This tag was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Phoebe Ward.

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Field Guides to Food

Food and Society in Southwestern Minnesota

Curated by Phoebe Ward

Southwestern Minnesota is a place of intensive agriculture, which makes it both a vital part of Minnesota's food system as a whole and an ecosystem threatened by groundwater contamination. The following interviews examine everything from the travails of migrant workers to the specifics of running a water treatment plant in the region. The interviewees all work to better the lives of residents in this part of Minnesota.

Use: I am an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, and I would like to use the items featured here to gain an understanding of the diverse perspectives and disparate interests present in the southwestern Minnesota food system. I also think that I am not the only one who would find an interdisciplinary collection of primary sources on this area useful.

Method: The following interviews come from an oral history project helmed by Bat of Minerva director Peter Shea. They have been drawn from the Blue Earth, Steele, Watonwan, Brown, Redwood, Cottonwood, and Jackson counties.

Contents of this path:

Contents of this tag:

Examples and processes related to the ways that people are gaining knowledge about food in its systemic context.

We all borrow food practices and values from other people. But what are the channels through which we do this? Under what conditions do some people become teachers, and others learners? Items that describe social patterns in these channels and conditions help to explain how “structures of information and knowledge” become a factor shaping the food system.

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