Ayana Curran-Howes is a second-year Ph.D. studentin Food Systems working with Dan Tobin, Assistant Professor of Community Development and Applied Economics. She came to ÈÕº«ÎÞÂë with a wealth of professional experience working in museums, conservation nonprofits, and food systems programs. Ayana earned her BA in Biology from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and graduated with her MS in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Michigan. Ayana’s current research interests focus on exploring ethical and politically engaged agroecological movements within the United States.
1. What current food systems research are you conducting?
As a second-year Ph.D. student, I am in the throes of building out my proposal. Currently, I am really interested in exploring what an ethical, politically engaged agroecological movement looks like in the U.S., specifically with small-scale farmers in Vermont, and building this out theoretically and empirically. I think one of the most promising attributes of agroecology is that it is highly relationship-based. Consequently, I plan to look at the impact of farmers’ relationships with their peers, farm animals, consumers, and their land itself on holistic farm sustainability (ecological, economic, and social) and farmer holistic health (i.e., physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual). So often, only the economic success and physical constitution of farmers (and any sort of laborer, really) is considered relevant, but by not looking at the whole system of the farm or the farmer, we are likely missing some important data that could help us build a more just, healthy, viable food system.
The other things that intrigue me most about agroecology are that it is politically engaged and pushes the bounds of what is possible for farmers and the environment under capitalist systems. Thus, I will be looking at what farmers imagine for rural and urban agroecological spaces both physically through landscape design and epistemologically through storytelling. Farmers do not often get the time to think into the future, make plans beyond the growing season, but this is critical for long-term sustainability. If we don’t imagine a better a future, it is not likely to spontaneously occur.
This work fits in really nicely with a research project I am working on with my advisor, Dan Tobin where we are looking at all the myriad values farmers are motivated by besides just self-interest and profit, which are largely the levers policy currently addresses. Through the creation of a scale we hope to understand more fully farmers’ relationships with their land, environment, workers, customers, etc. so that policies can address more than yield and profit maximization for improving holistic sustainability (economic, ecological, and social).
2. What got you interested in food systems research?
I grew up slightly food insecure and with a deep love for animals and the environment so I fixated on the importance of food and ethical food growing up, managing multiple concerns of cost, personal and environmental health, and ethics. Scarred by accounts and videos of what happens to farmworkers and farm animals within industrial meat production, I had thought about being a lawyer to shut down confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and slaughterhouses or being a large animal vet, but felt it would be too hard to work in such close proximity to pain. After getting a degree in biology and working for a conservation nonprofit I was compelled to focus my social and environmental justice work I was doing in the content area that mattered most to me, food systems. So I pursued a masters and now a PhD where I see agriculture as the essential entry-point for developing a collective, reflective consciousness that works generatively and recognizes the current system is not working well for nearly anyone besides agribusinesses.
3. How is your FSRC-funded research impacting Vermonters?
I hope my research provides some new language to talk about things I think many farmers already realize, that connection with one another and the more-than-human world is imperative for resilience. Using this language, I hope for my research to open up a whole new realm of policies that can help make small-scale, sustainable agriculture possible for people, especially those who have been displaced and discriminated against in terms of land access, lending, and systems of knowledge and power. I think if we start using other, more meaningful types of data outside of profit, and valuing other things, the people that will be able to enter the conversation will be more diverse, and we can all work together to build a brighter future. The every town project and the new land access and opportunity board give me hope.
4. Where do you see the role of your field in expanding research on food systems at ÈÕº«ÎÞÂë and beyond?
The beautiful thing about being transdisciplinary is that I am not siloed into any one field. Simply by bringing together the disciplines of philosophy, anthropology, and political agroecology, I am expanding what food systems research looks like. I hope to expand the types of data and ways of doing research that are often extractive and reductive. I will be using deep qualitative and creative work that will hopefully break down barriers of who is/isn’t a scientist and what does/doesn’t count as data in academia.
5. What is something about you people would be surprised to learn?
That I have zero interest in downhill skiing. I find skydiving less scary. But you can catch me on the trails xc skiing with my dog this winter!
6. What’s your favorite thing about living in Vermont?
My favorite thing is that I don’t have much to complain about. Good views, coffee, food, people…what else can one ask for?
7. What TV show, band/artist, podcast, video game, book, and/or anything are you most obsessed with right now?
The final season of Atlanta does not disappoint and I’m always obsessed with Donald Glover. I am a comedy nut, but always late to pop culture, so I just watched Bo Burnham’s Inside and am looking forward to watching the new Hasan Minhaj special.
