Met School Student Highlights ‘Our Vulnerability’
By KYLE HENCE/ecoRI News staff
NEWPORT — Friday evening the documentary film “Food Inc.” was screened to a packed house at Empire Tea & Coffee. The free screening was the third in an environmentally themed film series organized by East Bay Met School student Corrine Clapper, as part of her senior thesis project.
The final film, “Fuel,” will be screened Feb. 3 at 6 p.m. at Empire Tea & Coffee.
“People don’t realize how vulnerable they are,” said Clapper, noting the scant three-day food supply in Rhode Island should shipments cease for whatever reason. “But people are talking about it and that’s what’s important.”
Clapper is a member of The East Bay Met School Green Team, a group of 17 students active in local food, waste, energy and water issues. Each learns real-world skills through internships.
For the past two years, Taylor Rock, the school’s Green Team coordinator, has helped students incubate their ideas for real-world change. In the past year, the team has earned three awards: a $1,000 grant from Britta to reduce plastics at the school; an EPA Environmental Merit Award; and a Citizens of the Year Award from the Aquidneck Island Watershed Council.
Nominated for an Oscar in 2008, “Food Inc.” is a stunning and graphic indictment of the industrial food system. While the images are disturbing, the arguments and facts are compellingly and persuasively presented.
Eric Schlosser traces the roots of the system to the impact of fast food. “These big, big fast-food chains want big suppliers. And now there are essentially a handful of companies controlling our food system.”
“Industrial food is not honest food,” said Joel Salatin, who runs a small family farm in Virginia and advocates for local food across the nation. “It’s not priced honestly; it’s not produced honestly; it’s not processed honestly. There’s nothing honest about that food.”
“It’s pretty scary,” said Brendon Simmons during a panel discussion following the film. “It pisses me off, something that big that controls us like that.”
Simmons, 18, works on the family’s Simmons Farm in Middletown, the largest organic farm on Aquidneck Island. He said the farm’s community-supported agriculture (CSA) program features organic eggs, vegetables and meat that are provided to members who buy a share in the weekly bounty.
Two Met School students, senior Abby Bianchi and junior Maggie Havey, joined Simmons on the stage following the two-hour screening. Each described their experiences growing food locally — Bianchi with hydroponic growing systems at Salve Regina University and the Met School and Havey at a local church community garden.
“I have a passion for sustainable food production,” said Bianchi, before showing off a bag of hydroponic kale she had just harvested. Bianchi described a scientific regimen of daily water testing and logging of data from the system she monitors under the tutelage of Salve Regina professor Jameson Chace.