The following are videos on Food Deserts in America. Food deserts can be easily related to the hunger problem in the Global South. Big businesses are taking over, and terms like "economic equality" and "equal opportunity" are nonexistent within these small town food deserts of America. Currently, Michelle Obama is attempting to make change in these small towns. Communities themselves are also taking initiative for their own health, and starting community gardens. See the videos below for more on food deserts. Take action, because as stated by a youth in one of the videos "Give back to your community, because without your community, what do you have?"
The quote above by the youth in the community garden in the Chicago Food Desert documentary clip is so much more profound than it seems. "Give back to your community... because without it, what do you have?" Coincidentally, we are dealing with an issue much larger than just our community. We are dealing with our planet. And without our planet, what do we have? Mistreating, misusing, abusing, and taking advantage of our fellow earthlings is not going to help us sustain our planet long term. We need everyone's interconnected community's cooperation and resources in order for the future to be bright. As stated in one of the videos in class this week, "Humans do not share resources well." We often believe we are doing what is most economically efficient, but even more often we are choosing the least ethical option, as well as the most economically, and "earth" destructing option. The truth is, we have plenty of resources, we just don't have farmers. The farmers have all been displaced by Agribusiness. Unfortunately this is causing even more hunger, because these once locally usable crops are becoming export crops, leaving none left for the locals. We send aid, but this throws them into a pit even further because "If you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day. However, if you give a man a fishing pole, he can eat for a lifetime" (also American aid forces them to lower their local food prices). Our "aid" funds are being used for our own economic agribusiness gain. Everything here is interconnected. How does it relate? In Mississippi, we saw in the video that it is hard to find healthy food in low income areas. As stated in the video "Farm workers have been replaced by machines...", even the textile workers. Now the number of people below the poverty level is increasing, and these people do not have access to a supermarket or healthy foods, just like those who were displaced in the global south. Farmers in the global south are also displaced from their land due to agribusiness, move to the cities, and find it extremely difficult to survive due to lack of funds, and ability to do what they were skilled at doing. Shiva calls this "Corporate Hijacking", coincidentally directly causing "the emergence of food totalitarianism, in which a handful of corporations control the entire food chain and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to diverse, safe foods produced ecologically"(Shiva 17). As stated in the Chicago video, "Separating people from land and food is disempowering." The "fish out of water" effect is an indirect driver of the malnutrition. The urban migration of local farmers with land due to institutional injustice, is causing there to be a lack of farmers accessible to maintain local community crops. The malnutrition problem in these Food Deserts are also related to the corporate hijacking in such a way that we can see the effect that fast food and big industry businesses are having on lower income family health in America. Fast food is a direct driver of malnutrition in food deserts, as lack of food/agribusiness is a direct driver of malnutrition in the Global south. The farther the grocery store, the higher the obesity rate: a proven direct driver. Thus, just as local community crops need to be maintained in these hungry countries, community crops need to be maintained and utilized in food deserts of America. These community crops will also encourage biocultural conservation. People will be able to maintain their local cultures, their community bonds, and all of their unique qualities of grouping with others. Doing work together whether you live in a foreign country, or America, is healing to the indigenous of the area. Ironically there is a shot of bread being fed to pigeons at the start of the Chicago video. As preciously produced grains are being thrown at birds, many are starving for the opportunity to have one good meal a day.
We are not being more economically wise through agribusiness. We are destructing agriculture, cultures, and the planet. As stated in the "Future of Food" documentary, "A lot of identities are at stake, we need to protect the seed and the cultures". Shiva, in The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply speaks of the urban migration, and "stolen harvest" in this quote, "It is being experienced in every society, as small farms and small farmers are being pushed to extinction, as monocultures replace biodiverse crops, as farming is transformed from the production of nourishing and diverse foods into the creation of markets for genetically engineered seeds, herbicides, and pesticides"(7 Shiva). Is this "natural"? What are we creating? Isn't this worldview not more mechanistic? We are losing the intrinsic value of our biocultural diversity, and trading it in for monocultures, and genetically modified/engineered/chemically tampered "food". Shiva goes on to discuss the myth of "free trade", which really only causes gains for the rich, and destroys the local, and national markets (7 Shiva).
Shiva suggests Food Democracy, to combat this food totalitarianism. "We have to reclaim our right to nutrition and food safety. We have to reclaim our right to protect the earth and her diverse species. We have to stop this corporate theft from the poor and from nature"(18 Shiva).
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