AGRI-CULTURE:
PEOPLE THAT INSPIRE A food activist answers tough questions about organic food in a graphic new way > Jory MacKay “The history of agriculture in Canada is interesting and the rise of
organics is really neat,” says Jeanette Sheehy. The 27-year-old sits behind a desk, with her legs curled beneath her, in the small office of LifeCycles, above a warehouse space that also is used by Share Organics and Geazone Eco-Couriers. “And it’s something that most people don’t know a lot about.” Like most history (and many agricultural products) the story of farming in Canada contains some dark patches that we tend to gloss over or remove from our collective memory. “Farming in Canada was the driving force of colonization,” continues Sheehy, “and it was one of the major things that helped with the taking over of Canada and oppressing indigenous people and taking away their land.” Jeanette Sheehy wants to change the way we all think about the power and potential agriculture, for good and bad—and especially organics. But she hopes to avoid preaching to the converted. That can be hard in a city divided economically between those filling their baskets with pricey “artisanal” produce and others getting flats of bagged lettuce and sacks of potatoes at Costco. Originally from Ontario, Sheehy studied politics and international development at Queen’s University before getting tangled in a string of unfulfilling career choices. After a short, demoralizing stint doing international development work in Kenya, Sheehy returned to Canada and worked in legal aid. When she realized that wasn’t right for her, she and her partner headed to Europe and WOOF’ed for a year, volunteering on organic farms in France, Belgium and Holland. After deciding to move to Victoria to pursue farming as a profession, Sheehy got a job working for LifeCycles, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness and taking action around food, health, and urban sustainability. She runs its Growing Schools program and goes into elementary classrooms to interest kids in organic farming. The experience opened her eyes to how little young people learn about where their food comes from. “This gap in our education system is so glaring, and it really points to how little we care about the food we eat or where it comes from. It’s this blind spot in our world.” In 2011, Sheehy earned a Community Research Fellowship from the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy at UVic to research food security issues and networks of farmer knowledge. She could have summarized her findings in yet another unread research paper. But then she discovered comic books. “When I started the fellowship I’d just spent the summer in Vancouver working with a youth-run space, and they introduced me to comic books, which I wasn’t really into as a child,” says Sheehy. One series of comic-based “graphic novels” called Action Philosophers dramatized the ideas of Plato and Socrates, Nietzsche and Freud, in super-hero format. “It’s amazing,” says Sheehy. “This comic book series explained the canon to me in a way that all the books in my years of work never did. That’s when I realized the power of comics.”
Her yet-unnamed comic book series, which she plans to release in the near future, will be illustrated by Jill Stanton and offer answers to the most common questions fielded by organic farmers. “The central question I want to answer is why do organics cost more,” says Sheehy. “The answer goes back to the rise of chemical fertilizers and to the loss of communities based around agriculture.” The illustrated stories mingle experiences of Sheehy and her friends with historical facts. “It’s my way of dealing with my frustration and sadness with how little we respect farming,” says Sheehy. Readers can follow as the characters struggle with their own personal issues around farming and eating local. “The major thing that my friends and I are wrestling with right now is that organic food has become boutique-y. It’s something you can only afford if you’re wealthy,” says Sheehy. “Our friends don’t buy from us, which is shitty and horrible and not the reason why we’re farming. ... What do you do when organics are no longer the norm?” One solution: find a new, and colourful, way to tell the complex and dramatic story of farming in Canada, so that everyone—rich and poor, old and young—can understand why going organic matters.
Fall 2012
31