Tag Archives: pandemic

Racism in the Food System

Posted on by
15

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.

A Response to “Migrant workers are the backbone of our food system, why don’t we treat them better?”

Posted on by
30

Original Post: https://sites.uw.edu/pols385/2020/04/13/migrant-workers-are-the-backbone-of-our-food-system-why-dont-we-treat-them-better/

The United States has a long history of social inequity and it is coming to light more during the recent events of COVID-19. I do agree with Ag519 with the unjust treatment of migrant workers especially during this time and the fact that things aren’t getting better. I do have an answer to their question on why it is not getting better. Upper class society has a substantial amount of power over what happens in this world, and they do not want to lose this power. With that, all they worry about is how to gain more money and power and finding the quickest way at attaining that. In addition to that, there is barely any media coverage around big social problems in the world, so only a small amount of people knows what’s happening.

The video So Close to America: Undocumented Farm Workers & The Myth of The ‘Free Ride’ illustrates how migrant workers work just as hard, if not harder, than other people in America while doing the jobs no one else wants to do. During this time, migrant workers continue to work in close quarters with each other and do not have resources to stay safe while others can work from home or not work at all. A question that I think Ag519 does not ask that is very important is what can we do as a community to change this. What can we do as allies to support migrant workers and what can we do to change the system? This is an important question because it asks where we go from here. These answers can include educating others about the unjust treatment happening, especially during this pandemic and donating to foundations in support.

Change starts with everyone fighting together against inequity and unjust treatment.

Farmworkers harvesting zucchini in Florida, April 2020

Photo credit: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2020/04/23/483488/protecting-farmworkers-coronavirus-securing-food-supply/

Food Security, COVID-19, and the Future of Land Ownership in Yemen

Posted on by
6

In response to: “Womxn, Food, and Security Amid COVID-19 in Yemen” by Amber Torell

Amber’s post addressed the impact of COVID-19 on a group of under-represented and vulnerable people in one of the least developed countries in the world. Sadly, Yemen was a country in crisis before COVID-19. To gain a deeper understanding of the food-aid dimension of the global response to the Yemeni crisis, I visited the USAID website. USAID contributes to the UN WFP and supports NGOs in Yemen. Citing the same geo-political concerns as the WFP, USAID announced their reduction in aid to Yemen, specifically in Houthi dominated regions. Food aid represents an immediate desperate need and signifies a systemic failure in the region. Productive assets, including labor and land, are simply not being used to produce food. To be sure, “Land so pervasively underpins human activity that it usually plays some role during war and civil violence.” (Land and Conflict)

Yemen’s civil war is a factional conflict that has evolved into a humanitarian crisis. For civilians, a sustained state of conflict will put the focus on survival and meeting basic human needs, including food and shelter. Disenfranchised groups may be further marginalized and will need to achieve significant gains politically in order to establish power. Specifically, the role of women in poverty-ridden communities connects to my NGO – Landesa. My group is exploring the impact of COVID-19 on women’s land rights, as it is creating additional economic uncertainty. An imbalance we observe is that women farmers comprise a large majority of those who work directly in agricultural, yet only a fraction of those women are actual landowners. While in the short-run, advocating for women’s involvement in the Yemeni government could result in political unrest, having more women as stakeholders could help stabilize the country and its response to the crisis and lay the groundwork for future changes in rural land rights.

From FAO of the United Nations http://www.fao.org/gender/resources/infographics/the-female-face-of-farming/en/

 

 

The Future of Outbreaks

Posted on by
3

Tension hangs in the air during this episode of shared crisis and panic. The COVID-19 pandemic aided the growing awareness of potential infectious breakouts. The most recent data illustrates that foodborne illnesses increased 21% from 2017 to 2018. 48 million people in the US experience foodborne illnesses every year. Livestock and poultry were the leading cause of foodborne illnesses, and even though this remains the current assumption, consumer trends of intaking more fresh and prewashed produce shifted to fruits and vegetables as the primary source of foodborne breakouts.

These factors of risk continue to grow and vary. Large scale processing and production poses extreme peril for cross contamination, resulting in 99 Million LBS of soiled commodities last year. The Trump administration also slowed efforts in regulation procedures. Two government agencies, the FDA and the USDA overlap in fields of authority, confusing performance in these matters. Not to mention, the labor conditions in which yield is being harvested also contributes vitally to the increasing outbreak of hazardous stock. Overworked and underpaid employers are discouraged from voicing their need for humane treatment as trying circumstances provide no time for the opportunity. The Immigration and Customs Agency (ICE) introduces a fear-factor of deployment, therefore misdirecting concerns from health-safety protocols to the worker’s own safety.

In the wake of COVID-19, stakes of the human condition have never been higher. However, no matter the measures of caution we as a population take to ensure the general well-being of each other, Erik D. Olson, a senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, proclaims it is the government’s ultimate responsibility to successfully regulate harmless and reliable food distribution. As a common vulnerable citizen, I possess an unwavering ideal that this is definitely the most common consensus. A quote by Olson that rung true to me spoke, “You can’t shop your way out of this problem.”

Watch this video for more information on foodborne illnesses:

Original Article Link: https://thefern.org/2020/02/are-outbreaks-of-foodborne-illness-getting-worse/

Uncovering a Crumbling Food System in a Global Pandemic

Posted on by
6

Rice paddy in Vietnam shows prominence of staple crop, one of the most desired goods in the Coronavirus pandemic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/vietnam-s-rice-trade-thrown-into-turmoil-on-export-halt-muddle

In the 1970s, the US increased production of agricultural goods drastically to add to their exports. Today, Chuck Abbott’s article, “Agriculture feels impact as pandemic reshapes U.S. diet, rattles producers,” outlines the current state of domestic agriculture and the impacts of the global food system. Since the year began, not only has the country’s ability to export declined, but imports and domestic sales have been affected as well. Families are buying chicken for easy home dinners, but beef is left on shelves with their businesses seeing food waste and closure; rice prices skyrocket because Vietnam plans on shutting down exports. What this illustrates is how fragile the US and global food system has become, and how a wide-reaching pandemic can cause them to crumble.

Widespread cornfield monocrop. https://www.agweb.com/article/proven-nitrogen-source-no-matter-weather

rom an economic perspective, the way food is produced around the world is efficient and makes the most people happy with the least sacrificed. The theory says that you take your most efficient products and make more and more and more. Production goes up, price goes down, consumption goes up, making production increase again. This cycle engenders specialization, bringing everyone the best goods at the best prices as countries trade.

But if consumer taste or world trade changes at the drop of the dime as it has with the current pandemic, will our current food infrastructure of monocrops and extreme meat production collapse? The surplus of domestically produced meat and the scramble for imported goods like grains are telling. As with the web of biodiversity in times of change, the most overly specialized will fail first. These past few months have only revealed how crippled the world has left its built food system. It no longer resembles a resilient web whose manifold connections sustain it for infinity, but a linear chain riddled with disintegrating links.

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

Posted on by
10

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/