The truth that America is starving for

Raj’s Patel’s expose on the evolution and current state of the world food system is no easy read.  As each chapter unfolds, we are taken on a tragic journey, witnessing coffee farmers in Uganda who cannot afford to feed and educate their children, women in India who shoulder the weight of providing for their families on 95 cents a day after their farmer husbands commit suicide, and the skyrocketing obesity levels in Mexico due to the influx of American food companies. We are presented with information that incriminates our government in the cold and calculated manipulation of other countries, bending the rules of international trade to fit their profit-mongering agendas. The conditions of trade are written entirely by one party: the large corporations who hold sway in the United States and who possess influence in such superstructures as the World Bank. As Patel drives home again and again, the dizzying array of food choices that the West is drowning in comes at great cost: the horrific suffering, struggling, and eventual starvation of persons all over the world. How ironic that the food we are literally starving millions of persons for is killing us in the process.

Patel examines the trend of farmer suicides, which have been consistent since the 1970s. These are directly related to large corporations not paying farmers a fair price for their crops and not properly compensating them for time, labor, and quantity. This, in addition to occurring in Uganda, India, and Mexico, also happens in the United States. In India, many farmers are driven to take loans in order to purchase agricultural implementations in a desperate attempt to increase production output. When the rain fails or the price of their crop diminishes, these men frequently take their own lives. This leaves the wife to shoulder the responsibility of a debt ridden and failing farm as well as care for the children. These women often must relocate to cities where they take meager paying jobs and some are so bereft of options that they enter prostitution. 

As I was reading through this book, the emotions that kept recurring were anger and a sense of helplessness. This system wields all the power and holds all the cards, so it would seem. This is a system which all of us have been living in, whether we comprehend it or not. I grieve that these people’s lives have been destroyed

by the corrupt system that supports my access to thousands of unnecessary choices every time I set foot in a

supermarket. I know that even our smallest choices can act as opposition and protest the system in which we were raised, and I wish today was the last day I ever have to buy food at the great cost of another human being.  But the reality of our world and the reality of being a college student on a very tight budget prevents many things, including buying all my food locally. I can only pray that my new knowledge of this system and the small acts of opposition that I can afford will take root and grow into something more.

I have included several links below, including the link to Raj Patel’s website and other resources related to this topic. 

http://rajpatel.org/blog/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evoFFHsB3pU

http://www.foodfirst.org/