Category Archives: Denial

Political Lands and Foods; Indigenous Communities in Brazil as Land Defenders

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Bananas, sugar cane, palm oil, soy– theses are just some of the foods tied to the deracination of indigenous communities from their ancestral lands. Land rights for indigenous peoples in Latin America have always been contentious as territories have been appropriated for use of farming, natural resource and extractive industries, and other uses not originally intended by their original populations. While companies like the United Fruit Company quickly and other multinational agricultural companies took over in places like Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, agricultural development projects in Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon ecoregions have quickly displaced indigenous populations in Brazil, leaving an estimated 13.8 percent of land as formally designated for these communities, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, and 31% as agricultural land (USAID).   

Image by the Rights and Resources Initiative: depicting the RRI’s Forest Tenure Database four land tenure categories. (click here to see enlarged image)

For me, this research makes clear the nexus between land rights and access for indigenous communities, and mismanaged foreign investment which has disrupted local livelihoods and economies. To think systemically about land rights is to understand the ways that vulnerable communities are negatively affected by land grabs (particularly by governments to address food insecurity), or indirectly through foreign direct investment (FDI). 

Land rights are directly tied to our course ideas of transparency, food justice, and sustainability. Through networks like the Rights and Resources Initiative, organizations, governments, and others are vying to increase transparency with access to land globally. Food justice is inherently tied to transparent access to land: when we don’t know where our food is coming from, it’s difficult to identify who’s rights are violated at different stages of cultivation, harvest, processing, and transportation of these foods. Many rights are violated in the simple acquisition of land before it is even developed for agriculture. 

In the case of Brazil, this rings true. Thirty-eight large companies now control much of Brazil’s agricultural land, including large companies like Cargill and Coamo, which have faced significant backlash for their deforestation practices which have primarily displaced indigenous people in the Center-West region. In March 2020, Indigenous leaders from the Yanomami tribe testified in front of the UN security council warning against the genocide of indigenous and uncontacted groups in the region.   

Yanomami indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa denounces deforestation and indigenous land invasion in Brazil, via Conectas Human Rights

Systems thinking connects this course to fundamental ideas of land and food justice. Unpacking what transparent and equitable food systems will look like in the future will require serious action to protect indigenous habitation of land in addressing egregious issues of climate change, food security, and sustainability within the food chain. 

 

Systemic Racism and it’s Lack of Coverage in Early Education Systems

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The United States education system grooms its young students to view racism as a dark part of our country’s past. Through white-washed lessons hardly covering the full scope of slavery

A scene from the film adaptation of Harper Lee’s well known book, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

and assigned readings of glorified tales like To Kill a Mockingbird, our education programs are an insult to our nation’s Black community who continues to face devastating violence and racism. Systemic racism is embedded throughout our society’s systems in healthcare, education, incarceration, and housing. Not until recently, did I discover the various avenues racism pervades throughout the world food system.

This course has responsibly educated its students how the food industry is saturated in racial inequities. Beginning with employment, Raj Patel’s research highlights how the Black community is substantially underrepresented in the food industry’s managerial positions. Many like to believe that the unlawful practice of

Raj Patel’s research presented in “The Color of Food”

employment discrimination would deter this behavior but looking at the unequal wage gap, lack of diversity in hiring, and rare job promotion opportunities reveals the contrary. Systemic racism also infiltrates chocolate, American’s favorite commodity. American mega-chocolate corporations’ successful profits are a result of abusive African child labor practices along the Ivory Coast. This is another area where the U.S. looks hypocritical for championing the values of opportunity and freedom yet doesn’t uphold that for their relationships with nations beyond its borders.

As a Palestinian American, I empathize with the black community and their fight against systemic racism. Like the Black community, Palestinians understand systemic violence under the power of an oppressive government and have shown remarkable solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement overseas. I am proud to be a part of a culture that is intolerant of

Palestinians protesting their support for Black Lives Matter overseas. Image Belongs To: https://www.dw.com/en/fatal-police-shooting-of-autistic-palestinian-sparks-outrage/a-53723002

racism and injustice and represents this through peaceful protest. The demoralizing narratives that plague Palestinians and the Black community serves to saturate false public perceptions of these communities. In order to rectify this, education needs to unlock stories like, Freedom Farmers, which disrupts the harmful narrative that Black farmers have oppressive ties to agriculture due to slavery and contradictorily focuses on how these farmers have powerfully utilized their land for activism, resilience, and survival against white supremacy and economic exploitation. Racism is clearly not a fixture in the past, but remains a problem in our present, and will continue to be a virus infecting our future if we’re not fully educated on how it pervades throughout the systems in our society.

The food system is not failing people, it is working how it was invented  

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Before I took Political Science 385, the relationship between the food system and racism was not an explicit connection I made. I was in a bubble of ignorance, clouded by my own privilege of being considered white passing, socioeconomically privileged, and cis-male. I asked myself, “how could the [United States] food system possibly be racist? – it’s food, right? It was not until I stepped back, flipped through a couple of history books, and put myself in a different vantage point that I connected the dots: the United States is built on oppression and systemic racism, the food system is just one of the many layers that it lurks.

Systemic racism can be traced back to the very creation of the United States. The brutal colonization of the indigenous population for their land, forced slave labor and unjust laws stripping people of color from land ownership are just the beginning of injustice that minorities have faced in our food system. The very backbone of our modern-day food system has been created by the very populations that are left behind.

Not only has the entire system been built on oppression, the very laws that are meant to protect people from harm has had a long history of dismantling Black and Brown empowerment. Before Jim Crow laws were enacted in the United States, African American’s owned 13 million acres of land in 1902, by the end of 1997 years of Jim Crow, they only owned 2 million acres. White land owners now pass on their externalities to people of color, while they reap the benefits of their new found land. Many working longer hours for lower wages than their white counter parts.

There is so much more happening behind the scenes than the average consumer might think. Buying something as simple as an avocado, a banana, or chocolate, it is easy to forget about the hundreds of miles, hours, and workers it took to get where it is now. The food system is not a farm to table concept like people may think, it is much more complex and inner connected.

One thing that I will always hold close to me from this class is that you cannot look at one part of the system and generalize about the whole. The history of oppression in agriculture cannot survive on its own, it is interdependent on a long and brutal history of colonization, institutionally racist laws, biased social norms, and labor.

The food system is not failing people, it is working how it was intended.

Work Cited:

Food Justice & Racism in the Food System

New Research Explores the Ongoing Impact of Racism on the U.S. Farming Landscape

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-15686731/cocoa-farms-in-ivory-coast-still-using-child-labour

Alien Land Laws in California (1913 & 1920)

Photos: https://communityfoodfunders.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/History-of-Racism-and-Resistance-in-the-Food-System-Visual-Timeline.pdf

Racism in the Food System

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Systematic racism is the basis of every aspect of the USA and the food system has no exception. In the 1600s, the first enslaved people were brought from Africa to America and were forced into labor. This included working on sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations. This brought on a sense of superiority to the white Americans, seeing anyone who is different from them as less than. The exploitation of many people of color were used to keep the social hierarchy going and it kept money in the white man’s pocket. This past of the United States has helped create the racist laws, actions, and institutions that are here today.

Now that forced labor is seen as immoral, even though it is still happening in the present, people have found a more covert way of keeping people of color oppressed. This is shown through wage gaps, the job market, the housing market, and so much more. A majority of minorities cannot find good-paying jobs with the only reason being simply that they are not white. Because of that, they find themselves working in factories, farms, and other jobs seen as undesirable and underpaying. This means that all the food being put on people’s tables are most likely being harvested or packed by people of color. While they are doing all of the hard labor, it is usually the white people that are in charge, gaining massive amounts of wealth.

Because of the unjust treatment of minorities, it makes it more difficult for them to support their families. It is harder to buy basic necessities, which can lead to a multitude of problems. This cycle continues on through generations because nothing is there to pass on to their children. However, most white people have the privilege and wealth to live healthy and have opportunities to pass onto generations of their families.

These disparities have magnified during the pandemic. For example, the wealthy have enough money to stop working while the poor continue to work in factories, farms or other underpaid jobs to keep food on America’s table and to keep their families afloat. Along with that, the systematic racism in the health care system keeps a lot of people of color from getting access to testing for COVID or getting treatment. 

Racism and oppression are at the very base of what America was built upon. With that, the food system cannot be ignored in this equation. It is often looked upon as a basic process of the way it gets to your fridges and pantries, but it is not that simple.

Racism in the Food System

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I’m taking the liberty to focus on the food system and farm workers in Washington State. COVID-19 has served to peel back the layers of an incredibly unjust system. Farm workers, who are largely foreign and undocumented, have now been deemed ‘essential’ employees yet are not afforded basic safety measures. Currently, labor advocacy groups Familias Unidas por la Justicia and the United Farm Workers of America are filing a lawsuit against Washington State’s Health and Labor departments demanding regulated support for these farm workers who are too scared to speak for themselves because doing so could result in their H2-A visas being revoked and/or their information being given to ICE. Washington Health was reported issuing guidance that temporary worker housing facilities with a single room “should assign sick occupants to one side and occupants without symptoms to the opposite side.”

Speaking of housing, simply getting a roof over their heads is a challenge for many foreign farm workers. Not all farms are required to provide housing for their employees depending on the visas issued, and as Benton City has demonstrated, many local residents in farming areas push back hard against supplying farmworker housing. Residents of Benton City were recorded stating that they did not want Benton City to become like Mabton, a mostly Latino community. That was during complaints directed to the US Department of Justice in 2002. To this day residents are fighting against farm worker housing.

Perhaps one of the most telling cases of foreign farm worker discrimination was during the infamous 2018 Sumas Berry Farm case. The farm manager was quoted saying about the foreign farm workers: “They came here to suffer,” and that they were expected to work every day of the week “unless they were on their deathbed.” Despite H2-A visas not having a production quota in WA State, workers on this farm were expected to harvest two boxes of berries every hour or face deportation and paying their own way home. The conditions that brought on the allegations w

Sumas Berry Farm Protests

ere 12 hour shifts in hot, wildfire smokey conditions that led to severe heat stress, poor quality or portioned food, not enough water, expired visas that had yet to be renewed, and the death of a coworker, suspected from aforementioned conditions, which caused 70 employees to go on a one day strike and subsequently get fired. The farm was expected to pay a lawsuit settlement of $149,800, but a judge later cut that settlement cost in half.

These are just three examples of severe injustice and racism faced by foreign farm workers in the US food system, but it’s a systemic problem that infects every part of the country. Until we can strictly enforce basic human rights and regulations in the farming system, these injustices won’t stop. It’s one of the real costs of cheap food.

The Collective is Made of Individuals (Re: Contemplating Climate Complexity)

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I’m writing in response to Aisling’s post about contemplation, numbness, and the idea that our individual efforts do nothing other than make our personal selves feel better. I’m here to argue against that last point.

She is correct that, numerically speaking, one person doing something isn’t going to matter on a global scale. One person not eating beef isn’t going to eliminate the emissions produced by those cows. One person not getting their driver’s license isn’t going to be noticed by any politician or lobbyist. One person buying fair trade isn’t going to make trade fair.

It takes policy. It takes systemic change. It takes corporate and governmental action. But you know what makes up those corporations and governments? Individual humans. You know what makes up those masses of tens of thousands of protesters? Individual humans. You know what began the Organic Farm Movement in western culture? Individuals. You know who began to advocate women’s rights in the United States? Individual women. And together, those individuals had and have a voice. They have strength. Together, their individual actions created a tidal wave that started an international movement, that changed long-standing laws and discrimination, that brought us to where we are today because if each of those individuals said, “my choices and my voice don’t do anything, so why bother?” then it would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think we often forget no massive change has happened wide-scale out of nowhere. It grows.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying everyone has the ability to speak and act equally: that’s a part of our inherently exploitative society. But those who have the ability and knowledge shouldn’t be silent because others can’t speak. If anything, we owe it to those who are disadvantaged and silenced to fight for a better future for us all. As a whole, we are not powerless.

Why Consumerism Won’t Solve Climate Change

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Cameron McElmurry’s well written blog post (https://sites.uw.edu/pols385/2020/04/13/a-plague-overlooked-the-locust-crisis-lurking-in-the-shadow-of-covid-19/) discussing the locust crisis occurring in the Horn of Africa gives the reader a look into the world of climate change and how it has increasingly played a role in causing global catastrophes.

A Samburu boy uses a wooden stick to try to swat a swarm of desert locusts filling the air, as he herds his camel near the village of Sissia, in Samburu county, Kenya.

In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020, a Samburu boy uses a wooden stick to try to swat a swarm of desert locusts filling the air, as he herds his camel near the village of Sissia, in Samburu county, Kenya.  (AP Photo/Patrick Ngugi)

What Cameron and many others neglect to mention is that climate change itself is the by-product of a much larger issue. Although the word ‘neoliberalism’ gets thrown around quite often, the concept still manages to lurk in the shadows of climate change discussions, even though it plays a pivotal role in driving the rising temperature of the planet.

Neoliberalism is often thought of as a neutral force, one that is victim to the ebbs and flow of consumerism, when in reality it is the very force driving these patterns. One of the main tropes we in society are expected to believe is that our consumer choices are a part of our independent thought process, completely driven by our own free will and untainted by the environment which surrounds us. This illusion of choice that neoliberalism has spoon fed Americans in particular, is one of the main reasons why the issue of climate change is often blamed on the consumer. After all, our choices are what drives the demand and if we simply lived more sustainable lives (had gardens in our backyards, shopped at farmers markets, supported small business and overall made more environmentally conscious decisions, etc.), then this whole “global warming” fiasco wouldn’t be happening in the first place, right? This narrative is the blindfold that mass-corporations and governments alike tie neatly around the heads of citizens. Neoliberalism is such an effective deflective force that G20 countries are getting away with spending $88 billion per year subsidizing exploration for new fossil fuels without much more than a slap on the wrist from their citizens (article mentioned in class: https://grist.org/climate-energy/rich-countries-are-still-wasting-billions-on-subsidies-for-fossil-fuels/).

This image is an example of the illusion of choice in consumer brands, particularly in the food system.

This image is an example of the illusion of choice in consumer brands, particularly in the food system.

Even more alarming is that $88 billion is just what has been invested in finding new fossil fuels. Globally, a whopping $775 billion has been spent in subsidies for the production and use of fossil fuels. As mentioned in the article, these subsidies come in “three basic forms: investment by state-owned enterprises, direct national subsidies and tax breaks, and public finance.” It almost seems as though locusts are not the only pests threatening the livelihoods of people. At the end of the day, if we want to truly work towards a safer future for all inhabitants of the planet, we must un–tie the blindfold neoliberalism has wrapped intricately around the eyes of citizens and expose people to the fuel that truly drives climate change. 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Y3OEDdpJA this YouTube video highlights some of the overlooked effects of climate change (warning: discusses suicide).  

 

 

From Texas to Ethiopia: Food Crisis & COVID-19

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The article “Will COVID-19 lead to a food crisis?” the author explores the different ways the pandemic has affected the global supply chain in mid-April while speculating the various ways the possible outcomes of the stress COVID-19 will cause. It has been more than a month since the article was published and the matters of individual diet changes to disparities between the Global North and South have been even more exacerbated as time carries on.

The question has been answered: yes, COVID-19 is leading the charges for reasons why we are entering a period of extremes, intensifying weak links in our food system. Due to a myriad of reasons, the US is seeing overproduction of produce and consequently food waste, worker shortages leading to the bottleneck effect on food items like meat.

The US can no longer run from the detrimental effects of how the pandemic has tested our inefficient food system that favors profit over workers as seen in federal demand for meat factory workers to return to work. From the imperial practice of “free” trade disrupting food sovereignty to depleting natural resources, something as natural as food has become an entirely political entity and can affect food prices.

In the Horn of Africa, COVID-19 is intensifying the situation in a place where 60 million hectares are allotted to land grabs and local farmers battle plagues of locusts. These events have contributed to previous food scarcity within the region. With COVID-19, food access due to distribution delays and the declining market prices for food will affect everyone from farmers to children.

Map of Horn of Africa region showing how land grabbing affect food shortages https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c60c68c9fda947589359fea4633163bf

As the pandemic changes our daily situation, it is clear that what we need as a planet is a systemic approach that has the future of humanity and our planet in mind.

Climate change and the Individual: A response to Contemplating Climate Complexity

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This is a response to Contemplating Climate Complexity by Aisling Wade.

I first want to say thank you for sharing what you have — I really enjoyed what you wrote and reflecting back on what it meant for me.

= Abstract Tide Wave Water Color by Jessica Torrant

When I first learned about climate change and the detrimental impacts that it will have on our global community, I was stunned. I was stunned because no one was doing anything, no one was helping, and no one seemed to care. Education has exposed me to timely topics, but it has also unveiled my complicity. When I learned that I may be a part of the problem, I felt like a tsunami washed over me, sweeping my body away from shore.

As you have said, we will never feel the true cost of the triple inequality like the people who have contributed the least to the problem. My house will not be lost to rising sea levels, eroding soil, or wildfires either. I am in a bubble that seems cut off from the rest of the world’s problems. Though I am numb to the abilities of our government, I know that my bubble is not impenetrable. Climate change will inevitability lead to ocean acidification which will hit Washington hard, crumbling our fisheries, dissolving shellfish, throwing off salmon spawns and rippling up the food chain to us. Essentially liquefying our food structures and economy.

Even in my attempt to save the world by driving electric, I was once again reminded that my carbon foot print was bigger than I thought when we learned about renewable energy production in class. Eating plant-based diets also reminded me that my single contributions to help curve climate change does not tilt the scale in any meaningful way. As you, I feel like I have tried to help, but how can we make meaningful change as just an individual?

A Response to “‘Essential Workers’: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism”

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Coming across “‘Essential Workers’: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism” reinforced many of my frustrations regarding the valoric framing of laborers during the coronavirus pandemic. As more awareness campaigns, often celebrity-fueled, clap from screen to screen in viral transmission, people embedded within the linkages of our global food chain work to ensure the survival of themselves and those who depend on this vast network, not out of charity, but because that’s the way things are. These are real people with a real capacity for exhaustion, illness, and death- not some Marvel character that can recalibrate their cellular composition when compromised. The use of superhero imagery during this time of crisis to encourage productivity and decrease strike sentiment among food workers whose rights are consistently trampled is not surprising, as it has often been used to normalize and increase citizen engagement in the military industrial complex.


In reading the authored recounting of the Mexican Farm Labor Program Act, I am reminded that the systematic legacy of slavery in America has not yet dissapated, but rather, manifested into more obscured, diverse forms (Yes! Magazine). The cultural enclaves we find doting the outskirts of a pricey Seattle, and the pages of our history books likewise, are not out of choice, but a historical attempt by many immigration quotas to ‘cultivate’ a certain workforce with eugenic-like intent, preying on those whose lives have been destabilized in the industrial rat race to the bottom. We live at an ironic intersection, where the wealthiest of individuals are able to buy back the pastoral fantasy that the likes of Earl Butz’ so eagerly destroyed, while those burdened with the task of feeding an ever-growing urban population work to ensure the economic mobility of their children (GRAIN). Rightfully, this post questions the performative support offered by individual actors with real political and economic influence, much like many of us have questioned the performativity of our own green consumer choices within this class; it’s the easiest way to cope in an infrastructure which abhorrently lags behind the needs of the populace. If history taught us anything, it’s that, every once and awhile, a little civil disobedience is necessary, and that efficient industry and equitable economic distribution puts food on the table (not instagram montages).