Analysis Of The Global Food System In Jennifer Ayres's 'Good Food'

The global population is expected to reach 9 billion people by the year 2050 and scientific projections indicate that world is on a trajectory towards an environmental and global food crisis. World Leaders, environmental enthusiasts and aid agencies have cause for alarm as they support urgent policies for change, for without them mankind will face unprecedented food insecurity. In 2015 estimates were that there were “some 795 million people” [World Food Programme, 2015], experiencing food insecurity and 3.1 million children under 5 died through malnutrition, while Australians continue to waste an estimated 361 Kg’s of food per person per yr [PMSEIC, 2010, p.44] All the while the earth groans under the weight of Greenhouse Gas Emissions [GHG], deforestation, soil degradation and

Micheal Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a novel that discusses his findings about the food we consume from the fertilizer to when it end in the supermarket in three major sections. The first section is about the overproduction of corn, its origin and how it is in the majority of everything we eat because of its versatility. The next section is about the organic food “empire,” its origin from hippies and its similarities to the processed food industry in some ways. The last section is about him experiencing hunting for his food as a hunter- gatherer. Throughout these sections there are two major themes: there is a fundamental tension between the logic of nature and human industry, and the way we eat represents our most profound engagement

After travailing to Thailand, Shanghai, the Amazon and Madagascar, David Suzuki describes in his essay “Food Connections”, how Product, there producer, and contact with the earth, has been forgotten in industrial countries. He compares countries like Canada to third world countries.

The world continues to face a wide-scale food crisis. The effects of this crisis reach from the farmers who grow and raise the food to the very system of laws that are in place to govern the system itself. Food giants are reaching deep into their pockets for lobbying in order to take advantage of both the producers and the consumer all in the name of profit. Moreover, farmers are being driven to suicide, and the ecosystem’s livelihood is treading a fine line. Both Michael Pollan and Raj Patel bring to light these problems and offer suggestions to help lessen their severity. Though there are many philosophies on which they both agree, they both have their own ideas to fight back. Pollan seeks to challenge the consumer as an individual while

The land culture of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings differ greatly from the orcs, thus, providing readers a view of Tolkien’s perspective of agrarianism and current culture. These relationships to land correlate to modern views of the land. In the book The Good Food Revolution, the author, Will Alan, has similar views of land.

In Slaughterhouse Blues, anthropologist Donald Stull and social geographer Michael Broadway explore the advent, history, and implications of modern food production. The industrialized system behind what we eat is one of the most controversial points of political interest in our society today. Progressions in productive, logistical, retail, and even biological technologies have made mass produced foods more available and more affordable than ever before. This being said, the vague mass production of ever-available cheap “food” carries with it several hidden

As the world expands through time and business, the natural process of developing food is forced to adapt to the growing demands of civilization. Henceforth, the modern-day food industry is capable of producing a plethora amount of nutrients that sustains mass populations. However, is the modern tradition and technique of mass food production hiding a burdened truth behind the curtains of society’s unawareness? Is such truth more sinister than productive? Filmmaker Robert Kenner directed a documentary in 2008 where the methods of processing meats and harvesting crops were analyzed with their effects. As a result, Kenner’s documentary, Food Inc., has revealed that the ways foods are processed have consequently made them perilous for society. Through the use of

By evaluating the social aspects regarding the “omnivore’s dilemma,” Michael Pollan argues that people “don’t really know” where the products we consume come from. Thus, he decides to take matters into his own hands in order to discover “what exactly it is” society as a whole is consuming and how this affects their health, as well as the way they enjoy their meals. Furthermore, Pollan accentuates that the role the government plays in the way agriculture is manufactured, implicates the quality of the products in the stands of our local grocery stores.

In Raj Patel’s novel Stuffed and Starved, Patel goes through every aspect of the food production process by taking the experiences of all the people involved in food production from around the world. Patel concludes by eventually blaming both big corporations and governments for their critical role in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and in so doing causing the key food-related problems of today such as starvation and obesity. In this book of facts and serious crime, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a general but available analysis of global food struggles that has a goal of enlightening and motivating the general Western public that there is something critically wrong with our food system.

During this week’s class, I learned even more about where our food comes from with the conclusion of the movie Farmland, our class discussions, and readings. What I took away most from this week was how the societal image of farming and food production is typically not black and white, and how it’s very different from how we imagine our food is produced. The selections from Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma were particularly interesting to me.

Whenever people bite into some food, they often forget how far that food has travelled to get to them. Each ingredient has its own story, some better than others. By tracking just two days of my food consumption I learned a lot about myself and my food. It is easy to forget, or not care about where our food comes nowadays and how we impact where that food comes from with our demands. Foods from different regions carry with them different sociological, economical and environmental impact; sometimes, outweighing the value of the food.

In the documentary “Sustainable Table: What’s On Your Plate?” The topic of food and its origins is debated. The authors position is stated clearly throughout the documentary. The viewpoint of the author is that as Americans, for example, when we purchase food from the supermarket we are not considering the impact it will make if we buy the peanut butter that costs a few dollars less.

In the essay, “The Pleasures of Eating”, Wendell Berry, a lifelong farmer and an expert on food production, claims that eating is an agricultural act. According to Berry, consumers have become passive and don’t really know what they’re putting into their bodies. All they know is that they’ve been persuaded to want it. The extent of their knowledge is that plants and animals are raised on farms. They don’t know where the farms are, what type of farms they are, or what knowledge of skills are involved in farming. He supports this claim by first bringing to light the ignorance of the passive consumer and how they as passive consumers have become victims of the food industry. Then, he discusses how one must willingly escape this by reclaiming responsibility

both argue that food issues should be addressed by public policy. To combat hunger, malnutrition, and growth deficiencies in children, Frank argues that public policy relating to food has to be changed. Poor families should be supplemented with federal grants such as WIC vouchers to care for their young ones. Robertson et al. take a slightly different approach in their article “Food is a Political Issue” by not only holding the government accountable for reducing issues associated with food, but also the food producers and suppliers. Who should decrease the health disparities and care for the disadvantaged members of society? Robertson et al. advocate that although health disparities caused by food have to be primarily tackled through government policies, the health disparities are everyone’s problem and have to be addressed by everyone— from government officials, to religious groups, to the farmers and food suppliers

Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved analyzes the paradoxical content in its title statement. Patel demonstrates how the world food system has created two opposite, but inherently linked epidemics: obesity and crippling hunger. Throughout the course of this book, it becomes painfully clear that the majority of the world’s population is being manipulated by our global food system and by the corporations and their CEO’s who control it. Patel encourages his readers to make themselves politically responsible (313) and through Stuffed and Starved, highlights the discrepancies and major imbalances of our world food system, the small percentage of people who benefit from it, and the vast majority of humanity who does not. He does all this while