As the discussion about climate change tends to be more politicized than never before, individuals and public society are trying to reduce its effect through any mean necessary. One of those solutions is carbon farming which is the topic that this articlefocuses on. Based on the results of a research, people are trying a number of strategies that will all lead to sequestering more carbon in farmland soil and increase agricultural production.
In order to make this initiative appealing to most politicians and state legislatures, the terms have to be changed. For instance, in his article Can Dirt Save the Earth?, Velasquez-Manoff states: “…farm bill money…could help finance carbon farming done according to Wick’s protocol – not to fight climate change explicitly (which is now seen as politicized), but to bolster the health of soil (which isn’t).” This shows how people are reaching their goal of saving the planet without interfering with the politic. Also, the researchers and scientists acknowledge the fact that this practice is just one solution among many others and it requires in-depth studies to quantify or guarantee the capacity of the soil or plants to retain the carbon or for how long can they before they get saturated or they release it back into the atmosphere. As a population that relies a lot on science, it is true that one would definitely wait before and get reassuring decisions before moving forward with this practice. However, the imminence of the consequences of climate change does not give enough room for those studies to be conducted before actions are taken against climate change. Finally, besides removing carbon from the atmosphere, Velasquez-Manoff also talked about: “improvements in soil fertility, water retention and greater crop resilience.” So, it is not just about carbon, it is also about the future of the food that will be needed to feed the billions of people that will live across the world in the future.
Climate Change’s talk for different social class
Who or, specifically, what is to be blamed for the divide discussion about climate change: politics or society classes? This is a question that not only scientists struggle with, but even activists and individuals who care about the environment have to answer before pushing any ideological and awareness campaign forward.
The scientists in this article took the road of social class and try to make climate change effect on the environment and the food one consumes more appealing to the richer social class or to the people in richer countries. They did so by studying the consequences that climate change will have on barley which is the main ingredient in beers which, in return, is the most drunk alcohol beverage in developed countries. The scientist believe that these findings will help make these people care more about climate change and believe it. As one can read in the article People Still Don’t Get the Link between Meat Consumption and Climate Change where the author, Annick de Witt, says: “We seem to be in dire need of an inspiring and empowering narrative about climate change and the impact on our diet.” These two articles raise the point that if we want to tackle climate change, every layer of the society need to be involved and need to hold dearly at heart the move toward more sustainable way of consuming and reducing environmental footprints. Actually, climate change was never meant to be a point of disagreement or agreement because its effects are across every sector of human’s life, but food mainly because it relies heavily on agriculture which relies on weather and temperature and water at large.
McDonaldization and the Case of Foreign Countries
When people hear about McDonaldization, I am sure they directly think about McDonald as a fast food brand, but the word’s meaning runs deeper, wider, and taller than the foundation, walls and the rooftop of the famous fast-food physical presence in an area. Indeed, McDonaldization is “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world” as put by the sociologist George Ritzer.
There are a lot of traits linked to services, products, and institutions that have been through the process of McDonaldization. In this article, the author Sagar Malviya is comparing the expansion of Burking King and Starbuck in India while McDonald still holds the throne of the fast-food industry there. The interesting thing is that all these companies are Americans which emphasizes on Ritzer’s point about the fact that McDonaldization is firstly American. From this article, it can be seen that this is another country, India, but the American giants of McDonaldization still there fighting against each other for more profit. What about the local restaurants, what about the local food system, what about the local culture there in India? These are aspects of life that these giants do not think about most of the time when they move to foreign countries. In as much as they do not think about, people in those areas tend not to think about it too, because of the prestigious views they have about these fast-food chains. Fast-food restaurants and their environments have been portrayed so much in the media as an association with America, that when these restaurants move to other countries, the local population do not see just the restaurants, but pieces of America being brought. Having a McDonald or Starbuck or Burger King is not just having what Americans eat too in that other country, but for the younger generation who know about the American Dream, it becomes like a small realization of that dream. The point being made here, is that even though the system of McDonaldization is a power on its own, its power derived from the fact that it is American first on one hand, and on the other America becomes more powerful because McDonaldization is bringing America’s food close to every single home around the planet. This makes the latter’s expansion very easy in foreign countries which help them take more power.
Poverty and Food Insecurity from Kindergarten to University
Food is a vital necessity for us, humans, if we want to live, be healthy, and perform tasks at our maximum potential. However, food insecurity prevents some people from fulfilling that need. Either it be because the increase in the number of food deserts – neighborhoods with insufficient grocery stores, and thus insufficient supplies of healthy food – explained by Tracie McMillan in her article Do Poor People Eat Badly Because of Food Deserts or Personal Preference? or because of the Government not providing enough budget to school to provide food for the students which Jane Black explained in length through her article Revenge of the Lunch Lady, the common denominator is and has always been poverty. Indeed, it is because the people in certain areas are poor that grocery stores do not want to install their stores there because they do not think that the people will be able to afford their product, and it is because the parents of the students are poor that they cannot pay the school to have better meals for their children. Furthermore, hunger in school does not stop in just primary school or secondary, it follows poor students all the way to the university as this article by Caroline Gilpin points it out. Even if the article In America, you are what you eat: Education and income matter more than party affiliation published in The Economist describes how educated people eat healthier and better, it does not cover the financial background of those educated adults. In fact, food insecurity prevents children who grow up in houses where food was a survival necessity to experience a personal connection to their food and to value the importance of it being healthy for their own good. Therefore, solving the problem of food insecurity should not be focused on providing more food solely, but also change the mindset of the poor people about food.
Anyone would like to eat vegetable and fresh legumes whenever they could. However, the industrial society in which we live makes the price of those foods so costly to other’s daily life. Among farmers, the migrant farmers are the ones who do the work but get fewer benefits than anyone else in the domain. This is mainly what this article is focusing on. The article highlights the inequalities that migrant farmers face when they arrive to work seasonally in Canada from Mexico or Jamaica. Donald Wells mentions that those farmers will do the work that Canadians do not want to do, they will pay taxes even though they do not reap the benefits from those taxes because they are not citizens.
I believe this article showed a bigger problem in the food industry than just the injustice that migrant farmers face. It is a problem in the food industry, where the industrialization and processing food has taken so much part of the food production engine that small farmers are left without enough opportunities to make a decent living out of their farms. Consequently, they will easily be prompt to buy into the opportunity that is being presented to them in the sense that they can have cheaper labour at almost no cost whenever they need it the most. On the one hand, this system is very beneficial to the farmers and us, consumer of fresh vegetables and legumes, because it allows the farmers to spend less and earn more, and it allows us to never be in shortage of vegetables and legumes. On the other hand, it is very harmful to the human rights of those migrant farmers. Firstly, if they migrate, it is because they have no other choice than seeking better live conditions elsewhere. Secondly, these migrant farmers surely have families that depend on them or are with them, so, if they are not paid well those families will not be able to live properly, send their children to school, and, most importantly, take care of their health. Therefore, with these lights shared on some of the provenances our natural food, I believe that people who choose to eat more vegetables and legumes should advocate making sure that the process is fair for everyone, from the migrant farmer to the farmer whose farm they work in. Food is life and it should be able to give a living to those who decide to work it.
The Power of the Consumers
“The government of the people, by the people, for the people” as President Lincoln said it is the system in which we are living today. In fact, when the people elected to guarantee our safety as a people fail to do it, we can only rely on ourselves to make the necessary changes.
As highlighted in this article about Consumer groups asking FDA to designate leafy greens as 'high risk', we can see that the people, who constitute the consumers and who are also part of the food system, know what they want to eat to be healthy and feel safe. This request was made by the consumer groups over the late multistate outbreak of E. coli 0157: H7 linked to Romaine Lettuce. The behavior of the consumers in this case shows that they are becoming more and more aware of the food they eat and the non-action of the government agencies supposed to protect them. As we can see it toward the end of the documentary Food, Inc., big retail services such as Walmart are incorporating organic products into their lines alongside processed food because that is what the consumers are asking for. In the article, the FDA and state officials are blaming inconsistent records, problems with traceability and the consumer groups are pointing them to the law directly. This shows how educated and aware are those consumers which allows them to make a very thoughtful decision. This reality that in our current society, the people need to be their own judge and affect the changes reminds me of Robert Choate’s testimony that Melanie Warner talks about in her book Pandora’s Lunchbox. Choate’s experiences proved that the cereals that people were eating “do little to prevent malnutrition and they were empty calories”. This testimony stirred outrage among the consumers and compelled the cereal manufacturers to act. Therefore, as consumers, we should know that we have the power of changing anything about the food industry if we desire, and we need to do it for the good of the planet.