Collaborative project: due tonight?
Status: Finished, and yet not.

Why is it that every time I sit down on my computer, I impulsively add more and change things in the collaborative research project? No matter how much research I've done, I still feel unsatisfied.  I feel like there is so much more that needs to be done - I need more and more evidence to prove a point,  I feel as if I did not explain something clearly, I need a different transition.  I need to edit, remove, re-write, add in, change the format of my in-text citations, mess around more with the annotated bib  I want to go deeper and deeper into the issues and cover more ground, but I am out of time and have to leave it as is for a grade as of tonight.  For the last two weeks I have been obsessing over getting it right, and I am so unsettled with the idea of having to leave it alone.  I know it is something that I can continue on by myself even after the semester is over and continue to develop it for other purposes (even if only for myself), but I can't knock the feeling of not being satisfied with where it is right now.  I can't stand it. 

I wish I had this same feeling about my Twitterive - I feel like that is the project where the insane amount of revisions and continual development should be taking place, but I guess it was never a project that I felt comfortable with.  I have been dreading putting in the final revisions to the Twitterive and actually publishing them, because I hate having my personal experiences and relationships with people exposed.  I don't want you to read about the different kinds of conversations I have with my co-workers and how our relationships have changed and grown over the past few years, even if it will give more substance to the project and "put myself" more into it. It's even more difficult to write about now, because I can tell that even in the last few months, my relationship to my chosen "place" has changed considerably.  I do not feel the same about it as I once did, and a lot of it has to do with those who I purposefully left out of the Twitterive. I almost wish I did my Twitterive on something else that didn't bring on so much anxiety to write about. 

I have learned this semester that when I want to write about myself, I am much more comfortable and prone to tackling an issue and putting my opinion out there and backing it up through research.  If you ever want to know anything about me, you'll find it there, because I am much more likely to go even deeper into an issue than I am to go deeper into a na.  Personal projects like the Twitterive are just not my thing.  I'm not willing to open up that much yet, and I feel that research-based projects keep me at a comfortable distance.

Writing: How has this class impacted your notions of writing?
    -genre
    -modes
    -collaboration
    -blog
    -website writing
    -revision
! Your application of these ideas

Research: How has this class impacted your notions of research?
    -Place (Twitter)
    -Field research
    -Semi-structured interviews
    -Reflexive vs/including reflective
    -Oral histories
    -Narrative Inquiry
    -Qualitative vs Quantitative
    -Tweets, food inc, multiple readings on topics...

Technology: Impacted your notions and literacies in relation to technology
    -Weebly
    -Twitter (discourse)
    -Blog
    -Digital recording
    -Youtube
    -Files (compressing, converting)

Ground these in the technologies and writings you used.

Thoughts: feelings about posting writings on internet, more technologically literate? expanding my understanding of what "research" is, new genres used - my understanding of what "writing" is, issues with weebly, thoughts on "place" as a grounding point to create a project around - did tweeting help my writing? How did collaboration affect my writing - what would I do differently if I could

    After reading Kat's thoughts on her "Say No to GMO's" page, I felt that our collaborative research project needed a response to that in order to balance it out, since we decided to keep the project as unbiased as possible.  I decided to use what research I came up with for the pro's of GMO's as a way to incorporate that balance.
    Before, I thought that I would use my findings from articles and other readings from class and create bullet points to tie everythign together surrounding the information we had from our interview videos.  Once I got down to writing, I felt that the bullet points keep everything choppy, and the project would not flow together nicely.  I ended up coming up with a different format than what I had originally planned, although I am not so sure I am going to keep it that way.  Figuring out transitions for things is a lot more difficult than it seems.  I am not sure if by transitions we just need to link everything together at the bottom of each page, or if there is something else that needs to be done.  I plan on continuing to play around with it over the next 2 days to really bring everything together and create something cohesive.  I am not sure if I am going to leave Kat's page up on my Weebly site as well or not - I may break it down and resort back to the bullet points idea and filter in those main points around the videos, and do the same with the page that I began to create tonight.
    I also decided to change the formatting of how we had incorporated the Oral History project and the Collaborative research project.  I believe I want to keep the Oral History project with the raw videos and then the finished video separate from the Collaborative project.  In the Collaborative project, I believe I am only going to include the edited versions of the interview videos.  I really felt that the inclusion of the raw interview videos was a bit of a distraction in the Collaborative piece, and disrupted the flow of things.  I am going to have to wait until either tomorrow at school or Wednesday in class to move around the videos - for some odd reason Weebly is once again putting up a huge fight in allowing me to post videos on my page.  They are feeding me some BS about how it is only for "Pro" users, even though I was miraculously able to do it in the computer lab once

    The first raw interview to be posted for our group is an interview between Jessica and her mother.  Her mother was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1993, and decided to stay on an organic-only diet.  She strongly believes that it was a mix of her new eating habbits and a positive mindset that helped her heal and recover from cancer.
    The switch from non-organic to organic was not an easy one when she started. In 1993, organic foods were not as easy to come by, and few stores carried these products.  It was an extremely long drive from her home to the store where Jessica's mother could find organic foods - I believe she mentioned living in Atco and the organic food store was in Vineland.  She did mention the possibility of getting some organic foods from typical food stores, but the issue with that was the freshness.  They were not bought regularly and would often be sitting out in the crates in the stores for days, and the fruits and vegetables would start to go bad.  Because there was a relativey low demand for them and because of the farming practices used to grow organic crops, the prices for the organic foods she needed were extremely high.  She resorted to buying in bulk - apparently the prices of certain items were reduced if they were bought in bulk - in order to save money and gas.  She mentioned that she would frequently buy chicken in bulk because it could be frozen, and honey because it never goes bad. I am very interested to find out if buying in bulk is still a cost effective way to manage an organic diet.  I'm sure it is possible, but I would like to know how it compares to a grocery list of non-organic foods.
    Jessica's mother did mention that there is an "extreme difference in taste" between inorganic and organic foods.  She stated that organic produce is much sweeter than non-organic produce.  She tried to juice regular non-organic carrots, and thought that it tasted horrible.  
    Another interesting point that Jessica's mother brought up that I had never heard before in the argument for organic foods is that the processing techniques for non-organic foods can in fact take out some of the nutritional value.  When the foods are heated, they lose many of their vitamins and minerals, and should go through cold processing instead of hot processing.  This is definitely something that I am interested in looking into.
    Jessica's mother gave a great viewpoint for organic foods.  She has slowly switched back to non-organic foods since her recovery, but most of that has to do with remaining cost-effective.  There's plenty to think about! :)

    For our oral history project, our group is using the research question "What are the affordances and constraints of organic foods?"  We also hope to present both the benefits and problems associated with non-organic foods.  I will be working on the introduction and tying in articles from our class readings and from our own outside readings to support our different opinions to inform others of the benefits and risks of choosing either an organic only or non-organic diet. Although we are trying to remain unbiased in our research and with our paper, there seems to be a pretty good chance  that by the end of our project, there will at least be a slightly biased view-point.
    I began my research by attempting to find articles that sided with chosing non-organic foods over a purely organic diet.  I was hoping to find evidence to support some of the opinions I stated in my previous blog - such as supporting the food supply in other countries and how GMOs drive down the price of produce so that fresh fruits and vegetables are more accessible to others.  I also wanted to check to see if there were any outright health benefits to eating non-organic foods.  My research efforts so far were not as successful as I had hoped.  I thought that I had found a few promising articles that would give me the information that I was seeking, but the more I read into them, the more I realized that they were not necessarily for non-organic foods.  In fact, most of the articles that turned up throughout my searches were all attempts to unveil the harsh realities of consuming GMOs.  I think the next time I attempt research on this particular topic, I'm going to have to take a different route than what I have already tried.  I'm going to have to find out what a few of the major corporations are saying about what they do, and to check out what research they have posted that supports their products.  I'm starting to think that this is the only way I will be able to find information to balance our research question.
    The fact that it is difficult to find information that sheds positive light on genetically modified foods makes me wonder if it really is possible to give an unbiased research paper on this topic.  I want to know if the lack of articles coming up is due to a lack of popularity of finding the good in genetically modified foods, or if the current huge focus in research is to support the choice to stick to an organic diet, or if genetically modified foods really have very few positive aspectss Is it entirely up to us to make it perfectly balanced, or is it possible that no matter what we do, the readers will still interpret a biased opinion?  I am also wondering if we should refocus our research - maybe we do need to take a stand on one side of the issue to put together a piece with credible evidence.   

     I do believe in the idea of health benefits from sticking with organic foods, but I am not so sure that these benefits are enough to outweigh the benefits of inorganic foods.  I don't think it's feasible for an average middle class family to afford to live off of purely organic foods.  For some families, it is difficult to even afford to prepare healthy meals, let alone organic meals.  
    I am also curious to know about how much food is shipped from our country to other countries that are in desperate need of help with obtaining food.  If there is a large number of countries that we export food to, is it really necessary for us to go the organic route and put all of those people at greater risk for starvation, when inorganic foods make it possible to produce enough good to help?
    Finally, I cannot help but wonder if it is even possible to know if you are really eating purely organic food.  There have been so many strains of GMOs introduced into our foodchain, and the seeds from these plants get mixed up so easily in other fields, that half the time farmers are not even aware that this has happened.  Large corporations, such as Monsanto, cannot control the transfer of their genes to other crops.  Unless individual crops are tested (a task that is too daunting to even imagine, given the size of the corn fields that exist in Iowa alone, according to "Omnivore Dilemma"), there really is no way to tell if you are actually eating something that is organic or not.
    These reasons keep me from completely siding with those who believe organic foods are the way to go.  I believe our dependency on GMOs and the careless ways in which they are used at this point in time has destroyed any possibility of our country managing on organic foods alone.

    I am working with Kat, Jessica, and Casey. We have figure out the general topic of our project: Organic food vs Inorganic food.  We want to consider questions such as why farmers choose to use inorganic or organic crops, the differences in the expenses of the two, whether inorganic foods should be labeled, and even if they are labled, is there a way to really know for sure that they are organic.  So far, it seems to be pretty broad, but I believe that through our research, conversations, and interviews, it will flesh itself out into a cohesive project.  
    We want to include a video that shows a conversation that expresses our viewpoints prior to any real research on several of our research questions.  We hope to end our project in the same fashion, to show how our viewpoints may have changed prior to gathering information, and how these thoughts affect us as consumers, and whether we may consider making any lifestyle changes in accordance with this.
    We will also be including an interview with Jessica's mother - a cancer survivor - who believes that her choice in eating organic foods played a huge role in her recovery.  Also, we will have an interview conducted by Casey with Duffield's, an inorganic farmer's market.
    We hope to gain insight into what the driving force is behind consumer's and farmer's choices between organic and inorganic foods.

This piece will most likely be extremely helpful in the collaborative research project.  Wendell Berry seems to be on a bit of a rant...although an informative rant, in his article "The Pleasures of Eating".  From interpreting his language, I feel that this piece was meant to shock it's readers into becoming informed.  He has made urban dwellers have been his main target and - although I have to question his idea of what exactly an urban dweller is - I can see his point.  
    Berry claims that "urban shoppers" are simply consumers who don't see themselves as part of the agricultural process - they eat whatever is easiest for them to get a hold of and whatever takes the least amount of preparation with little regard to what it took to get their food to that state.  They see it as a product, and don't appreciate or are unaware of the agricultural processes that are at the root of the product.  
    We have to face facts - I'm sure that this is not entirely the consumer's fault.  I'm sure inorganic farmers and corporate food production companies are banking on this.  They have recognized the psychological force behind their buyers, and use it fully to their advantage.  As long as the consumers who they have removed from the agricultural processes (through making their products cheaper easy to prepare) are seeing results, they will continue to turn a blind eye to the ethics of agriculture and what issues are prevalant with their food.  This is why "urban shoppers" are passively dependent upon corporate and inorganic food companies.  As long as they are blindly dependent, companies will continue to push through with their products.  Since the 1950s when mass production of food started to become commo, this cycle has been building and picking up more steam along the way.

This piece has left me with several questions that will pertain to our research project.
1. Are urban shoppers more likely to be pro-GMOs?
2. How can we make the "local farmer" more accessible to those who do live in cities?
3. is it even feasible for urban families to afford to stick to local farmers, given the common SES among ur

I'm not entirely sure what this reading has to do with our oral history project, but I'll take a stab at it. Perhaps this is the idea that as the people we are interviewing are telling us their stories, they will be further engaging with us their ideas and opinions of the particular subject.  Our interviews are supposed to almost take the form of a conversation (even though it is supposed to be a little more of a one-sided conversation, with us trying to get as much out of the interviewee as possible), and perhaps this is where the reflexivity is supposed to come into play.

Another possibility is that we are not experts on the subject matter that we are supposed to be researching, and we might not have our opinions made up about the controversy surrounding genetically modifed foods vs organic farming.  We might have to linger in the "in between", and sort through what we do know, our own experiences, and what we are going to be told through our interviews and other sources.  We have to pay attention to the thoughts that we have surrounding the subject, and be aware of how and why our thoughts

1. Should GMO foods be labeled?
2. What effect does the growth hormone that is injected into meat have on our bodies?
3. Is the FDA doing enough to keep consumers safe?
4. What are the implications of passing Kevin's Law, and why are so many against it?
5. Can a country thrice on organic food alone?
6. Do genetically inserted pesticides affect our health?
7. Is there any way to truly know if the food you are eating is organic, and what causes certain foods to slip through the cracks?
8. Is there a cost effective way to keep healthier foods in schools?
9. Do GMOs have any effect on childhood diabetes?
10. How can food labels be made more user friendly, and will processing corporations be willing to do this?
11. Should the place of origin be included on food labels? How would this affect businesses, and is there a way to protect businesses if this is implemented?