By Hannah Crooks
When she is not taking her teenage daughters on trips to the mall or playing bluegrass and jazz with one of the many instruments she has learned to play, author Brandi Janssen’s life is consumed with a passion for environmental sustainability, agriculture, and farm safety.
Janssen’s book, Making Local Food Work: The Challenges and Opportunities of Today’s Small Farmers, from which she will read at Prairie Lights on Friday, focuses on her direct research with small farms and farmers and how they balance profitability, consumer accessibility, and environmental sustainability.
Stemming from her experience living on a farm, Janssen’s desire to learn about the world around her began early on.
“I grew up on a farm. I spent a lot of time outside,” she said. “I’m trained as an anthropologist, so I like to see how [ecological systems and human social systems] fit together, and that also lends itself to an environmental focus. I am also interested in agriculture, and a big piece of that is how we can continue to grow food in a way that is not environmentally destructive. That is a challenge.”
The research questions that kick-started her book originated from a family trip to a pumpkin patch in southern Illinois.
“There was farm equipment sitting out that kids climbed on,” Janssen said. “It was the first time I had been to a place like that, and as a person who grew up on a farm, I found it strange that you would open your farm to the public and let people climb all over your equipment. When I went back to graduate school and I was thinking about research questions, I thought about the different strategies small farms are using to stay successful.”
Making Local Food Work was not originally intended to be in book form. The project began as a dissertation and was later rewritten into a book to gain a wider audience. Janssen described the rewriting process as unexpectedly difficult, but the result was worth it.
“The experience has been kind of surreal,” the author said. “In some ways, the dissertation was easier to write. [Transitioning it into a book] forced me to go back, and think about the audience, and rewriting it for a more accessible style. Dissertations are not interesting to read, so the goal of the book was to make it something that’s a little bit more interesting but also to think for a broader audience.”
In addition to being an author, an advocate for local food systems, and a clinical assistant professor in the UI Occupational and Environmental Health Department, Janssen is also the director of Iowa’s Center for Agricultural Safety and Health.
“When you think about sustainable agriculture, the environmental component is one piece, but the social piece is another, and worker safety is part of that,” Janssen said. “Basically, we do education and outreach related to farm safety and public health. Agriculture, as an occupation, kills more people than any other industry in the state. There’s a need for our work.”
Janssen said the center commits to helping farmers understand safe farming practices that are also environmentally safe. Center members work to show farmers that dangerous practices are not worth the potential profits.
“Because most of our farms are small-scale, they are usually outside of the occupational-safety and health-regulation structure,” she said. “It then falls on the farmer to implement these practices on his or her own, and sometimes it’s easier to do these things in a way that is less safe. It’s our to job to convince them otherwise.”
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque
Cost: Free