Category Archives: Topics

Contemplating Complicity in Global Food Injustice

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Figure 1: Granlund, 2011

With ever constant demands for my time, energy, and thoughts, I usually don’t stop and think deeply about where and how the food I consume is produced. A reoccurring theme of my feelings after contemplative practices were complicated emotions around my own complicity in global food injustices.

Never was this clearer to me than during the contemplative practice on chocolate. Watching the cocoa farmers experience eating chocolate for the first time, I knew it was just one of the many global food injustices propagated by a global trade system which values consumers in developed countries, over producers in developing countries. From countries experiencing famine contractually forced to export their food (Carolan, 2018), to rice originally smuggled and planted by West African slaves, returned to these countries in the form of contingent and domestically damaging “food aid”(Lecture 4/30), the systemic inequalities that I implicitly benefit from are all around me.

Initially, these contemplative practices filled me with a feeling of guilt and ineptitude considering the miniscule impact my individual actions could make on these globally propagated problems. Yet, as they progressed, I eventually came to a feeling of resolve.

Figure 2: Campesina 2020

While I can’t help cacao farmers in West Africa and may not be able to change global trade agreements on my own, I can still do something. I can acknowledge the privilege that I have and help bring these issues to the attention of my fellow citizens, who collectively can more effectively demand for more equitable international food politics and purchasing agreements such as getting more involved in the Food Sovereignty and Beyond Fair Trade movements.

Overall, these practices have shown me that I can and need to slow down and appreciate all the people whose lives went into supporting my own and do my part to make their lives a little bit better.

Sources:

Campesina, La Via. “Till, Sow and Harvest Transformative Ideas for the Future! Now Is the Moment to Demand Food Sovereignty – #17April.” Focus on the Global South, 16 Apr. 2020, focusweb.org/till-sow-and-harvest-transformative-ideas-for-the-future-now-is-the-moment-to-demand-food-sovereignty-17april/.

Carolan, Michael. “Cheap Food and Conflict.” The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Routledge, 2018, p. 78.

Granlund, Dave. “Dave Granlund – Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations>.” Dave Granlund Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations RSS, www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/2011/07/27/obesity-and-famine/.

Sustaining Myself

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As a young person in today’s interconnected world, I am often so consumed with my role in social, academic and political systems that I forget I am a part of my own system. When I ask myself, “who am I?”, I think of my roles in others’ lives. I am a daughter, a sister, or maybe a friend, but I rarely think of myself as possessing a body that interacts with and consumes from the world.

A drawing I made, representing how we are all unique individuals, but we are largely similar with regards to our needs for survival.

Being so disconnected from my body, I rarely think about the way I am treating it. I base my eating habits around what will make me happy instead of what will make me feel good. Two pints of ice cream sound wonderful at the end of a taxing day, but perhaps my day would have been better if I had drank more water and nourished myself more completely throughout the day. Not only do I contain a living system within me, but I am also part of a system composed of my past and future selves. What I eat and the thoughts I have today will affect the person I am in a few days or years, and the experiences I have between now and then will shape the way I remember myself as I am today.

These are lemons that I helped pick from my dad’s lemon bush.

Learning about the food system forces me to connect to my body, because I am forcibly reminded of how reliant I am on international systems to survive. It’s now impossible to ignore the voice in my head nagging me to not only eat healthier, but more sustainably. The next time I go to the kitchen, perhaps, I will choose a fruit that comes from a family member’s tree, and feel secure in the knowledge that I am paying it forward to myself and to future generations.

Source: Sarah Oliver, VIM Fitness.

From Harvest to Consumption: A Bittersweet Tale

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I recently spent some time in Cape Town, South Africa. There I had two professors, a husband and wife, both from the area. I quickly noticed that they did not have conventional wedding bands. Rather, they had outlines of wedding bands tattooed on their fingers. Toward the end of the academic quarter I discovered why this was. The mining history in South Africa is a horribly devastating one; black South Africans had been forced into mining jobs, paid little to nothing, and lived in treacherous conditions. The legacy of the mining industry impacts individuals and families to this day. So, my professors abstained from the traditional gold or diamond bands in protest and demonstrated their loving connection with tattooed wedding bands instead.

Two men eating their rations in a shanty town created for miners to live in for most of the year (https://showme.co.za/facts-about-south-africa/history-of-south-africa/the-history-of-south-africa/)

Although this anecdote might seem random or even irrelevant, it is what came up in my mind when engaging with the chocolate contemplative practice. Why? The bitter sweetness of the chocolate, both in taste and through its commodity chain is shared with the wedding band. Both are a sort of celebration, a dessert and a union of love. Both have seen, and still see terrible injustices and human rights abuses in their commodity chains. Both require an immense amount of water and fossil fuels. In both cases, the harvesters and primary suppliers, the “beginning” of these global commodity chains, often never have the opportunity to see the final result of their grueling work—chocolate or wedding bands. Just as the food we consume embodies water, so does our consumption of other goods.

A child rakes cocoa beans on a drying rack, demonstrating the child labor frequently used in chocolate’s commodity chain (https://www.ethical.org.au/get-informed/issues/animal-testing/young-boy-rakes-cocoa-beans-on-a-drying-rack/)

This contemplative practice prodded me to think about our own responsibility in the commodity chain. Should we model ourselves after my professors? Should I stop my father from consuming his ritual post-dinner chocolate bar each night? The contemplative practice did not lead me to a final and perfect answer, but it did allow me to consider one family’s response to the injustices of a different commodity chain, offering me insight into what I believe is the right thing to do. Ultimately, this is the starting point. This is the headspace from which we can begin to consider how to alter our personal behavior to support what is right for the environment and for other human beings.

– Sophie Stein

Far-away treats

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Studying the complexities of the world food system from my home is humbling at times. How am I connected to it and how can I, an individual, make a difference in the grand scheme of things? The contemplative practices from this class have both amplified this feeling of smallness and helped me gain insight to my reactions to the things I am learning. One practice, on contemplating chocolate, particularly stuck with me. Prior to the practice, two videos were assigned; one documenting child labor on cacao farms on the Ivory Coast, and another on cocoa farmers tasting chocolate for the first time.

I find previewing content like this to be insightful and to provide context that is larger than myself. I admired the hard work of these farmers, and how they were so grateful to be tasting the product from the cacao beans they so tirelessly produce. For a second, I felt so greedy that I can have all the chocolate I desire, yet the people who produce this taken-for-granted treat are mostly unaware of it, and are totally fine without it. I am reminded of the entrenched inequities in our food systems, global hunger, and the fight for food sovereignty as I think of the commodity chain of this chocolate I eat.

It makes me wonder what I truly need in my life, and what American capitalist society tells me I need. I certainly do not need chocolate, or many other products that begin in different hemispheres from me. Yet, I still continue to buy such foods, like chocolate, oranges, coffee, and many more delights that are the result of exploited labor. But in reality, I do not believe me changing my consumption habits makes much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, yet I can try. I wonder, however, why am I so privileged to be the beneficiary of the commodities of the world food system?

Map of global chocolate production and consumption. The top consumers live so far away from the treats they enjoy!

 

Cacao fruit with harvest tool.

Image sources:

https://medium.com/@jerrytoth/whats-wrong-with-cacao-farming-d33ec4a949b2

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-euHLRk7EPJ4/UQgwseW_v4I/AAAAAAAAB1c/ejkQArr_hgY/s1600/chocolate.jpg

 

Thinking More Deeply About Hunger

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For how much food is such important to every person’s everyday life, I think it says very important things about the life I am able to live where I don’t need to worry about my hunger. Because I don’t need to worry about my access to food it and answer to questions I have about my hunger may seem as simple to me as, “if you are hungry, then eat.” It is often difficult for me to think about the such substantial amount of hunger that is in the world if I have never experienced it myself. It was very important for me to take time to listen to and digest the thoughts of how abundant hunger is in the world and how debilitating it can be.

One thing that I think really helped me better understand the point of this contemplative practice was that I went into it having barely eaten anything in almost 24 hours. In the buildup to this exercise I found myself being able to barely focus on anything other that how hungry I was. I felt more tired, it was more difficult to concentrate on classes, and my body felt uncomfortable.

Once I was able to settle and listen to the contemplative practice I was able to think more deeply not just about how hunger was affecting me at that moment, but how people experience that feeling that I had nearly every day without the ability to even know when they could eat next or how much they are able to eat. I think in a class like ours when we take the systems approach to things like hunger, it can often be difficult for us to think about these issues more individually, I think it can really help us understand what people are going through if we take time and really think about how hunger can affect ourselves and others.

 

Photo Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/13/food-diet-what-you-eat-affects-brain-health-dementia#img-1

The Bitterness of Chocolate

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The contemplative practices have forced me to reconcile with the fact that I take part in the food system, a system that profits off of child labor and sustains the inequalities between multi-billion companies and farmers in the Global South. This became more apparent to me through the contemplative practice on chocolate.

Before the contemplative practice, I saw myself as a chocolate fiend. Coming from a transnational family, my mother usually enlists her siblings for brands of chocolates uncommon in the States. With an abundant amount of chocolate in my house, I associated chocolate with family and a quick sugar pick me up, but through the practice, I realized at the heart of each bite is the cocoa bean.

A picture I took of some of the chocolate in my house

A cocoa bean

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Make Chocolate Fair reports that about 90% of farmers’ incomes from the Ivory Coast depend on the cocoa bean which is to be an annual average of $2,400 for a typical farm family. This compensation is microscopic compared to the total global retail sales of the chocolate industry which was reported to be 98 billion dollars in 2016.

chocolate bar broken up into fragments describing the share in the value chain of chocolate production. 6.6% going toward cocoa farmers, 35.2% for chocolate manufacturers, and 44.2% for retail. 4.3% for taxes/marketing board, 2.1% for transportation and traders, and 7.6% for processors and grinders.

The percentage breakdown of share in the value chain of chocolate production.

Source: https://makechocolatefair.org/issues/cocoa-prices-and-income-farmers-0

Not only is the pay insufficient for the actual value of the extensive labor, but the chocolate industry is infamous for utilizing child labor. Many broken promises have been made by companies like Hershey and Nestle to eradicate the use of child labor that fall flat due to the complexity of reasons such as poverty, lack of farm-level supervision, and the reverberation of civil war within the area. Many of these reasons for companies’ shortcomings are also weak links within the greater living food system that spans beyond chocolate.

While listening to Karen’s voice pull me into a state of self-awareness about the different parts of the commodity chains within the production of chocolate, I began to notice the bitterness of chocolate.

North Carolina’s Hog Industry Is A Telling Example of Crumbling Tort Law in America

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After colonial-era tobacco fields gradually fell out of fashion, North Carolina established a rich history of hog farming. What seemed an economic lifeboat has posed serious environmental and health hazards to the people most intertwined in the process. North Carolina produces 10 billion gallons of wet livestock waste annually, most of which resides in uncovered waste lagoons that are prone to flooding during hurricanes- an issue that will only become more prevalent as climate change worsens. To prevent natural overflow, most of the fecal water is used to fertilize crops, which introduces issues of nitrogen concentration groundwater and river runoff.

A rust-colored hog waste basin looks far from any ponds we know. Credit DEFMO via WUNC (Magnus & Stasio, “A Big Look at Big Hog in North Carolina”)

Most of these ponds exist in majority black and latinx communities who, historically, have been disenfranchised through sharecropping, and rarely benefit from the wealth that is generated by multigenerational contract hog farmers. Rather, an experience of lifelong asthma and shortened life spans is steadily present. Community members in Bladen County recently sued Smithfield farms for violating the right to “private use and enjoyment of land” through negligent waste-management practices, and won. Members lamented the lack of mobility, feeling trapped in their houses, as trips outside swiftly caused nausea and headaches- a disadvantage many of us are only recently experiencing. Millions were awarded to plaintiffs, but restrictions on nuisance suits relating to hog operations quickly followed. 

 

The state has a history of restricting suits and issuing moratoriums in relation to swine litigation, as public officials receive sizable campaign donations from contracting companies who control the market, enacting a tort law that, little-by-little, chips away individual capacity to address industry malfeasance- a national pattern in tort law that was exponentially embraced after the famous Liebeck v. McDonald’s hot coffee case. Another product of the litigation required individual farms to significantly reduce odor in ten days, through the installation of pond covers and methane energy converters at their own expense- a demand that farmers under Smithfield felt impossible. With many farmers soon in violation of court demands and breach of Smithfield contract, they saw their pigs carted off and livelihoods destroyed. 

Source: Yeoman, Barry. (2019, Dec 20). Here are the rural residents who sued the world’s largest hog producer over waste and odors— and won. Retrieved from The Fern.

GLARING VULNERABILITIES IN BRITAIN’S FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/22/tim-lang-interview-professor-of-food-policy-city-university-supply-chain-crisis

This article written by Jay Rayner, focuses on the writings and texts of Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at London’s City University. Lang’s primary assertion is that Britain has an extremely delicate “just-in-time” food supply chain, leaving it vulnerable to collapse. The author and Lang decide to leave talk of Corona for later, as Lang believes there is a fundamental problem with the food system, virus aside.

(Evening Standard, Tim Lang)

Lang asserts that because just eight companies control 90 percent of Britain’s food supply, primary producers are not making nearly enough money. Lang proposes an expansive solution to address the increasing fragility of Britain’s food supply chain: new sustainability laws, national nutritional guidelines, audits of food production, numerous new bodies and food system commissions, and more. I, as well as the author of this article, would suggest that these policy suggestions are very politically liberal. This is not necessarily a problem in and of itself however, the article does not include any evidence as to why these policies would be best. I believe this article could be improved upon if supporting evidence was included.

(International Life Sciences Institute)

Britain only produces about 50 percent of the food that is consumed in the Nation. This leaves the nation even more so vulnerable to outside influences disrupting their food supply chain. I agree with Lang that policies must be changed and introduced to ensure that the country can become increasingly independent. Furthermore, since a great deal of Britain’s cultivatable land is not being used to grow important crops, the nation does indeed have the capacity to expand and develop their domestic food chain. In the wake of serious food shortages due to Corona Virus, I believe that many countries, including Britain, are going to have to make alterations to food supply chains looking to bolster domestic food production.

-Sophie Stein

The Right to Privacy, Free Speech, and a Humane Life

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The family farm. Rolling green pastures, a red barn, and calves running around with their moms before stopping to suckle. This is where Americans picture their food comes from. What they don’t realize, however, is how many carefully crafted laws there are to keep farming and ranching out of the public eye and away from accusation. I recently went to a family dairy farm. The reality was they owned 3,000 dairy cows, the males sold to an industrial beef farm, the mothers spent 4-5 years standing on wood, sand, and manure before being sold for to an industrial slaughterhouse, and the calves were separated from their mothers the day they’re born.

The news about what is happening and how misleading this industry is gets exemplified through Ag-gag laws. Ag-gag laws are laws that essentially prohbit any recording of what happens on these farms and in slaughterhouses. As per the persecutor’s discretion, filming what happens, even if the footage displays illegal treatment of the animals, can have you tried for terrorism. Many states have begun overturning these ag-gag laws as being unconstitutional due to the first amendment’s freedom of speech as well as offering protection for when abuse is discovered.

https://fernnews-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/01.Slider-Texas-dust.jpg

Yet this year, an article came out on Food and Environment Reporting Network stating that it is now illegal to take drone footage of feedlots in Texas. You are allowed to charter a plane to film, but that is an incredibly expensive venture compared to a drone. The industry argues it is to protect themselves and their private properties. The reporters argue it is still a violation of the first amendment and keeps the public blind to the conditions the animals live in so they don’t have the opportunity to make educated choices when shopping.

What do you think? After reading personal and professional perspectives, do you believe these laws are just? Or do you believe they are in violation of the first amendment and prevent consumers from learning exactly where their food is coming from? Are they there for the small family farmers? Or the industrial agriculturalists who dominate the American meat and dairy market?

Personally, I believe this is just one of the real costs of cheap food.