John Soluri 's Banana Cultures Agriculture, Consumption and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, (Which for spatial and repetitive purposes, I will refer to as Banana Cultures for the remainder of the paper), introduces the reader to a world of corporate greed, consumption, and environmental change using the history of the common, everyday, fruit, the banana. He explores the various political occurrences, health problems, and changes in mass media through the rise of the consumption of the banana in the United States, and around the globe.
In his introduction, Soluri introduces his idea of the banana as a symbol, something that he repeats throughout the book. I believe this is one of his strongest arguments. To him, the banana is a symbol of the "distance" (2) between those who grow the banana and those who consume. According to Soluri, while the actual fruit lost its exoticism
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Workers, tempted by "high wages and short days", tended to disregard the problems the associated with high exposure of copper sulfate and the constant presence of a blue-green stain on clothes and skin in order to support themselves and their families (124). The workers, plagued by the health problems caused by exposure, were further insulted when companies decided to replace them aerial crop dusting (198-199). Now, not only were they chronically ill, but out of work, as well. Worker 's housing and condition was usually subhuman, lacking plumbing and electricity (155), with companies doing the bare minimum to improve. The term "subhuman" may be seen as a bias term, due to my modern upbringing; but electricity and plumbing were readily available in the 1950 's when these reports surfaced. According to Soluri, " a significant number of packing plants lacked basic amenities as late as 1974"
In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability. I agree with Kingsolver that knowing the origin of food is an important and healthy benefit of developing a true food culture, but it is impractical to maintain that everyone is able to buy more expensive food. Kingsolver presents a compelling argument for developing a food culture, however this lifestyle change may not be practical or even possible for a poverty-level citizen. The following essay will summarize and respond to Kingsolver’s argument to demonstrate how “Called Home” is a model for novice social scientists.
Tomatoland is a book written by Barry Estabrook, an investigative food journalist. Throughout the pages of Tomatoland, Estabrook explores the path of tomatoes, from the seed in South America to the hands of migrant workers in the fields of Florida. Through his exploration he discovers several issues that exist within the fresh tomato industry in Florida. Two of the major issues that he discovers include the use of highly toxic chemicals that cause severe damage to the health of humans and the environment, and the exploitation of migrant workers. Estabrook directly blames the continuation of such issues on those who support the tomato industry, “it’s a world we’ve all made, and one we can fix”; this includes consumers, crew bosses, the government and the corporate farm owners, like the executives and those who work in the business side of farming. Although there are many who are at fault, Estabrook directs his blame more towards the government and the farms corporate owners. Estabrook’s assessment of blame is substantial because the government and owners of the tomato corporations are the ones who have the strongest power towards regulations and production.
The Michoacan state in Mexico has become the world’s largest producer of avocadoes. Although this vegetable is grown on farms throughout this state, it is also tied to an integral network of trade and export to countries across the globe. In this essay, I will argue that like any commodity chain study, the production of the organic Hass avocado has an intricate production process, which for my commodity chain study begins in Uruapan, Mexico a town in the state of Michoacan. This analysis has indicated the crucial underlying links to trade, labour, and demand that the export of this vegetable has created throughout North America and the rest of the world. I hope to establish these links in an attempt to ‘defetishize’ this commodity and bring about the broader and conflicting issues that have resulted between Mexico and nearby countries such as the United States and Canada. I will begin this research by briefly reviewing the actual process and networks that the organic Hass avocado forms from the farms in Uruapan and the path it takes to the grocery stores in Vancouver, Canada. Then look to the implications of NAFTA and other related issues that have affected the trading process of avocadoes and has created severe divisions between the USA and Mexico. I will establish the importance of the organic produce industry and its exports to further developed countries with increasing demand for these organic products. And conclude that the future of the organic produce industry may be struck with ongoing divisions, as it becomes more globalized, between larger organic agricultural firms and smaller organic farmers who rely heavil...
Kamara, Mariatu and Susan McClelland. The Bite of the Mango. New York: Annick Press Ltd., 2008. Print.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
"Review of The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life And Times Of America's Banana King."
Not only is the pay and work hours bad, the jobs are dangerous too. One man lost two of his fingers in a machine and after being taken to the hospital, his boss furious for having to pay for the bill, is expected to go back to work in excruciating pain to pay off the medical bill (Lee-Potter 2007). In a Chinese sweatshop in Italy a fire broke out and killed 7 people. Because of all the dust and fabric on the floor, the fire spread quickly trapping workers inside due to iron bars on windows to keep them in (Aloisi 2013). The reason for those 7 workers to still be at the factory is that they were sleeping in “cardboard cubicles” (Aloisi 2013). Most workers cannot afford to have homes outside of the factories and sleep where they work. When factories are shut down, its inhabitants are
Young girls were not allowed to open the windows and had to breathe in the dust, deal with the nerve-racking noises of the machines all day, and were expected to continue work even if they 're suffering from a violent headache or toothache (Doc 2). The author of this report is in favor of employing young women since he claimed they seemed happy and they loved their machines so they polished them and tied ribbons on them, but he didn 't consider that they were implemented to make their awful situations more bearable. A woman who worked in both factory and field also stated she preferred working in the field rather than the factory because it was hard work but it never hurt her health (Doc 1), showing how dangerous it was to work in a factory with poor living conditions. Poor living conditions were common for nearly all workers, and similar to what the journalist saw, may have been overlooked due to everyone seeming
Despite many people working for companies that cared so little for their employees, upper class citizens had no idea what was going on behind closed doors. It took muckrakers, investigative journalists who exposed the horrors of factory jobs, for the wealthy to see what poor, immigrant workers had to do for a living. Even the president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, was not fully aware of what conditions these workers were subjected to. He sent two trusted men to investigate a certain meat-packing facility, and The Neill-Reynolds Report was the result. In this report, it was revealed to Roosevelt, along with the nation, that the men “saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors… in most cases damp and soggy…” and that the workers arrived every day to their jobs only to face “the expectoration of tuberculosis and other diseased workers,” (Doc B). Not only did people in the meat-packing industry have to work in dangerous conditions, but their health was at serious risk as well, from both fellow employees and the raw meat that was handled daily. Fortunately, once word of this reached President Roosevelt, he passed the Federal
Berry does not hesitate in using harsh words and metaphors like “the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot”(Berry 10). This provokes the readers to feeling horrible about industrial eating. He uses our pride while pointing to the lies of the make-up of industrial foods. He plays on human self-preservation when writing about chemicals in plants and animals which is out of the consumer’s control. He tries to spark a curiosity and enthusiasm, describing his own passion of farming, animal husbandry, horticulture, and gardening.
It was clear that the governments in America would not issue a permit to Union Carbide plant under such circumstances, which lacked severe environmental standards and permitted slum dwellers to live near the plant and so on. Such actions were the ones that led to more deaths. Before the major gas leakage from the MCI unit on December 3, 1984, some people were killed because of phosgene gas leakage. However, no one took it seriously, despite the media report. One of the reasons that people ignore this was because people didnt know the potential danger of the chemical plant.
For this paper, I chose to read and examine Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Written in the height of the muckraking era, The Jungle exposes the terrible conditions of the meatpacking industry and influenced the American public...
As cities started to industrialize, farmers crowded into cities for job opportunities. These farmers became factories workers or miners who faced harsh conditions as they were packed into tenements with no running water, sewage, or clean drinking water. Besides their harsh living conditions, factory...
Skinner, author of “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests,” also exposes Hardin’s all or nothing rhetoric. According to Skinner, “tropical forests in South America are being destroyed in order to raise cattle to produce beef for companies such as McDonald’s and Swift-Armor Meat Company (413).” Skinner’s argument supports Durning’s argument because Skinner states that the amount of beef imported was a “concomitant with this increase in consumption (415).” When North Americans import the beef from Central and South American countries they are making it where “Central Americans cannot afford their own beef” (415). From Joseph K. Skinner’s perspective we are actually the people on the outside of the lifeboat. Skinner states that, “the United States began to import beef, so that by 1981 some 800,000 tons were coming in from abroad, seventeen percent of it from Latin America and three fourths of that from Central America (415).” From the way Skinner looks at things, we are basically the people on the outside of the lifeboat. While Hardin states that the poor have pirate-like tendencies, Skinner believes that the Americans are the actual pirates because we are taking things from others for our own benefit. It is visible that Garrett Hardin is using his rhetoric to make the poor out to be the issue. After reading Joseph K. Skinner’s article and Alan Durning’s argument, one would believe that Garrett Hardin’s perspective is no longer