Seminar Week 3 (revised)

Kat Thompson

Seminar Week 3

“Trust”

450 words

Triggering Passages:

Taste does not enter the equation. “ No consumer tastes a tomato in the grocery store before buying it. I have not lost one sale due to taste” one growere said. “People just want something red to put on their salad.” (Estabrook, pg. 28)

Systematically erasing the unique ethnic, tribal, and cultural backgrounds of the world’s people while elevating a mythical Caucasian Race was a shameful exercise in egregiously bad science, but it endured because it supported the control of the world’s land, labor and capital by a powerful elite. (Giminez and Harper, pg. 2)

The Bayer spokesman did say the merger would “create several thousand new high-tech, well-paying jobs … jobs that will keep America at the forefront of agricultural innovation and that serve U.S. farmers by delivering better products and services faster.” (http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/17/investing/monsanto-bayer-trump-jobs/index.html)

Reaction.

Fear, anger, disgust. Who does one trust? Hopelessness. Why do people not do anything. Why is apathy so contagious. Resolve. Resolve to do better. Resolve to know more and make more educated food choices, knowing that there is more to our food than just the nutritional count.

The readings this week have me thinking about what kinds of residual matter is in my foods and what kind of energy they are bringing to the table. Our food carries with it more than just the chemicals that are sprayed on it. Just like people our food has DNA. Our food remembers. It remembers not only what happens to it, but also what happened to the generations of food before it.

This reading secured my desire to eat more local foods. It also makes me grateful for my connection to plants. This week as I was harvesting wild carrots, I could not help but note the obvious differences between the white tangle of hairy roots and the shaved orange phalluses we buy (often packaged using a chlorine bleach wash) from the grocery store.

Society, through cultural erasure, has largely left us with some unhealthy tomatoes. As a “white” person I have largely had my ethnicity erased to assume the privilege that was secured through colonization. Many ethnicities endorse feeling a desire or need to whitewash themselves in order to assimilate “white” cultures.  Our country is no longer a mix of rich cultural heritages. Just as we no longer see very many heirloom tomatoes.  I recognize the brunt of the injury lies mainly with those with darker complexions. To put a stop to it though, we need to recognize that racism hurts everybody involved. The stories of all of our grandmothers have been erased to tell the story of capitalism.

That story is a poisonous, inbred, mealy, flavorless lie.