10th Annual Melon Forum | April 12, 2023

On April 12, 2023, from 5:00 – 7:00 P.M., the Yale Sustainable Food Program hosted its tenth annual Melon Forum at St. Anthony Hall, where ten Yale seniors presented senior theses relating to food and agriculture: Gavrielle Welbel, Meredith Ryan, Kayleigh Larsen, Brianna Jefferson, Ben Christensen, Catherine Webb, Caroline Beit, and Lucie Warga, majoring in subjects from Environmental Studies to Economics. Raphael Berz and Michael Min contributed their prospectuses to our 2023 Melon Forum brochure. Virginia Davis ’23 planned and led the event. The students’ projects ranged across disciplines, methodologies, and theories, utilizing novel approaches to tackling wicked problems in food systems. To view the Melon Forum brochure, please visit this link.

Lucie Warga ’22 began the event with her presentation, assessing the socio-political climate influencing school nutrition standards in the last decade. Drawing from archival research and discussing cultural norms, Warga engaged in an interdisciplinary exploration of food standards for students in U.S. schools.

Following Warga, Meredith Ryan ’22 explained how she used remote sensing and Google Earth Engine to analyze how the Russia-Ukraine war impacted agricultural production in Ukraine. Ryan used sensing technologies to analyze different types of wavelengths absorbed and reflected by chlorophyll in regions of interest to determine the impact of the war on agricultural yields. 

Presentations focused not only on fluctuations in geography, but also on their shifting relationships with the people and environments around them. Catherine Webb ’22 highlighted the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, a collective of six Shinnecock women  who work to steward the land amidst “social geographies of antagonists and potential allies,” she wrote. Their ancestral relationship with kelp guides their present-day work in kelp farming. Themes of protection, spirituality, and connection imbued Catherine’s thoughtful presentation. 

“You can’t talk about hunger without talking about race,” said Kayleigh Larsen ’22. Larsen’s presentation explored American food politics, activism, and power from 1964 – 1973. Through three case studies—one of which highlighted the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program—she examined how grassroots organizers used food systems to contest values of an oppressive society. 

Next, Gavrielle Welbel ’22 presented their long-term research on rock weathering in agricultural settings through analyzing carbon dioxide removal, crop yields, and soil pH. In conjunction with a team of researchers and farmers, Welbel studies rock weathering at Zumwalt Acres, a farm which they co-steward in Sheldon, IL.

Next, Brianna Jefferson ’22—advised by YSFP Director Mark Bomford—presented on the intersections of hydroponics and environmental justice. Through interviews with companies in the Northeast and Florida, Jefferson investigated large hydroponic companies’ purported commitment to environmental justice and local communities. She found that while the companies’ commitments were largely opaque, they did at times positively impact communities by providing job opportunities in underserved areas. 

Jefferson’s presentation was followed by Caroline Beit ’22, whose project on the history of breastfeeding in American prisons tracked court cases and political visions of breastfeeding. Studying the racialized double-standards of white and Black women breastfeeding their children, Beit analyzed the effects of court decisions that have affected the accessibility and legality of breastfeeding in carceral settings. While breastfeeding has been repeatedly criminalized, other court decisions have elevated breastfeeding as a constitutional right. 

Finally, Ben Christenen ’22 presented a graph-theoretical project on human population clusters as a function of geography. “People tend to live where they can grow food,” he said. Christensen  used computational methods to explore the geographic conditions conducive to supporting large populations, and considered if natural geographic clusters correlated with canonical ideas of “regions.” 

Around forty students gathered to watch these seniors present their culminatingYale academic works. The YSFP provided wine, a variety of cheeses, and sweet treats. We hope you’ll join us next year at our 11th annual Melon Forum. 

To view photos from the event, please follow this link. Photos by Reese Neal ’25. 

All Pib Slow Play: A sedimentation of history and sound | Friday, April 15th

On April 15th, 2022, from 3:00-5:00 P.M., the YSFP hosted a workday followed by an event called “All Pib Slow Play: A sedimentation of history and sound,” organized by  MFA student Miguel Gaydosh, SOA ‘22, which featured pibil style cooking. In the early afternoon, volunteers started off the workday by preparing for and planting strawberries. They used “flamethrowers” to cut perfectly shaped holes in a black tarp, laid the tarps over a lower field, and planted strawberries in the circular openings. Using silver rods, they pushed the yellowed, spindly roots of the nascent strawberries into the dirt and packed them in with their fingers into the wet mud, careful to leave the fragile web of roots intact and buried deep in the dirt, but the green bud at the top exposed to the sunlight. Long-time  and first-time workday participants squatted side by side over the bunched tarps and planted three rows of strawberries; conversation sprouted between graduate students at the School of  the Environment, farm managers, and first-years meeting each other for the first time. 

At 4:00 PM, volunteers migrated upwards to the Lazarus Pavilion, where the culinary events team had been hard at work preparing food for the event, alongside Guatemalan chef Sandra of La Cocina de Sandra, her husband, and her son. The family slow-cooked some truly spectacular food for the undergrads and many School of Art students in attendance. Throughout the event, Sandra stood supervising several large silver pots with an array of bowls full of chopped and diced vegetables, steam billowing out; she was working on preparing pupusas and tamales. In front of the Farm’s brick oven, culinary events managers heated up a silver tray full of cilantro and lime rice, slowly stirred a basin of beans, and cooked Guatemalan-style chow mein. At the wooden picnic tables, Catherine Rutherfurd ’22 mashed coconut rice pudding she made in a tray with gloved hands. Underneath our chalk sign sat a few pots of agua de jamaica (hibicus water). As all this culinary goodness unfolded, Miguel and his fellow students soundtracked the event with slowed Xumbia and ambient music, reflecting the slow cooking which was happening in the pib. 

Back behind all the action under the Lazarus Pavilion was the star of the event: the pib. Before the event began, culinary events managers took turns digging into the hardened earth to create a 3-feet-wide by 3-feet-deep pit. Once it was dug, the pit was lined with rings of stones stacked atop each other. The team then lit a fire at the bottom of the pib, which heated the stones for several hours and created tons of hot coals. Attendees dropped in sweet potatoes, wrapped in banana leaves and tinfoil, directly over the coals and rocks. Miguel and others then worked together to cover the potatoes with the soil, leaving them to cook underground for an hour. After digging up part of the pit and finding they weren’t yet fully cooked, we re-covered the potatoes with soil for another hour or so, letting them bake underground in the slow cooking pibil style. When the potatoes were finished, they were smothered in honey butter with Cobanero chili and lime. The event was a beautiful fulfillment of Miguel’s vision, which intended in part to teach, practice, and evolve a tradition long held by his Guatemalan family.

Big thank you to Miguel; Sandra and her family; Geo Barrios, who helped organize this event; and everyone who turned out to make this event such a beautifully unique and meaningful evening on the Farm. 

Photographs by Reese Neal ‘25. To view all the photos, please follow this link.

Post by Sarah Feng ‘25.