Stuffed and Starved discussed the increasing inequity of nutrition that has accompanied the increasing stratification of wealth all over the world. At what cost to the sustainability of global ecosystems and livelihood of people all over the world, does the American supermarket aisle come at? As well as how do we live with the concept of people being forced to fill their bellies with fast food that leads to obesity, or starve and obtain diabetes from lack of proper nutrition.
When U.S. corporate produce monopolies are able to give poor Ugandans a mere 1/200th of what they make off of its sale; it is no wonder that Africans are starving, and so many American’s can’t afford basic essentials and deal with food stamps, fast food, and persistant hunger. In developing countries like India, capitalism’s corporatization of agriculture has resulted in people having to sell themselves literally; while in America this practice is generally known as ‘living on minimum wage.’ India also mirrors America’s political tendency towards light skinned people as a reaction to disempowered diverse groups of people who are demanding human rights. But what is most striking the intensity of suicides that occur as people are displaced. All over the world from Mexico to Africa to South Korea; Desperate farmers have taken to the streets in response to neoliberal increases in staple food prices as subsidies as slashed by IMF imperialist directives forced upon third world and developing nation-state leaders.
What makes Stuffed and Starved is critically important is its idea of verbalizing the need for an alternative food distribution system; One built on feeding people, rather than maximizing profit through wasteful means. Discussing the struggles in rural India, and the intense desperation of farmers who are losing their livlihood as factory farming leaves them with no way to live; It’s all to common story all over the globe. Connecting Lee’s suicide, to NAFTA’s effect on Mexican farmers; It becomes clear that globalization from above has displaced, disenfranchised, and made the lives of millions all over the world suicidally desperate.
Yet globalization has merely intensified in recent years; globalization, colonialism, and produce have always been connected. The European Rhodes ideology of ruthless exploitation of resources at any cost for profit has been applied to all agri-business through the use of IMF controls to liberalize all markets to the point where poor farmers can no longer make a living. In order to protect, the concentration of wealth and land in fewer, imperialistic, hands; companies like Chiquita have done everything from squeezing small Jamaican banana farmers to enabling a U.S.-backed coup d’etat of sorts in Guatamala.
Stuffed and Starved does an extremely good job of painting capitalism and the coporate influence on our food supply; At the same time it paints a disasterous picture of what the history and social conditions behind our food supply are. It frames anti-capitalism in a completely refreshing lens than is not often heard.
When U.S. corporate produce monopolies are able to give poor Ugandans a mere 1/200th of what they make off of its sale; it is no wonder that Africans are starving, and so many American’s can’t afford basic essentials and deal with food stamps, fast food, and persistant hunger. In developing countries like India, capitalism’s corporatization of agriculture has resulted in people having to sell themselves literally; while in America this practice is generally known as ‘living on minimum wage.’ India also mirrors America’s political tendency towards light skinned people as a reaction to disempowered diverse groups of people who are demanding human rights. But what is most striking the intensity of suicides that occur as people are displaced. All over the world from Mexico to Africa to South Korea; Desperate farmers have taken to the streets in response to neoliberal increases in staple food prices as subsidies as slashed by IMF imperialist directives forced upon third world and developing nation-state leaders.
What makes Stuffed and Starved is critically important is its idea of verbalizing the need for an alternative food distribution system; One built on feeding people, rather than maximizing profit through wasteful means. Discussing the struggles in rural India, and the intense desperation of farmers who are losing their livlihood as factory farming leaves them with no way to live; It’s all to common story all over the globe. Connecting Lee’s suicide, to NAFTA’s effect on Mexican farmers; It becomes clear that globalization from above has displaced, disenfranchised, and made the lives of millions all over the world suicidally desperate.
Yet globalization has merely intensified in recent years; globalization, colonialism, and produce have always been connected. The European Rhodes ideology of ruthless exploitation of resources at any cost for profit has been applied to all agri-business through the use of IMF controls to liberalize all markets to the point where poor farmers can no longer make a living. In order to protect, the concentration of wealth and land in fewer, imperialistic, hands; companies like Chiquita have done everything from squeezing small Jamaican banana farmers to enabling a U.S.-backed coup d’etat of sorts in Guatamala.
Stuffed and Starved does an extremely good job of painting capitalism and the coporate influence on our food supply; At the same time it paints a disasterous picture of what the history and social conditions behind our food supply are. It frames anti-capitalism in a completely refreshing lens than is not often heard.
