham’s began hosting HaPIZZAness nights, community dinners featuring a buffet of wood-fired pizzas with seasonal toppings, as well as lawn games, wagon-ride farm tours, and fresh produce for purchase. These events play a dual role in the community: a fundraiser for LFC, and a venue for community members of different backgrounds to come together over a meal.
Melissa Dunham, who grew up in the twin cities, grew increasingly aware of the divisions within her adopted town of Grinnell after the 2016 presidential election. “During the election cycle, it felt like the community was more divided than ever. We wanted to do something that would bring the community together, that would literally bring people to the same table,” she explained. Prior to initiating HaPIZZAness nights, the Dunham’s hosted farm field days, events where interested individuals could work and learn on the farm for a morning. Unfortunately, very few residents of Grinnell attended these events, and rather, most attendees drove from Cedar Rapids or Iowa City. “We wanted to do something that would focus on our own backyard and everyone eats pizza,” said Dunham.
Indeed, it seems that the whole, big backyard comes out for pizza night. At these events, the Dunham’s have hosted small-business owners, high school students, professors, the president of the college, and even the former president of the NRA. At one particular pizza night, Dunham watched two next-door neighbors meet and exchange phone numbers for the first time.
Heading into the new presidency, Dunham knew the environment would face accumulating attacks. Constituent support for environmentally-sustainable practices would grow increasingly necessary, and thus, an appreciation for environmental sustainability would grow increasingly necessary as well. With this understanding, HaPIZZAness nights took on a third mission: an opportunity to educate community members about the environmentally-sound farming methods used at Grinnell Heritage Farm. During these events, attendees could choose to tour the farm by wagon and learn about the farm’s various environmentally-conscious practices, including beetle banks, cover strips, and drip irrigation. Thus, HaPIZZAness nights became a unifying force not only through their success in bringing community members together, but also by presenting a town-wide opportunity for environmental education.
In my experience, sustainable agriculture has represented a unifying force at locations that span beyond Grinnell Heritage Farm. At the Grinnell Farmers Market, low-income community members exchange EBT card dollars for tokens to be used at the market. At the six Grinnell Giving Gardens, run by the nonprofit Imagine Grinnell, any community member in need may stop by to harvest produce, with most of the produce donated to the MICA Food Pantry. Such town-wide access expands the demographic most likely to benefit from sustainable growing, moving beyond higher-income individuals with more leisure time and greater opportunities for environmental education. In turn, these venues cater to community members of dissimilar backgrounds and political affiliations. Of course, I do not mean to imply that socioeconomic status determines every individual’s political affiliation. Yet, in Grinnell, Iowa, the spaces that cater to the widest array of financial abilities represent the spaces most likely to mix relatively progressive college affiliates with community members of diverse political views.
If the farmers market and Giving Gardens provide any indication, to foster community coalition, sustainable agriculture venues must prove accessible to people of dissimilar economic means. Melissa Dunham commented on this power of access with regards to Local Foods Connection. “Everybody says vote with your food dollar, but 30-40 percent of our community does not have the ability to go out and vote with their food dollar,” Dunham explains. “A significant piece of our population does not have ability to vote… which is criminal almost. We are giving them back their ability to vote.”
In the political sphere, the population of Grinnell, IA casts votes for various candidates and policies. Many vote in a manner unlike the manner in which Melissa or I vote. However, regardless of how we vote in an election, we should all possess the ability to vote for food that is amiable to our health and the health of the environment.
Melissa points out that a donation to Local Foods Connection moves in two directions. “Say you were to donate $10,” she explains, “that $10 goes to support a family who is unable to procure that fund financially, but that same $10 gets spent with a local farmer that is farming in an environmentally-just way.” I can identify a third direction for that donation as well. As the donation allows community members to connect with local farmers and learn about the sustainable practices those farmers use, it adds a layer of environmental literacy as well. Some community members, without the opportunity to meet local farmers and consider where their food is coming from, might not vote for environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. Yet, once aware of the merits of these practices, individuals grow increasingly inclined to vote with their fork, and choose food grown in a way that protects their health, the health of their children, and the health of the environment.
Perhaps, once all people are given the opportunity to access and understand sustainable agriculture, it does not need to represent a politically divisive issue. Perhaps, once all people are given the opportunity to access and understand sustainable agriculture, it can become a subject of universal agreement. Perhaps, sustainable agriculture can become the topic where we all, both literally and ideologically, share the same table. Once we are seated around that same table, eating brick-oven pizza topped with organic beets and local parmesan, then maybe we can begin a conversation on the issues that truly divide us.
