If you gaze into the depths of the food system too long, you might begin feeling dizzy. It can make a person uneasy to learn about and recognize the inequality and privilege related to the ways we get (or are unable to get) our food. While the maze-like relationships between all the actors within the food system usually serve to confuse, disenchant or even perturb us, they also offer opportunity. Untangling this mess requires innovative and creative ideas that address the root cause of problems.

One opportunity we have is to learn how to grow food, again. Only 100 years ago, 90 percent of folks in the U.S. farmed. Only four generations later, and less than 2 percent of us do. Such a shift has essentially eliminated the knowledge and connection we have with our food. Cultivation is an activity that can bring us back to not only our own roots, but to humanity’s roots. Cultivation, the act of caring for the land, can reveal more than just knowledge of plants. It can help bring food politics into perspective.

By planting and harvesting food, we are contextualizing what and how we eat. Understanding California’s current drought is easier when you see your own garden shriveled and wilted. You can grow on your apartment balcony, in your backyard or on campus. Gardening can be as easy as potting your favorite herb or watering a tomato start. For those looking for ways to dirty their fingernails and soil-stain their knees, try tending a plot at the Experimental College Gardens or volunteering at the Student Farm on campus. Both will provide the opportunity to experiment, make mistakes and look at our food differently.

We can also gain perspective by actively working to remove the blindfold that obscures need and hunger within the food system. For some, this blindfold never existed or was removed long ago. For others, removing the blindfold starts with realizing we are wearing one to begin with.

The number one cause of hunger in our own country, and worldwide, is inequality. A popular phrase within the food movement is “food deserts,” or places where folks lack adequate physical access to healthy food. Some critics retorted that “food deserts” are more akin to “money deserts.” Food that is physically accessible is not always financially accessible.

To address this issue on campus, students formed The Pantry, which serves as a resource to fight against the rising costs of education by providing high-protein, non-perishable foods to any UC Davis student in need. Clubs, sororities, fraternities and other student groups can volunteer to “Adopt-a-week” by volunteering staffing hours. The Pantry isn’t the only food bank creatively reaching out to communities in need.

The Food Bank of Yolo County is addressing hunger through youth programs. They offer the Kids Farmers Market, an after-school program that not only educates children about nutrition but provides them a minimum of 10 pounds of free produce to take home once a week. The program treats children as partners in addressing food access, education and nutrition in a meaningful way.

Varied perspectives can influence large-scale laws and regulations that support a just food system. Recently, Michelle Obama announced a revamped nutritional label for all packaged foods that accurately conveys health information to consumers. The proposed changes correct the cunning ways food corporations have manipulated information for decades.

The new label would require differentiating between naturally occurring sugars (such as those derived from fruits) and added sugars (such as high fructose corn syrup). Serving sizes would also change to reflect actual consumption and container size. For example, a 12-ounce and 20-ounce soda are both considered one serving size, because the entire bottle is usually drunk in one sitting. Labels would also be required to list nutrition information for “one serving” as well as “servings in this container.”

Large, powerful companies like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are obviously unhappy with the changes — and they should be. They profit off of misinformation. Thankfully, large scale changes are beginning to reflect the increased awareness and concern around food system issues.

Start widening your perspective by emailing ELLEN PEARSON at erpearson@ucdavis.edu. You can also follow her thoughts at peardaughter.wordpress.com.

Purchasing health insurance is essential to make sure that you are prepared for any worst case medical situations, and by law every American is now required to get covered. If left uncovered in the case of a serious medical emergency, you could be saddled with staggering medical bills. If you are without insurance, you have until March 31 to find and sign up for a plan. While this might sound like a daunting task, it is essential that you get covered and it is easier than you might think. Remember that if you are on your parent’s health insurance plan you can stay on it until you are 26, and if not you can still enroll in the Davis SHIP plan if you are a registered UC Davis student. But if you are graduating and can’t stay on your parent’s insurance, or otherwise find yourself without insurance, there are a lot of questions you probably have about the next step. Here are some key tips for finding affordable health insurance:

1. Check out options at the Covered California Marketplace. These plans include coverage for doctor visits, hospitalizations, maternity care, emergency room care, prescriptions and more. You can see all of this information online at https://www.coveredca.com/

2. Find out about financial help that’s available. On Covered California’s website, you can find out if you qualify for financial assistance to lower your costs.

3. Use Covered California to compare plans side-by-side. The new marketplace lists your options on one website, and shows what each plan covers.

4. Take advantage of expert help in-person, online, or by phone. Specially trained people are available across the state to help you apply and understand your options. Find them at https://www.coveredca.com/enrollment-assistance/ .

5. Don’t take no for an answer. Insurance companies can no longer deny you due to a pre-existing condition. If an insurance agent tells you that you can’t sign up because you are sick, they are breaking the law.

6. The sooner you enroll, the sooner coverage starts. If you enroll by March 15 your coverage will start April 1st. But if you enroll between March 15 and March 31 your coverage doesn’t start until May 1.

If you’re from outside California, all of these tips still apply, but you should check out https://www.healthcare.gov instead.

Health care reforms have given consumers a variety of new protections nationwide that they didn’t have before. In addition to being able to stay on your parents’ plan until you are 26, these are other key consumer protections:

Free preventive care, including check-ups and vaccinations

Insurance companies can’t set a lifetime cap on what they’ll pay if you get sick

Rebates if your insurance company spends less than 80 percent of premiums on care

No more annual caps on what your insurer will pay if you get sick

Insurance companies can’t charge women more than men for coverage

To learn more about Davis SHIP and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), check out our information online at http://shcs.ucdavis.edu/pdf/davisship-aca.pdf

To find out more about the ACA and Covered California, check out CALPIRG Education Fund’s full Health Insurance 101 guide online at http://www.calpirg.org/resources/cap/so-you-need-health-insurance-now-what .

Zach Weinstein
Health Care Associate, CALPIRG

Dr. Michelle S. Famula
Executive Director, Health and Wellness
University of California, Davis

Twelve months ago, former Editor in Chief Janelle Bitker published a Letter from the Editor that began with: “There will be no issue of The California Aggie outside your lecture the first day of spring quarter. Or the next day. Or the next day.”

I never thought I’d be saying the same thing.

The California Aggie is suspending its print edition and staff pay for Spring Quarter. As of today, everyone who works for The Aggie is a volunteer for a digital newspaper. We’ll still be publishing news online and updating our social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) as if we had a printed edition of our paper.

Yes, the fee referendum passed — thanks to you. Yes, after a couple of weeks, the Office of the President finally has the Vice Chancellor and Chancellor-approved referendum. But guess what: Spring Quarter tuition and fees have already been issued. In the language of the bill, it is explicitly stated that the funds would have come into play in the spring.

The Aggie does not have enough money to continue printing or to pay its staff without going into a larger debt than anticipated. We fought the good fight during the campaign and got our referendum passed by the student population in the name of journalism.

After a debilitating political quarter for The Aggie, we know that with the (hopefully) incoming fee, we have to prepare. And by eliminating expenses, we now have the time to reorganize the staff, approach projects we never had time for and have the conversations that need to happen with regard to the future of the paper.

For the first time, The Aggie will be able to train its incoming managing staff effectively, including an Editor in Chief that will hopefully be selected before the final week of this quarter. During this time, Campus Media Board will also be recruiting the professional business staff member we anticipate hiring with the incoming fee.

It’s an extremely frustrating situation, but we’re not going to spend our time defeated and disappointed. It’s a bittersweet decision, and we hope we have your support. No newspaper should ever have to go through the political wringer that we went through and continue to experience. We hope that this situation never repeats itself within ASUCD or the UC Davis Administration.

ELIZABETH ORPINA is open to questions and concerns at editor@theaggie.org.

Linda P.B. Katehi recently mentioned via email that she would like to hear about hate crimes occurring on our campus. To stop further hate crimes, I demand that she disband police patrols, stop student surveillance and fire Officer S.R. Terry.

The following occurred Thursday, March 6 between 7:15 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. on Orchard Park Road.

I heard shouting outside on the street. I went outside and saw two police cars and a police bicycle; five cops total. A Hispanic male student (whom we shall refer to as “C”) was being held in front of the nearest car with two police officers trying to question him. He was not cooperating and was shouting that his rights were being violated. He was demanding to speak to a lawyer, shouting for help. I later found out that he and his companion had been stopped because they were smoking Swisher Sweets, and Officer S.R. Terry allegedly smelled marijuana. Though even after a thorough search of both victims and the premises, it was not evident that any was actually found.

The other officers put C’s companion, an African Muslim student (whom we shall refer to as “P”), in the back of the second squad car and came over to help search C. They forced him onto the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was shouting in pain, and they tasered him. He had five officers on top of him as they tried to remove his backpack, go through his pockets, and take his shoes. When he got up there was blood on the sidewalk from the police beating him to submission. They put him in the squad car, and waited until the fire department and an ambulance arrived.

Another passerby saw the incident and asked what was going on. He tried to talk to P but one of the cops said “It’s against the law to talk to prisoners,” and told him to leave. This is a lie and an abuse of police power to intimidate the public.

A medical examination was performed on C. The paramedics gave him a neck brace and put him on a stretcher; they moved him to the ambulance and drove away escorted by the first police car. The paramedics also wiped up the blood from the sidewalk. The second car stayed behind and the officers searched the area.

While P was in the car, I heard the bike cop S. R. Terry make several racial slurs including “He’s shouting jihad” (in reference to P speaking in Arabic). Eventually they let P out of the squad car and had him sign a citation for marijuana possession, even though he had none.

Two police officers approached me separately to ask if I had witnessed anything; I refused to speak to them.

The second car and the bike cop left with no sign of the injustice that had been committed except a small drop of blood that the paramedics missed.

With the law on their side, it seems like the police are entitled to do whatever they want. I feel powerless, I’m scared, and I don’t feel safe around the people who are supposedly here to protect and serve.

There are lots of ways of understanding the universe. I always see Life & Style magazines everywhere, and I realize that those are pictures of how I am supposed to comprehend life. I make this hypothesis based on supply and demand. American society will be given the type of philosophy it craves, much in the same way a mother might feed her developing preschooler boxed macaroni and cheese, Doritos, and ice cream every night. Clearly, these glossy pages of gossip are how people want to think about humanity, and they are so provided.

However, for the sake of everything that isn’t social media and supermodels, I would like to propose an alternative. I proposition that we understand the universe not in the way that only satisfies our simulation-hungary id. I suggest a thing called reading.

I can watch Girls and get a solid look at bourgeois, white, indie kids who live in New York City. I receive this with a grain of nudity, well-placed clothing shout-outs and background music. Then again, I could also read Catcher in the Rye and stay on the same theme of melancholy, hedonistic griping about privilege. In that case, I would have a small book that smelt of cigarettes for which I paid $1 from the local SPCA thrift store. However, in watching the Catcher In the Rye movie that played in my mind while I was reading, I was the director, philosopher and general decision maker. I decided if the characters had big or small noses, what their accents were, how the houses looked. I was basically Lena Dunham.

“I Can” watch Nas rap about colonialism on YouTube and see cute little kids sing along to a track about a history of oppression with “Für Elise” playing shyly for four and a half minutes. I could also pick up a copy of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It would take me about a week to experience an insignificantly small portion of the horror that went on in Nigeria and I could feel culture, passion, rage, confusion and empathy for something that I can’t even really understand. I can’t even be personally connected to these experiences, but the book can make me feel emotions to such an extent that I get frustrated with my own skin color. It makes me think to myself, should I feel guilty?

I can flip go through the pictures of what people wore at the Oscars and be amazed at the ornateness of the dresses, how regal money can make people look and how different I look from the units of perfection I see before me. On the other hand, I could read The Great Gatsby and get to go to incredible parties myself, albeit in my head, and have love affairs with the characters I read before me. Instead of comparing myself to a picture without context of character, morality or circumstance, I get to experience the tumultuous situation of love, isolation and money. In comparison, staring at pictures of expensive dresses might make me feel vapid and empty.

I can turn on any “Real Housewives” episode and be entrenched in gossip and betrayal fed to me through the bodies of unsophisticated pseudo-actors on the fame train. They will no doubt be beautiful and rich, probably dependent on their husbands with so little work experience that they are uncomfortably intrigued by their maids. Instead, however, I could hear a maid tell a heart wrenching tale of love, loss, fortune and magic in Wuthering Heights. I can imagine my own version of what a beautiful, rich, dependent person looks like. Moreover, I don’t have to forcibly forget that everything I see on my TV screen is actually scripted. No, my delightfully deceitful characters have an acknowledged team of screenwriters, that being Emily Brontë and I.

What I mean to conclude is simply that there exist ways of getting our animalistic fixes. I want to hear about cheating wives, murder and self-indulgent complaining. I admittedly enjoy stories about those things. That being said, these stories can be sold in much less simple ways. Reading is one of the few ways that humans can both learn about the universe and create their own universe using their minds. There is a time and a place for everything, I would just encourage everyone to make sure that picking up a book is one of them.

Thank you to everyone who read my column this quarter, to The Aggie for giving me this incredible opportunity and to all past, present and future authors.

To read with EREN KAVVAS, you can email her at ebkavvas@ucdavis.edu or read along at her blog, atlas4wanderingminds.blogspot.com.