Food for Thought: Fact & (Science) Fictions

Food for Thought: Facts and (Science) Fictions is a public platform for critical community engagement with topics related to agricultural practices—here on earth, and in our wider galaxy. Food for Thought will draw general audiences into considering its themes from an array of vantage points by way of exciting and popular narrative films, weird and delicious snacks and refreshments, and speakers who know how to employ everyday language while addressing complex issues. The platform is part of the Davis Humanities Institute’s “Cultivation: Food, Farming, and Heritage in the Sacramento Valley and Beyond”—a year-long initiative which explores the themes of farmers, farming, race, and ethnic heritage in the Sacramento Valley and beyond.

The free, outdoor events, which will mostly occur in March 2023 in Sacramento’s historically-Black neighborhood of Oak Park, will arise from the screenings of two popular American films. The first, Sounder (1972), depicts a Black family’s struggles to avert starvation by farming sugarcane on depleted soil in Depression-era Louisiana, while grappling with their eldest son's longings to attend school full-time. The Martian (2015) chronicles an astronaut-botanist’s attempts to stay alive on Mars—where he has accidentally been left behind by his crew mates—through cultivating potatoes inside his vessel’s artificial habitat.

A near half-century divides the release dates of these films; a century divides their stories. Yet despite sharply different time frames and plot lines, both films turn on the life-and-death consequences of growing food. Food for Thought will prompt conversations in response to these films with a focus on sustainable farming, interdependence, histories of Black farming, and more.

With cash in hand, we will finalize plans for our guest speakers — all of whom require honorariums, and some of whom will have travel, lodging and per diem expenses. We will finalize our plans regarding the exact site or sites where the events will take place. We will secure rental of a high-quality and large LED projector, with screen and speakers. We will find a means for catering our snacks and refreshments. Finally, we will begin an outreach campaign with fliers and radio spots. We want to attract a large, heterogeneous group! These are our main actions and attendant expenses, with many other smaller ones in the mix. This is an ambitious project with many elements and people involved.

Oak Park, considered Sacramento’s historically Black neighborhood, is the main location for these events. Food for Thought aims to attract the African Americans living there. But all peoples are welcome and will be encouraged to attend. One of the aims of choosing this location is, in fact, to draw non-BIPOC populations into spaces currently and historically considered part of Black Sacramento, including the African American bookstore, Underground Books, and the 40 Acres Art Gallery and Cultural Center, for the purpose of creating rich conversations within contexts of Black-majority spaces.

The platform aims to raise awareness of relationships between farming and racial identity, and to inculcate pride in achievements of people of color from our past, including George Washington Carver, an agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted the efficacy of certain crops and methods to prevent soil depletion, and Booker T. Whatley, a pioneer of sustainable agriculture who is credited with developing an early form of the CSA, or Community-supported agriculture.

These food- and farming-oriented programs will foster discussion amongst students and everyday people spanning race, class, age, ethnicity and more. Convivial contexts will support consideration of our past and future in unexpected ways, through topics that are inherently engaging as well as vitally important—how we eat, learn, and stay alive, as well as how we think about and inhabit outdoor space together. Additionally, outdoor events inevitably draw passers-by and degrees of spontaneity, which will be encouraged.