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Local Food and the Environment:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
By: Katharine Shiffler
Garden Cycles Bike Tour Embarks Summer 2007
This summer and fall, three women are will be traveling thousands of miles by bicycle to promote local, healthy alternatives to industrial agriculture. SIT Study Abroad alums, Kat Shiffler (Bolivia '04) and Liz Tylander (Ecuador '03) are planners and participants in the Women's Garden Cycles Bike Tour, a project documenting local alternatives to the current industrial agriculture model in the Northeastern United States and Canada. They will be biking from Washington DC to Montreal, talking to urban gardeners, organic farmers, eco-innovators, and participants in the growing local foods movement - and putting together a picture of the projects that exist in that part of the world.
They will be using bicycles as a means of transportation to demonstrate the alternatives to fossil fuels. The use of people-powered transport is also a commentary about appropriate technology and the global food supply chain. The bicycle tour investigations will be documented through audio and visual recordings that will be distributed via website and public forums, ultimately promoting the journey as a resource for academic institutions and bringing it back to use in budding grassroots initiatives in Washington DC, where the tour organizers live.
"This is going to be a lot of fun. We're really excited about making all these connections while on the road," said Tylander. "But ultimately we're going to be looking to put all this information to use in our own malnourished communities in Washington DC where it is desperately needed." All three ladies are involved in start-up urban garden project that is harvesting organic food for use in a soup kitchen in the Shaw neighborhood in DC as well as other grassroots environmental projects.
"We're attempting to track a big, global trend - that is, local food movements. Local food, small markets, and environmental advocacy are all going to be really crucial to know about in the coming years," said Tylander. The Women's Garden Cycles Bike Tour is taking off in July, and in the meantime is still looking for additional collaborators and sponsors for the long road ahead.
You can contact them at: gardencycles@gmail.com and check out their team sponsor the Chain Reaction Bike Shop at http://shawecovillage.org/
Kat Shiffler graduated from American University from the School of International Service. While in Bolivia with SIT she co-produced the documentary "At the End of Work / Al Fin del Trabajo", a look at the changing culture of the worker and the labor movement in Cochabamba. Now she plays in the dirt and rides bikes in Washington DC. You can contact her at katshiffler@gmail.com
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