Field Pea, Incorporated

 

Political instability; Economic turmoil; poverty; war; climate change, and all the remaining forces in our lives - they all intersect through the food we need to survive and thrive.  There are many perspectives on what food does for people, but here are just a few.

Celebrity chef and humanitarian Jose’ Andres’ says “food is everything”[i]. Andres’ goes on to say that he believes that people who eat, should also think about what eating accomplishes.

The late Dr. Paul Farmer, co – founder of Partners in Health and a pioneer in managing health inequities throughout the world, pointed out that food security, like many other goals of a public health initiative, is the product of countering ‘failures of imagination’ and harnessing the ‘power of partnership’.[ii]

Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace was quoted as saying ‘the soil is the mother of man and if we forget her, life eventually weakens’[iii]

Food is at the center of all aspects of our existence. We have a responsibility to help those in our community, who do not have the resources to get the best food for themselves. It may be one of the clearest pieces of evidence, that public health is intertwined with finding solutions to social problems. [iv]

Residents of the South and West sides of Chicago will benefit from the work of a three – year project, designed to bring sources of nutritionally dense, reasonably priced vegetable protein to their homes, their gardens, and their community’s sources of food. A not – for – profit organization named “Field Pea, Incorporated” will be formed in accordance with Illinois law[v] to implement this project.

Over the three years envisioned for the life of the project, staff and community participants will take part in activities to produce and distribute vegetable protein – with emphasis on using the field pea as a primary protein source – as well as to educate consumers on the food products’ possible uses, and to celebrate the lives of the cultures who celebrate the vegetable protein as theirs.

Goals for the project will include the following:

·         Can residents of Chicago’s south and west side neighborhoods, accept increased use of vegetable protein in their diets?

·         Can the networks of food security programs supporting these neighborhoods, augment their annual crops grown with a greater variety of legumes, such as field peas?

·         Can community members who incorporate greater amounts of vegetable protein in their diet, see improvements in their cardiovascular health?

 Chicago’s South and West side residents have received and are receiving numerous interventions to better their food security. [vi] The emphasis on providing fresh produce to residents has led to the development of numerous community and school gardens, urban farms, and educational consortia. These programs have regardless, reported vague relationships between increased access to fresh produce, and the cardiovascular health of the neighborhood populations.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), through the twentieth century, had been the most common cause of mortality and morbidity in the United States. [vii] A recent frame of reference towards the management of CVD is “Life’s Essential 8”, a program of the American Heart Association which serves consumers to help them manage cardiovascular risk factors. [viii] Managing diet while using this framework, consumers may expect to see effects on many of the other seven factors (e.g., weight control, blood pressure/cholesterol/sugar) affecting their health.

Making vegetable protein an emphasis of this project will give project managers incentive to explore a hypothesis; namely, that incorporating such a food source can significantly affect blood cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. Bringing in foods of the various cultural groups around metro Chicago, where field pea protein is a core ingredient of a dish, may serve to give these groups incentive to come together in other ways.

What will happen during this project? Grants, donations, and fund-raising will be the sources of income for the project facility, to be housed within either the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences[ix] or Windy City Harvest’s ‘Farm on Ogden’[x]. Each facility brings together resources for agriculture and food science/technology. During year one, staff to administer the program – an Executive Director, an Administrative Assistant, a Volunteer Coordinator, and an Education Coordinator – will be hired. A Board of Directors will be selected, who will then initiate the first annual series of community forums. Community input will be gathered to focus the project’s goals, on an annual basis.

Staff and volunteers select and prepare a demonstration garden, to start the annual crop of vegetable protein. One commercial seed catalog advertises twenty – two varieties of field pea alone. [xi] Companion vegetable plants for field peas, which may serve to protect the peas from pests and increase yields, may include beans, carrots, corn, cucumbers, radishes, and turnips[xii]. Flowers that will complement the vegetables will include marigolds, nasturtiums, and sunflowers[xiii]

Working parallel to the demonstration garden will be the demonstration kitchen, needed to trial recipes and food products attractive to the target populations of Chicago neighborhoods.  For example, field peas with rice may be made into a patty, a sausage, a hoppin’ john, or a loaf. The kitchen will also be available to trial field pea dishes, from cultures around the world with emigres in Chicago that include:

·         India: curry, masala

·         Pakistan: peas with spinach and dill

·         Brazil: akara

·         Indonesia: sambal goreng

·         Kenya: kunde, red red

·         Syria: lubia (has meat)

·         Egypt: loubiya (vegan)

 

The demonstration garden should only bear vegetable plants that are native to the northeast Illinois region. Since rice is only grown in southern Illinois, grains that will complement the legumes (i.e., supplying essential amino acids for which legumes are deficient) include winter wheat, rye, triticale, spelt and oats. [xiv] [xv]

The project will also benefit from use of offices for administrative staff, an auditorium in which consumers and interested parties can attend educational programs, a store for dispensing food product to neighborhood consumers, and a multi – purpose room for other community activities. Project activities will seek to make the project center a community hub, where citizens may come together to share not only food, but also other commonalities with their neighbors.

During year two and three of the project, staff and volunteers will seek to expand the production and distribution of the food products developed in year one, while encouraging community partners (restaurants, schools, hospitality industry training programs, community gardens, urban farms) to use the product. Another linchpin of the project will be the development of student affiliations with metro area vocational and professional training programs, in disciplines that include hospitality, agriculture, horticulture; physical, occupational and speech therapy; nutrition, marketing, and medicine.

The Southern Foodways Alliance Fall Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi,[xvi] will be an ideal forum to review the project and its outcomes, during the final year of the project. A final community forum led by the project Board will draw the project to a close.

Proust’s REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST made famous the madeleine cookie. Now, it’s time to ‘remember’ the field pea.

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[i] “3 Questions: Why Food Is Everything”, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, April 25, 2015. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/150415-jose-andres-three-questions-food-spanish . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[ii] Farmer, Paul, “Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation: An Excerpt from His Book”, Partners in Health, May 1, 2013. https://www.pih.org/article/paul-farmer-speaks-to-the-next-generation-an-excerpt-from-his-new-book . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[iii] Culver, Senator John C., “Seeds and Science: Henry Wallace on Agriculture and Human Progress”, quoted in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 142, No. 117, 8/2/1996, pp. S9644 – S9647. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1996-08-02/html/CREC-1996-08-02-pt1-PgS9644.htm . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[iv] Yong, Ed, “How Public Health Took Part in its Own Downfall”, THE ATLANTIC, October 23, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/how-public-health-took-part-its-own-downfall/620457/. Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[v] “A Guide for Organizing Not – for – Profit Organizations”, Office of the Secretary of State, State of Illinois, March 2020. https://www.ilsos.gov/publications/pdf_publications/c165.pdf . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[vi] Toole, Tucker C., “Grassroots Efforts Take on ‘Food Apartheid’ in Chicago’s South Side”, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, October 8, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/grassroots-activists-take-on-food-apartheid-in-chicagos-south-side. Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[vii] Dalen, James E., Alpert, Joseph E., Goldberg, Robert J. and Weinstein, Ronald S., “The Epidemic of the 20^th Century: Coronary Heart Disease”, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, 127 (9), September 2014, 807-12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24811552/ Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[viii] American Heart Association, “Life’s Essential 8: Your Checklist for Lifelong Good Health”, https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-lifestyle/lifes-essential-8 . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[ix] Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, “Agriculture”. https://www.chicagoagr.org/apps/pages/?uREC_ID=38910&type=d . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[x] Chicago Botanic Garden, “Farm on Ogden”. https://www.chicagobotanic.org/urbanagriculture/farm_on_ogden . Accessed on October 17, 2022.

 

[xi] “Pea, Southern”. Victory Seeds 2022 catalog. https://victoryseeds.com/collections/pea-southern . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[xii] Orabone, Ellen, “Black – Eyed Peas: The Plant, Not the Band”. SUSTAINABLE FOOD CENTER. https://sustainablefoodcenter.org/latest/gardening/black-eyed-peas-the-plant-not-the-band . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[xiii] “Southern Peas (Black – Eyed Peas): How to Grow and When to  Plant in Your Backyard or Patio Garden”. FROM SEED TO SPOON: Growing a Healthy Lifestyle. https://www.seedtospoon.net/how-to-grow-when-to-plant-southern-peas-black-eyed-peas/. Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[xiv] Nafziger, Emerson, “Small Grains and Grain Sorghum”, University of Illinois Cooperative Extension. http://extension.cropsciences.illinois.edu/handbook/pdfs/chapter04.pdf . Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[xv] “What Is a Complete Protein?”, Piedmont. https://www.piedmont.org/living-better/what-is-a-complete-protein. Accessed October 17, 2022.

 

[xvi] Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Mississippi: Center for the Study of Southern Culture. https://www.southernfoodways.org/ Accessed October 17, 2022.