Tag Archives: supply chain

In Response to “We Are Told Not to Cry Over Spilled Milk” by Carbam

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By focusing on dumped milk, you showed concern in your blog about the food waste before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. I agree with you that as the coronavirus spread rapidly across the world, it is disrupting our supply chains and making farmers grappling with low prices and an abrupt drop in demand. Because of the lockdown, restaurants and grocery stores are shutting down and farmers are forced to destroy their crops, throw out perishable items, and dump excess milk. According to estimates from the largest dairy cooperative in the US, dairy farmers are dumping out approximately 3.7 million gallons of milk per day due to the pandemic.

Florida dairy farmers dump excess milk amid coronavirus

With restaurants and schools closed because of the stay-at-home order, it is inevitable that we will experience a hard time managing soaring food waste. One way to alleviate this problem, from my perspective, is to donate the excess food to food aid programs such as SNAP. Also, the government should allocate compensation fairly to farmers to help them go through this hard time. As we’ve discussed in class, inequalities in the food system over time are magnified and are especially obvious during this pandemic. While coronavirus is devastating agriculture, the most vulnerable and impacted groups are low-income families and undocumented workers. As they rely more heavily on SNAP and other food aid during the pandemic, donating excess food can not only ensure enough food supply for SNAP but also abate food waste pressures.

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

The Privilege in Contemplating Chocolate

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Contemplating chocolate before eating it seems like something quite odd to do, however it is important to take the time to consider the implications of our eating and in the words of Michal Pollan, consider how eating is a political act.

During my contemplative practice, I was struck mostly by the video about cacao farmer N’Da Alphonse in Ivory Coast, and his first ever taste of a chocolate bar. The reality – both convicting and surprising – that the man who grows the cocoa which is eaten all around the world as chocolate has never had the privilege of tasting his own product. I felt disturbed, confused, and frustrated thinking about the injustice that surrounds the growth and sales of chocolate. I also thought about globalization (which we often discuss in this class) and as depicted in the image below, how the system has ravaged many developing populations for the cost-benefit of first-world nations.

One of the ways in which globalization has impacted the world is in the centralized purchase of goods that settle for low prices, high efficiency, and large profits. This has resulted in what we call global capitalism, which is exemplified in the fact that 147 of the world’s corporations and investment groups controlled 40 percent of corporate wealth, and just over 700 control nearly all of it (80 percent). This corrupt version of capitalism monopolizes power and resources, often leaving farmers in developing countries behind with scathingly low pay, unsafe working conditions, long hours, and abusive child labor. In fact, around two million children work in dangerous conditions unpaid on cocoa plantations in West Africa. This brings into light even more the injustice and lack of food sovereignty that the global commodity food chain has created for the majority of developing countries around the world.

 

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0 https://www.cornucopia.org/2008/11/michael-pollan-eating-is-a-political-act/ https://www.thoughtco.com/why-is-global-capitalism-bad-3026085 https://www.thoughtco.com/all-about-the-global-chocolate-industry-3026238

 

Undocumented farmworkers are left at high risk for COVID-19

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The migrant farmworkers are at high risk of coronavirus outbreak and are unprotected. In the US, 47 to 70 percent of total farmworkers are undocumented. Many undocumented farmworkers are facing the problem of unsanitary and crowded labor camps and transportation. They are not offered with additional training or instructions for disinfection or social distancing by their employers. Moreover, there is no federal guidelines that tell farmers what to do if they don’t have quarantine space for sick workers or where accessible and affordable health care services are. 

     The migrant farmworkers are not treated as essential workers they are by the federal government before this global pandemic. Undocumented farmworkers are excluded from Fair Labor Act of 1938 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1835. Although state level laws have provided more protections for farmworkers, there is not enough guarantee of farmworkers rights under federal laws. Migrant farmworkers are experiencing the hardship of low hour pay, inaccessible health care services, bad living conditions and fear of deportation.       

     As the workers who put food in the markets and an indispensable role of the supply chain in the food system, farmworkers should be protected. I hope the COVID-19 outbreak can let the federal government acknowledge that farmworkers are critical to the U.S. economy and consider legislation to give the rights and protection they deserve. Under the pandemic, the farmworkers need to be provided with protection gears and hygiene products. They also need enough housing for quarantine, affordable testing of coronavirus and medical care services. If the backbone of our agricultural industry becomes affected, there will be shortages and interruptions in our food supply. If farmworkers are sick, who is going to harvest America’s food and what will happen to our food supply?

(Sources of Articles)

Liza Gross, Esther Honig. 2020. Migrant farmworkers feed America, they’re at high risk for a coronavirus outbreak. https://thefern.org/2020/03/migrant-farmworkers-feed-america-and-theyre-at-high-risk-for-a-coronavirus-outbreak/

Danny Hajek. 2020. Farmworkers, seemed essential, don’t feel protected from pandemic. 

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824358228/farmworkers-deemed-essential-dont-feel-protected-from-pandemic

(Image)

Tim Padgett. Undocumented Migrants: If we’re “essential” workers during COVID-19, why detain us? https://www.wlrn.org/post/undocumented-migrants-if-were-essential-workers-during-covid-19-why-detain-us#stream/0

Food Supply Chain “Strong” But Questions Remain

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Washington State Governor Jay Inslee declared a statewide shutdown of restaurants and other public spaces back on March 15th, assuring Washingtonians that the supply chain was strong, hoping to alleviate fears and hoarding by consumers. And while grocery stores have remained open, albeit with sparsely stocked hand soap and toilet paper shelves, an NPR article released a few days later raised questions about the trying times about to strike those in a different—yet equally vital—part of the supply chain: agricultural workers.

Workers in Wapato, WA. Photo Credit: Elaine Thompson/AP

The good news is that most seasonal workers coming from Mexico will still qualify for their H-2A visas. The bad news is that these people will be traveling far and wide, often living in close proximity to one another once they reach their employer’s fields, meaning exposure to COVID-19 is a strong possibility. While distributors and farmers deal with the logistical and financial strain of re-routing products from shuttered restaurants, the last thing they need is a labor shortage.

So what can be done? Greater government involvement in clean and safe housing for workers? Incentives for workers exposing themselves in travelling long distances across borders and state lines, like short-term medical benefits, or insurance, for seasonal workers, to protect them if they fall ill? And what of farms that will be closing from decline in business?

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. COVID-19 has put our healthcare system in crisis. No matter your politics, it is clear our systems simply aren’t geared for dealing with a calamity. In the age of the Anthropocene it hardly seems this current health crisis will be the end of hard-times. If we don’t prepare now, addressing weaknesses in our systems, the next crisis we face could mean not just soap and paper products disappear from store shelves.

Small Restaurants in the Age of Covid-19

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The Hood River Valley is an old logging community that now relies on the orchards and recreational tourism industries to stay afloat.

I live in a small tourist town that relies heavily on the popular summer months. As a stereotypical outdoorsy PNW town, the main attractions are hiking/biking trails, microbreweries, and wineries. With the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these things have been closed indefinitely and our community is left to wonder what is going to happen.

An op-ed in the New York Times written by New York City Restaurant owners questions the future of restaurants as we know them. “Independent restaurants employ more than 10 million people. And our fear is that these jobs may well disappear for good.” Restaurants have always been a risky business with large upfront investments, lots of employees to pay, slow returns, and seasonality. This is especially true in my hometown where the population doubles in the summer and most restaurants barely scrape by the winter months.

The popular farm to table movement is better for the environment, encouraging small scale organic farms and local supply chains. But in the age of Coronavirus, these operations are being hit the hardest. American food culture correspondent for the Times, Kim Severson, comments on this in her latest article. The $12 billion dollar industry is facing heavy losses as “these small farmers, like many others across the country who spent decades building a local, sustainable agricultural system, are staring at their fields and wondering what to do now that the table has been kicked out from under the modern farm-to-table movement.”

Farmers and restaurants alike have been looking to do what they can to minimize loses by sending food to farmer’s markets, or encouraging customers to do take-out or sign up for food delivery boxes. Everyone is scrambling to change their business model, but the question that remains is how long this will last, and will anyone be left to return to normal?