Millennial Agriculture Projects (pending funding)

Here, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, it is time for a renewed trek across the country, this one devoted to delivering both food and the word to every town, large and small.  Our care-a-van, which we are calling M.A.P.—short for Millennial Agriculture Projects (as well as Mighty Agricultural Pilgrimage)—will visit towns and cities, large and small, across Oregon—and, eventually, across the country—delivering plant-based, non-GMO food, in an effort to work with citizens across the state to reinvigorate the culture within agriculture.  In collaboration with local farmers, beekeepers, and artisans, local specialties will be incorporated into festive, nutritious meals served in situ by chefs celebrated as innovators capable of reconfiguring the edible world with delicious, aesthetically delightful food as well as new and exciting ways of eating and thinking about the world and its future. 

The truck will run from spring through fall and will feature a large extendable awning, long wooden tables and chairs, and beautiful dishes, all meant to give participants an unforgettable culinary experience.

M.A.P. events will be led by a range of people working together—chefs, nutritionists, writers, musicians, and artists—and may include competitions, bake-offs, and test kitchens.  The Institute intends to hold roundtable discussions on these eating occasions as well, pulling together some of the most exciting new philosophies of food, nourishment, and sustainability, understood in terms of community, identity, and value as well as the work of artists who have made food and eating the subject of their work.  In tandem with this venture, the Institute will sponsor a vegetarian/vegan still life series that intends to do for legumes, tofu, grains, and bread what Dutch, German, and Italian still lifes have long done for dead game. 

All in all, we seek to work together with a significant number of like-minded people to rethink and reconsider the social, artistic, aesthetic, philosophical, and civilizing dimensions of plant and animal cultivation that, until recently, were largely inseparable from it.