Tag Archives: food production

ENVIR 385: A Reflection

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My group had the opportunity to work with Landesa; a non-profit organization that helps secure land rights for the world’s poorest. Although Landesa covers a more general scope, our focus was to bring awareness to the issue of women land rights in underdeveloped countries, and to learn more about how it connects to resilience-building within communities in the face of a pandemic. 

We learned that the women in the regions we researched make up the vast majority of the agricultural workforce, but due to the huge gender disparity, the lack of land rights puts women in vulnerable positions, especially when facing a health crisis. If the patriarch falls ill or passes away, there isn’t much a woman can do to support her family. At least not with the current system.  

Women’s Land Rights infographic. (Created by Ashley Wright)

This quarter we talked about systems theory. We are all part of a system(s). If a part of the system is changed, then the other parts will be affected– impacting the system as a whole. This impact could either be negative or positive. Through our research we found that by giving women legal access to land, it could be the latter. They have the ability to help their communities build resilience by making an economic and ecological impact; all they need is change. The current status quo is an example of an unsustainable system.

Unsustainable systems are everywhere. We don’t have to go to an underdeveloped country to see them. Our food system is a big one. 

Individual, institutional, and structural racism lives in our food system. In the reading, “The Color of Food”, Raj Patel concludes that racial disparity in wages and representation can be found in most occupations along the food chain. POC are often limited to low-wage food jobs in the food industry, leading them to experience high rates of food insecurity, malnutrition and hunger. But consumers are oftentimes unaware of these exploitations because there is a great disconnect between consumers and the food chain. 

The Color of Food, Raj Patel

With the BLM movement in full force right now, it is important to understand that racism goes beyond just police brutality. It lives in different parts of our society. 

As this class comes to an end and our projects wrap up, I can’t help but think about the systems I belong to and the impact I’m having on them. Raj Patel stated that, “consumers vote with their purchases”. As a consumer in this unsustainable system, my choices matter when it comes to food. 

The Slippery Slope of the Sabra Brand

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Zoe’s article, A Culture of Chocolate showcased a thoughtful, personal contemplation of their cultural identity and its relationship to the world food system. Zoe’s expression of guilt from eating a piece of Ghirardelli chocolate resonated with my own culpability in purchasing a highly controversial food product: Sabra hummus. Being Palestinian, I feel a deep responsibility to advocate for Palestinian justice and rights campaigns, yet little did I know that the hummus I ate was financially supporting a Israeli military infantry accountable for the killing of well over 1,000 Palestinians. 

A line of hummus products from the Sabra Brand.         Image belongs to: https://sabra.com/content/new-sabra-logo.html

Not only is the Sabra Hummus company supporting a cruel military brigade, but also half of its company is owned by PepsiCo. Being a global food giant, PepsiCo has garnered plenty of undesired attention for its human rights violations regarding the unemployment of 162 PepsiCo workers in a West Bengal warehouse, attributable to the workers attempting to join a union. With this newfound knowledge relative to the unethical standards the Sabra brand follows, I have become self-critical and a guilty consumer similar to Zoe’s feelings concerning the chocolate she ate. Looking beyond immoral company standards, it’s also crucial to view the already vulnerable position the Middle East finds itself in relation to food production on account of their scarce water supply, limited access to arable land, and fluctuations in international commodity markets as a consequence of their high dependence on imported grains and other food items.

The non-arable farm land covering the majority of the Middle Eastern region.  Image belongs to: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/middle-east-front-lines-climate-change-mena/

In 2016 it was reported that the Sabra brand generated an estimate of $800 million and was projected to become a  one billion dollar brand. This US based company producing a Middle Eastern staple condiment is going to reap the extravagant rewards, meanwhile Middle Easterners continue to live in a society plunging within the depths of food insecurity. As an Arab American, I feel alarmed.

Raisins are a Cover-Up Story

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When I was young, I would make these raisin apple cinnamon muffins. Biting into the delicious treat I made and tasting the sweet yet sour raisins on my tongue, I never realized how a such a simple food can represent something so immense.

The Sun-Maid Raisins commercial describes their raisin-making process as simply using grapes and sunshine. What they fail to convey, however, is the fact that there are people hard at work doing strenuous labor. If not, the industrialization of agriculture destabilized the the job market for a substantial amount of people. This kind of cover-up has happened and continues to happen all over the world. For example, while the world is focusing on buying toilet paper and stocking up on goods, minority groups are getting their organs harvested forcefully while still being alive. This has further reminded me that the media will do almost anything to create a distraction from things that need to be focused on as well. Some questions I will continue to ask myself from this point on is what other things are going on besides this that deserve attention additionally? How can I help bring these stories out for others to hear and be aware of?

 

This contemplative practice at first felt slightly unproductive to my time. However, creating these connections to the outside world and what I can do to help make this world a better place for everyone living in it. I did not find a lot of linkage between what I have learned in this contemplative practice and what we have learned in this class as a whole. Altogether, although these mediations and contemplative practices may seem ineffective, it can open your mind to a world of new ideas.

Works Cited:

Smith, Saphora. “China Forcefully Harvests Organs from Detainees, Tribunal Concludes.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 18 June 2019, www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646.

On Contemplation and the Complication of Chocolate

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Learning that contemplation practice would be part of this course brought me some anxiety. As one who struggles when invited to “focus on the breath,” mindfulness goals are slain by an internal battle of brain versus lungs. My Zen façade hides a bar brawl of distractions fighting for my attention. Our class has contemplated hunger, exotic foods, a raisin… As the course progresses, I’m realizing these sessions aren’t necessarily a quest for Zen or epiphany as much as they are a space to ask. To feel. To notice. I am reassured by Professor LItfin’s insights into the mind’s natural tendency to roam and how contemplative practice works to “encourage students to actively integrate their subjective experience into their objective learning.” We are connected to the goings on “out there.” Our experiences are relevant and even essential for deep learning.

A recent contemplative practice was done after having viewed clips where cocoa famers in Africa’s Ivory Coast taste chocolate for the first time and another revealing persistent child labor in cocoa farming. Thoughts after watching:

  1. What a way to illustrate inequities and ironies of the global food system
  1. Is chocolate ruined forever? 

I’m joking about #2. Kind of – chocolate is considered an essential business in my house. But paying attention to the lives behind food brings awareness and hopefully, action. Look yourself and your food in the eye, acknowledge that it was planted, tended, harvested, and processed by people.

Who’s lives are behind this square of chocolate? Does fair trade mean new improved taste with less guilt?

A young boy uses a machete to break cocoa pods at a farm on Africa’s eastern Ivory Coast. Image Source

Sometimes the clarity we seek in the moment eludes us only to be realized later. For me, the questions multiply. Having had some room to reflect upon our contemplative sessions, I continue grappling with my place in the food ecosystem. How can I be more than a consumer? If further contemplation of food, hunger, and our role in food systems can guide me towards understanding, or at least deepen my appreciation for food, I’ll keep practicing.

I discovered this chocolate scorecard which ranks brands according to fair labor practices and environmental impact.

Sources

BBC News. (2011, November 10). Cocoa farms still using child labour [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-15686731/cocoa-farms-in-ivory-coast-still-using-child-labour

Green America . (n.d.). Child Labor in Your Chocolate? Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://www.greenamerica.org/end-child-labor-cocoa/chocolate-scorecard

Litfin, K. T. (2020). The Contemplative Pause: Insights for Teaching Politics in Turbulent Times. Journal of Political Science Education, 16(1), 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2018.1512869

O’Keefe, B. (2016, March 1). Bitter Sweets. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://fortune.com/longform/big-chocolate-child-labor/

VPRO Metropolis. (2014, February 21). First taste of chocolate in Ivory Coast – vpro Metropolis [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0

 

“Essential Workers”: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism ?

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In the face of major shifts and/or unrest both global and domestic, the US has historically relied on the most marginalized groups to uphold the status quo; an aspect of our history that is too often left out of, or skewed within, popular narratives. An example ringing with familiarity, was the onset of WWII (when swaths of the agricultural labor force migrated into war production factories) the 1942 Mexican Farm Labor Program Act systematically promoted the exploitation of immigrant labor as a means to keep meeting food demands on the backs of “cheap” labor. Our immigrant workers are a labor force that has been consistently condemned, ridiculed, and cast out. And again, today, in the face of a global pandemic, we are turning to the numerous undocumented immigrants that make up our 2.4 million farmworkers to continue to supply us with our demands (Honig, 2020). They are essential to keeping America fed.

Yet, as the choir of bells ring through our cities in gratitude to those who are on the front lines, these essential workers continue to work unprotected in close quarters, high risk conditions, and extremely limited access to testing or health care. And when calls are made to solve these issues, and to provide adequate provisioning, they are too often being met with no answer. Ultimately, they are being ignored. Still though, the faces of leadership turn to the media to give praise and show appreciation of our essential workers… our “heroes.”

Is this the way to treat our heroes? Do we truly believe that these people put themselves at risk everyday, in-spite of the love of their families and own lives, to be our “heroes?” Or have they been given no other choice, no other option to sustain themselves, or their families? And, in knowing this well, the faces of leadership can chose to tend to their need or not. The migrant workers, who have always been an essential labor force, are treated as if they are disposable. This pandemic is not an independent actor, it is constantly being fed by the conditions that were already established, long before it’s outbreak. Vulnerable living conditions, limited access to health care, muted voices, and insufficient ground to establish self-determination are the by-products of our capitalist structure that continues to sustain itself through the most marginalized people, who tend to fill our most essential positions.

 

This blog post was inspired by the FERN article: https://thefern.org/2020/04/as-pandemic-spreads-and-growing-season-ramps-up-farmworkers-deemed-essential-but-still-largely-unprotected/