Food Inequality

Our literature class focused on the study of food is bringing together powerful texts rarely, if ever, studied together.  When thinking about food inequality what better match than Petronius' The Dinner of Trimalchio (from the Satyricon) and Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal?

Perhaps we could say that Petronius' satire is more tame than Swift's...  Could we imagine the actual eating of children at his outrageous dinner?  Swift's essay works because it is both conceiveable and utterly unthinkable.  It is possible to imaginatively connect wealthy landlords and their indifference to impoverished people from whom they benefit to the actual eating of children.  The force of Swift's satire is also tied to his mockery of the indifference of the philosophers, economic thinkers, news reporters, the middle class, and those who don't rise up in protest.  Do they fail to see the violence of the system in which they live?

And I guess that seeing that violence is at the heart of what we are trying to do in our class, to not be oblivious to it.

Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes, a charity organiztion in our community, feeds over 130,000 people yearly.  This raises questions.  Why is basic food security left to charity?
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the first documents created by the United Nations in the aftermath of WWII.  Article 25 states:

• Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance...

Aren't governments "instituted among Men" to secure their basic rights?

The decadance -- and slavery -- of the Roman Empire, the wealth of English landlords -- and the starving of the Irish -- were topics for satire, and deep concern. What of the interrelated inequalities of today?  The extraordinary wealth of billionaires, the malnutrition of the poor, such as those in Guatemala who work the fields that feed Americans?  (40% of Guatemala's exports go to the United States.)

Swift's essay is so powerful because cannibalism is one of the most basic and powerful of human taboos.  At the center of ancient ritual and Christian eucharist sacrament and a subject of literature.

Given American economic and political relations with Guatelama, perhaps their children should be served at the table of Walton Family, owners of Walmart.  (The best-selling item at Walmart is bananas.)  Are the Waltons currently eating the parents?

Food Inc

The film Food Inc is a powerful documentary about contemporary food systems and corporatization of our food supply.  Some of the images of factory farms and slaughterhouses were unforgetable.  The scene of pigs being crushed, and chickens grown unnaturally fast on top of each other so that they can't even walk were truly horrible.
2000 pigs an hour at Smithfield.

Yet, one of the most disturbing elements of the film in my mind was not the violent replacement of Old McDonald's traditional farm, but the efforts by these corporations to keep secret what they are doing. In a capitalist economy your dollar is your vote, meaning that what you spend your money on "votes" to determine what is produced, and, to the extent the consuer is thougthful, how it is produced. 

(Of course, again in a capitalist economy particularly one with wealth as unequal as ours, dollar voting is not "democratic" -- some get for more votes than others... )

How do consumers make intelligent choices about what they purchase if the full information is not available? 

The International Market

In his book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System Raj Patel argues that  problems of hunger -- affecting more than 1 billion people on earth -- are connected to problems of overeating -- obesity affecting over 1 1/2 billion.  The connection is through food systems organized in the global economy.  Ironically, many of the hungriest people in the world are farmers, "pitted against one another across vast distances by the international market." And obesity is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide.

Patel argues that "at some stages in the chain that links field to plate, power is concentrated in a very few hands."  At those points are usually large corporations in shipping and processing that are able to make substantial profit and lobby governments to write laws that favor their interests.

The desperation of rural farmers is tied to urbanization, perhaps the most dramatic transfer of population in human history.

The global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005...  likely to rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030.

UN State of the World Population 2007 

I can see this evolution in my own family.  Both of my parents grew up in cities, but my grandparents, all born in the 19th century, were born on farms.  The food my mother served came to us from supermarkets.

One of Patel's first examples of the way that food corporations impact laws and policies is the story of the United Fruit Company and Guatemala in the 1950s.  More anon.

"Never criticize your mother's cooking"

In the house I grew up in the 1960s my father left for work every weekday morning and returned home just after 5:00 every evening.  During the day, it was my mother's job to take care of the four children and the house, shop, and prepare meals.

The main meal of the day was dinner, served at 6:00.  We all sat down together.  No television. There was always a meat dish, rarely fish, salad with Wishbone Italian dressing, often potatoes and/or some kind of vegetable.  There was always ice cream for desert, sometimes pie or cake.

Dinner time was a time of rules:

• Be on time to supper.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Don't eat before the blessing and hold hands during it.  
• Elbows off the table. 
• Don't talk with your mouth full.  
• Don't take more food than you can eat.  
• Don't play with your food.
• Give new foods "a college try." 
• Eat everything on your plate or no dessert. 
• Ask to be excused from the table.
• Above all, "Never criticize your mother's cooking."

Reflecting back, I grew up in an orderly, rule-following, white middle class household with stereotypical gender roles. What we ate was, more or less, what everyone in our neighborhood ate.  As far as I knew, what everone in the world ate. We rarely went out for dinner.  Our diet was high in animal fat.  Chicken, and everything else, was fried in bacon grease.  We drank whole milk, used lots of butter, and ice cream was a constant.

When I was 16 and my siblings 14, 11, and 8,  my father, 53, died of heart disease.  Smoking and high cholesterol. My parents were wise, thoughtful, well-educated people making intelligent choices yet the diet we ate was, in fact, deadly.