Multimedia lexicon demystifies language of sustainable food, farming

PETALUMA - Providing visual tools to help people understand unfamiliar words surrounding the growing sustainable food industry is the goal of the Lexicon of Sustainability.

This project by Douglas and Laura Howard-Gayeton was featured at the North Bay Business Journal’s Food & Ag Industry Conference Nov. 4 in Santa Rosa.

Today, many have difficulty differentiating between “pasture-raised,” “free-range “and “cage-free” poultry-raising, or what “monoculture,” “biodiversity” and “permaculture” really mean.

For example, a chef working at the Google campus learned about the term “pasture management” from the Lexicon and changed the purchasing procedures for the Google campus kitchens to sourcing locally from sustainable producers for all the company’s meat. “Ash-free” has become a term utilized by policy-makers in Washington, D.C., as a result of learning the term from a Project Localize student who created it for her Lexicon information artwork in a Boyle County, Ky., high school.

“We moved to Sonoma County to start a food business and created Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream Company in 2004 because we wanted to make a healthy dessert and be good land stewards while giving our animals the very best care,” Laura Howard-Gayeton said. “We found that it was hard to source the kind of ingredients that met our sustainability standards. Now, a decade later, the natural food industry is everywhere and while there are folks working hard to make better raw materials, there is still a desperate need for more transparency in the supply chain, as well as a deep need to educate all consumers about how their food is made, and what happens to our environment in the process. So we created the Lexicon of Sustainability to illustrate these issues.”

The Gayetons are dedicated to taking back the true meaning of sustainability, one term at a time, while operating from their Petaluma-based goat farm. They founded the Lexicon of Sustainability (LexiconOfSustainability.com) in 2009 to guide the project emanating from a series of barns on their property to worldwide availability supported by a team of passionate lexicographers, researchers, artists, filmmakers and sustainability experts.

To provide the visual components to deliver their messages, they formed Rumplefarm, the production company that produces the Lexicon. She is the producer, farmer, entrepreneur and executive director of the Lexicon. She pioneered the art of multilayered narrative approaches to film and video during her career as a producer of advertising commercials.

Douglas is an information architect, filmmaker, photographer and writer who has created award-winning work described as being “at the boundaries of traditional and converging media” since the early ’90s. He is the director of the Know Your Food series for PBS (pbs.org/food/features/lexicon-of-sustainability-episodes) and author of video productions “Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town” and the recently released “Local: The New Face of Food & Farming in America” (lexiconofsustainability.com/short-films).

Together the Gayeton duo and their Lexicon team are developing a grassroots collection of personal stories about people who are developing sustainable food and farming solutions, including topics ranging from food waste to organics and seeds to land trusts. This series has expanded to the web forming a repository of knowledge where people can go to create their own sustainable communities, stimulate dialogue and share their ideas about food, best practices, soil and a host of other subjects that will soon include a dedicated Lexicon of Water and a Lexicon of Energy.

The Lexicon translates ideas into informational artwork that become popup shows appearing across America at farmer’s markets, fairs, community art events and other venues. Students, teachers and others wanting to activate their communities and create conversations around bold new ideas curate each pop up site. Volunteers take this new graphic lexicon to the streets as posters and billboards, or place them on easels at local community art exhibits.

“We have dedicated hundreds of sets of our artwork to folks who want to host a Lexicon Popup Art Show. To qualify for a free set, curators promise to host six shows in their communities and donate the posters to a school when they’re done. However, most of our curators organize many more than six shows. Colleen Morich, in Decatur, Ga., is on show number 140! We are so grateful to be part of such a vibrant movement of people dedicated to rebuilding sustainable communities.”

The Lexicon of Sustainability has hosted more than 1,324 popup shows since 2013, and 1,100-plus students have participated in Project Localize, the curriculum designed to teach kids how to document and participate in their local foodshed. That is the geographic region that produces food for a particular population, often associated with “eat local” or “locavore” campaigns.

By focusing on the local foodshed, volunteer curators research, create and share captivating “hero” stories. The Lexicon has led two student delegations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Capitol Hill to promote sustainable food and agriculture practices.

Curators are typically people looking to host an event and find that art is a great way to gather people around ideas and to get conversations started about issues that everyone can relate to. The Gayetons believe strengthening communities starts with getting people together.

Through the related Lexicon of Food web portal (LexiconOfFood.com), visitors can see what sustainable food systems really look like. That resource dives deeply into the subject of sustainable food systems and provides edibles education on topics such as the zero-waste movement, Meatless Mondays and raw vs. cooked vegetables.

This mobile device–friendly platform has been created for social utility so students and business leaders interested in an authentic and transparent knowledgebank of food and farming have a place to go to define terms in ways that can easily be explained, shared and attributed.

So that “the language of food cannot be abused by special interests.” Laura Howard-Gayeton said.

The Lexicon of Sustainability mission statement says words without meaning are just letters floating in space. One should understand the words related to food, learn their meaning, discover the people behind them and find links to other ideas and words that might change one’s life, she said.

“We’re creating a new lexicon that connects online viewers, those who see our artwork and others who attend live seminars, with the people and principles that define sustainability,” she said.

What the Gayetons started six years ago has become a viral movement with no fixed center. This idea emerged in response to a trend as people reclaim the soil and discover new farming schools of thought. Now people are learning from the Lexicon about who grows their food or how to grow it themselves in their own gardens or on city rooftops.

“Information transforms societies, and that process begins with each one of us,” Laura Howard-Gayeton said. “Words can change the world, and the Lexicon is about understanding the benefits and advantages of sustainability when it comes to our food and lifestyle.”

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