“All commodities are assigned a grade, so a standard is imposed on what is bought and sold. But that grade is often below what most consumers would choose to purchase. Corn is probably the most striking example-grain market specialist Chad Hart of Iowa State University refers to “food grade” versus “feed grade.”1 The former is sold as canned corn or ground into corn flakes; the latter is used to feed livestock and is distilled into ethanol.” (Newman 11)
In the society we live in it’s easy to forget that at all times, in every way, we are being graded. This passage “triggered” me because it relates to my experience at Evergreen. Being a individual at an alternative school and participating in an alternative learning process, makes it easier for me to see how grading food (like people) is HARMFUL. All food should be of the same quality, the same standard which is: healthy. Healthy soil, healthy nutrients, and healthy land. Just like our education system, our food system should be structured in a way that doesn’t depend on grades.
“ The insight that the act of eating dissolves the boundary between self and other, between subject and object is not mine alone, nor is the idea that eating is also a social practice that confirms and delineates difference, demarcating social barriers and affirming group formations” (Tompkins 4)
In my 8 credit program: Community Resilience Women Making Change. Our first week focused on the idea of cultures and how we are socialized into them. This passage connected me with the metaphor of the iceberg; in which like the iceberg the bulk of mass is underneath the water line. We are taught our individual culture’s customs mostly though non-verbal cues. And one of the non-verbal cues is the way we eat, how we eat together, individually, what we eat, what we use to eat with, and how we view eating. The social aspect of eating is one of the greatest socialization’s we learn, from early childhood on, and those eating activities are unique to each culture or family.
“As environmental sociologist, the analysis we offer in this book is in fundamental accord with Suzuki’s declaration. We are embedded in physical, ecological systems, but we have been changing them through our social, human-made systems, which have been organized to pursue specific interest. Social systems are sociohistorical products. Thus, they can be changed” (Longo, Clausen, Clark xii).
This is a passage from the Preface of the book I will be reading in regards to my personal project. As someone who reviews the idea of managing fishing as a social system and social problem, I am excited at what this book will offer in terms of solution and insights. Far too many times we forget that our Oceans are not just for physical scientist but also for social scientist to study as well. This is especially true when we are talking about fisheries management as it is a purely social construction.
“Last year, under then-Gov. Mike Pence (R), Indiana state police raided a voter registration center working to sign up black citizens. Pence, who also opposed a state law banning LGBTQ workplace discrimination, tweeted about MLK Day too” (Satlin).
This article had me at the title: Politicians Honor MLK Day While Working against the Rights He Fought For. One shining moment of the internet is the freeing up of information, including the idea that the internet forgets nothing! No longer can politicians say one thing, while behind closed doors doing the opposite. We must not forget this as we transition into the new era.
Works Citied
Clark, Brett; Clausen, Rebecca; and Longo, Stefano B. The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Print
Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print
Satlin, Alana H. “Politicians Honor MLK Day While Working Against The Rights He Fought For.” The Huffington Post January, 16 2017: Page (1). www.huffpost.com. Web. January, 16 2017.
Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print
Hey Linsey, Shani here.
I’ll preface with, I did not read the seminar material. However, I feel I can comment on one of the points you brought up.
-The grading of food: it might interest you to know why our system grades food. It goes into the economies of scale. As farmers need more land to grow more harvestable products, they need a way to harvest those products quickly, hence machinery. Machinery has some negative effects on the soil, but it does help get more work done with less time. So contemporary farmers use standardized crop varieties to harvest them in a few uniform sweeps using a handful of machines. It’s through this needle hole that we get problems with nutrition, taste, soil structure, etc- we must look at what plant breeders have been breeding for: uniformity.
Now if you look at the slow food network, and the new efforts going in to connecting breeders to eaters, you’ll start to see that things are going in a different direction (for the people who can afford the different direction). But this leaves out half of the equation. Have you heard of the “both-and” scenario? Essentially, the problems are two-fold (people need nutritious food, but nutritious food isn’t cheap), and there’s an undeniable truth (there are LOTS of people who need to eat and can’t afford to take part in the slow-foods movement). So any solutions made need to address all of these facets. It’s not enough to have healthy food if people are going to go bankrupt buying it. So what’s the solution?
Maybe you should look into Carol Deppe. She purposefully grows food which doesn’t meet any level of standardization. She breeds the nonconforming varieties and sells those seeds on purpose so that large companies like monsanto can’t and wont go after her, and those people who buy her seeds can’t standardize. How much of the problem does her solution address?
You mention you’re interested in the social aspects of these problems. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you look into the issue of silent starvation, which occurs when people eat nutrition-lacking food. It’s an issue that plagues the socially-disadvantaged and costs the public way too much money a year in doctor’s visits. Should monocrop farmer’s pay for those doctor visits if it can be proved that the dis-ease is nutrition based? Who and how do we place responsibility on? There’s also the aspect of nutrition interfering with mental-health, you can read about this in “The Second Brain : The Scientific Basis of Gut Instinct and a Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestines” by Gershon.
I hope you found some of this interesting. Thanks for sharing. Way to go with the salmon toss.
Shani A
Thank you Shani for the wealth of knowledge and resources to learn more about this!!