The Co-op Q&A with Chris Kennedy
This month we chatted with one of our website content writers, Christopher Lee Kennedy. He’s a designer and educator based here in Brooklyn. At the Co-op, he lends his interests in nature, design and social-ecological systems as the creator of Farmer Hot Takes, a regular part of the Food+ section of our website (and often featured in this newsletter).
Q: When did you join the Co-op and why did it appeal to you?
A: I joined the Co-op in February 2019. I have been a member of various co-ops here in New York and North Carolina for a number of years. I joined Greene Hill because the ideas of collective ownership, food justice, and equity are incredibly important to me. I believe there’s something quite beautiful about a community coming together to practice alternative forms of economic partnership, and to take charge of how we source food ethically and sustainably. I think this builds not only resilience, but possibility in a time of climate crisis. Plus, I live just down the street currently.
Q: What is your role at the Co-op? Can you tell us a little bit about it?
A: I am on the Website team where I develop stories for the extended Greene Hill community. We’ve been tasked with developing interesting ways to share the Co-op’s mission and vision, and to attract new members.
Q: How does your background prepare you for your Farmer Hot Take interviews?
A: My background is in environmental engineering and design. I worked for a number of years at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation where I conducted water quality monitoring and developed stormwater maps for the Capital District near Albany. After working in the field for some time, I went to graduate school and studied the intersections of environmental education, art and design. Since then I’ve worked as a designer and artist to highlight issues related to urban ecology, climate justice and sustainability.
One of the more recent projects I’m involved with is the Environmental Performance Agency, an artist collective I co-founded in 2017 and named in response to the ongoing rollback of federal environmental policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Appropriating the acronym “EPA,” our goal is to shift thinking around the terms environment, performance, and agency — using artistic, social, and embodied practices to advocate for the agency of all living performers co-creating our environment, specifically through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant. (The group includes Catherine Grau, Andrea Haenggi and Ellie Irons). I also work at the New School University where I serve as the assistant director at the Urban Systems Lab, an interdisciplinary research and practice space focused on developing more equitable, resilient, and sustainable cities.
Q: What aspects of our food system are you most interested in writing about?
A: The Farmer Hot Takes column was imagined as a way to connect Greene Hill Food Co-op members with some of the local farmers the Co-op has a relationship with. I’ve recently extended this to feature local activists and organizers working toward food justice in various ways. At this particular moment, I’m thinking a lot about soil and soil health, and also ruderal landscape -- the in-between spaces in New York like vacant lots, highway medians and sidewalk cracks. We’re at this crucial crossroads where monoculture industrial farming is no longer a viable option for sustained coexistence on the planet, so we need to look to our past and future for guidance: to traditional ecological knowledge that honors indigenous communities and ways of knowing, and also to new advances in permaculture and urban farming. There’s also so much wisdom we can glean from plants and organisms on the margins; they are the climate survivors and can show us how to adapt and thrive in a time of extinction.
Q: What do you enjoy doing outside of the Co-op?
A: I have been a member of the NY Mycological Society for over ten years. Founded in the late 1950s by John Cage and Guy Nearing, it’s one of the largest mushroom clubs in the country. I love going on forays and hunts in some of the local parks and landscapes in NYC. One of my favorite hikes is to Mount Beacon or the Blue Mountains outside of Peekskill — and also to Dead Horse Bay to see what treasures unfold as the tides expose subterranean landfills from the 1940 and 50s.