Giving a Goat

This is my second reading of Kalama Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve, though it has been many years since I've read her autobiographical novel. I don't remember all the details, but I'm already cringing remembering that the impending changes in India will result in disaster in her life, which is already anything but easy.  I remember being deeply affected by all the unfortunate circumstances that shaped the main character, Ruku's, life.

In the first fifty pages of the novel, Ruku is married as a very young girl (per tradition in India) and eventually gives birth to a daughter and five sons. She and her husband are completely dependent on the rice paddies and vegetable gardens she grows for food.  Like many agricultural workers throughout the world (see post on Rigoberta Menchu and present day migrant workers in the United States), they do not own any land.  Instead, they work incredibly hard to grow and harvest the rice on someone else's land, a man they have never met, and they are paid by a manager.  Of course, the trouble with reliance on an agricultural job is the unpredictable  weather.  One year, after eight days of severe monsoons, the entire rice paddy is lost and Ruku's  vegetable garden is completely destroyed.  She has nothing to feed her five sons, all under the age of 7 years old. She and Nathan have a meager savings, but there is no food for sale in the village because everyone's crops have been destroyed.  

The severity of Ruku's food situation is sobering.  I live less than a mile from a grocery store where food is always available.  Although the effects of weather on agriculture makes prices rise and fall, and I may not be able to buy everything I want all the time, food is always available.  Ruku and her husband are unable to feed the children anything besides seasoned water for weeks.  When they finally drain the rice paddies and catch some fish, their stomachs are sore from "feasting" on food after weeks of starvation (48).  It's hard to imagine that kind of desperation.  I especially cannot imagine watching my children cry, starving for food, knowing there is nothing that can be done.  

Sadly, this is still happening throughout the world.  Though I support a child in Mali and another in Peru through World Vision, I never feel like I am doing enough to really make a dent in this problem of hunger. Recently I received a World Vision gift catalog in the mail.  For $75, I can donate a goat to a family in need. One goat could save a family from starvation in a place like India or Africa.  

(Check out this video about a family in Tanzania who gets a goat!)

Though money is a bit tight with a baby on the way, reading Markandaya's novel again has made me think about the baby and not being able to feed one's family and how that would affect me.  So, tonight I bought a goat through World Vision for a woman in need. It feels like an appropriate gesture for this class and the readings I've done this semester.  In The Hunger Games, Prim's goat was able to help the family survive by providing milk and goat cheese, which Prim could sell or add to the family's meager food supply.  Markandaya also mentions a goat that helped provide for the family; unfortunately, she had to sell the goat in a time of need and was unable to buy milk  after the goat was gone.  When I taught 12th grade English at Portage Central, we raised money to buy cows for families in Rwanda trying to rebuild their lives after the 1994 genocide.  It was good to be able to do something to help after we read the devastating story of their people. Though I am still only helping one family at a time, it's comforting to be able to do something when reading about hunger makes me feel helpless.  The problem is just so big. 

Food Scarcity, Oppression, and the Hunger Games

This weekend I read the first few chapters of The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, for the second time. I read the series a few years ago and have also enjoyed the movies starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. This reading was a little different because I read the first chapters now enlightened by other readings and discussions that have taken place in our literature studies class focused on food.

In the past seven weeks of class, we've delved into the corruption of the food industry and the government that regulates it (or does not regulate it, depending on the circumstances);  the mistreatment of people who work within that industry, from migrant workers in Michigan to slaughterhouse workers in Florida to coffee plantation workers in Guatemala; the availability of cheap, fast food as opposed to the (often) scarcity of healthful food grown locally,especially in inner-city areas; the staggering number of food-insecure households and the unfortunate recent government cuts to food stamps...

Though The Hunger Games takes place in a fictional location in a fictional future world, the dynamics of society haven't changed much.  In fact, the wealthy capital city controls the people in the districts through the lack of food.  Katniss comments on all the people who die of starvation in her district, and we find out that Katniss and her family were dangerously close to starvation, saved by a couple loaves of bread from Peeta. At one point, Katniss wonders what people in the capital city do all day since they just push a button and get food.   Katniss spends most of her morning hunting and foraging to provide food for her family since her father was killed in the coal mines, which prevents their family from earning a living wage.  The wealth of the capital is a stark contrast to the way Katniss and her family (and many families in her district) barely survive.

The unequal distribution of food and resources is a problem that feeds most of the other problems in this fictional society.  It's also the way a very small group of people exerts control over a much larger group of people.  It's not much different than the way the Irish were oppressed by the English in "A Modest Proposal," the way Rigoberta Menchu and the Mayan people were oppressed by Banana Republics and the dictators of these countries, the way migrant workers are oppressed by the wealthy food industry, the way immigrants in Chicago were oppressed by their employers in The Jungle...

Are we destined to continue this pattern as the larger, poorer classes are kept poor and powerless in their efforts to barely survive? Check out the changes in wealth distribution in the United States over the past fifty years (video found on Allen Webb's blog)...are we really committed to democracy, a strong middle class, equal rights?

Mayans, Monsanto, and the Meat Industry

One thing that struck me while reading Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonial was the reverence of the Mayan people in regards to land and animals.  Menchu says that her people do not kill animals for food.  She writes about a particularly bright spot in her difficult childhood the first time she was given her own animal.  As a tradition and part of learning responsibility, indigenous children were often given an animal to care for as a gift when they had reached a certain age.  Menchu took care of a small pig, who later gave birth to piglets, which she was able to sell to earn money for her family.  After working all day, Menchu went out into the mountains to forage for food to make sure her animals were fed. 

Menchu’s narrative about the sanctity of human and animal life is in stark contrast to the way our chicken and beef companies fatten up chickens and cows with genetically modified corn and hormones in order to grow heavier animals and sell more meat (see Food Inc).

After reading just the first eight chapters of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, it’s evident that the meat industry of the early 1900's has no respect for the thousands of animals slaughtered  daily in the Chicago factories.   Through Sinclair’s  narrative, it’s also evident that there is no respect for human life.  The thousands of men, women, and children who work in the Chicago stockyards are treated just as poorly as the animals.  This is not unlike the way Menchu and her people were treated as hired hands in the banana and coffee plantations owned by U.S. Companies.  Menchu and her people died of heat exhaustion, pesticides, and starvation.  The immigrants working in the stockyards died of cold, chemicals, and starvation.  (Can you imagine working in Chicago throughout the winter in an unheated factory?!?)

Menchu also wrote about the extra plot of land that was planted, worked, and harvested in her village to be shared by the entire community.  Each family had their own plot, but there was also a large piece of common land for emergencies.  If anyone was ill or injured, there was food to eat.  Each day of the week, someone from the community would go to work the common land.  Jurgis and his family (from The Jungle) also work hard to take care of each other, struggling to survive in Chicago after their arrival from Lithuania. 

Through the narratives we’ve read and through our class discussions, it is evident that compassion for people and animals is part of our human nature.  We’re all deeply disturbed by the abuse of the Mayan people at the hands of wealthy food corporations and corrupt government.  We’re upset to learn about the current conditions of the migrant workers who pick our food.  We’re traumatized by the descriptions of animal abuse taking place at large farms and slaughterhouses, and we’re distressed about the number of people who work for the food industry without earning fair wages.  Yet, our government continues to cut programs to help the poor in order to provide more tax cuts to the wealthy.  The greed of large industries and politicians stands in direct contrast to human nature, which tells us to take care of one another.  Is it impossible to have wealth and power AND compassion?!?

Agricultural Inequality: from Guatemala to California.

I knew that life was difficult in Guatemala after I spent a week there in 2001.  I traveled to Guatemala with an aid group bringing medications and provisions to very remote mountain villages.  Because I was able to speak Spanish, the guides often talked to me about their history. I heard a lot about the “scorched earth” campaign, a military policy of complete destruction of entire villages of indigenous people.  People were “disappeared” or killed along with their entire villages.  The scorched earth campaign in Guatemala was really the genocide of the Mayan people in the 1980s.  Even twenty years later, recovery was a very slow process. 

Though I’ve been aware of the situation in Guatemala since my visit in 2001, I was surprised when reading Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating that the conditions for agricultural workers in California are not much better.   The Guatemalan people are taken advantage of by land owners, who work for large companies, as well as by the contractors who oversee their work.  Rigoberta Menchu worked very long days in extreme heat and was often cheated out of her pay.  McMillan also found herself working 12 hour days in conditions of extreme heat.  When McMillan picked garlic, she worked eight hours, but her timecard was changed to two hours because she only picked $16 worth of garlic in a day and minimum wage is $8 an hour in California.  

Menchu also mentioned children who died from pesticides sprayed on them while they worked in the coffee plantations.  Though the United States does have regulations requiring that workers not be present when pesticides are sprayed, McMillan noticed that the workers were still breathing in the air from fields adjacent to the fields being sprayed, and that workers were taken back to the fields to work just after the pesticides were sprayed in California.  

Clearly, the mistreatment and oppression of large groups of people is part of our collective history.  Just as the English landowners took advantage of the Irish, Guatemalan landowners took advantage of Mayan descendants.  Through our readings and discussion, we’ve found multiple examples of the ways our food industry takes advantage of those who work in agriculture, or in the slaughterhouses, or in Walmart.   When we look at information about wealth distribution in the United States, it becomes obvious that we are heading in the wrong direction.  What can we do?  Revolution?


Some interesting sources for more info:


Farmworker Justice is an advocacy site.  They describe themselves, "Farmworker Justice is a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower migrant and seasonal farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions, immigration status, health, occupational safety, and access to justice."


Another interesting document focusing on farmworker conditions in Michigan can be found on Michigan.gov.  This report (A Report on the Conditions of Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers in Michigan) is based on findings from 2010 by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.  A quote from page 4 of this report: 

The working conditions faced by migrant and seasonal farmworkers were often the topic of their testimony during the forums. Problems described included the lack of drinking water, portable toilets and handwashing facilities available in fields where the hand-harvesting various types of agricultural products is taking place. Some workers said they did not have access to water in the fields at all, while others stated their employer charged them for water. Some stated there were no bathrooms and no breaks offered. Other testimony during the forums described outright wage theft and established that the accepted industry practice of growers paying piece rates to workers often results in workers being paid less than the required minimum hourly wage.

The Roman Empire, Corrupt Politics, and Monsanto

While reading a section of the Satyricon (a piece published during the Roman empire that gives us a glimpse of the the extravagance of wealthy Romans), I found myself wondering if this is how the Waltons live.  According to Forbes, six members of the Walton family (founders of Wal-Mart) have more worth than the bottom 30% of all Americans put together. 

I also found myself pondering, not for the first time, the ways in which our 21st century society is like the Roman Empire of 2,000 years ago.  In my history classes, we always studied the Roman Empire as a great democracy making leaps toward modern civilization, but the disparity of wealth and increasingly-corrupt politics brought it down.  Are we headed in the same direction?  According to this article, "8 Striking parallels between the U.S. and the Roman Empire," history is not on our side! 

Here's one example: In reading Food Politics and watching the documentary Food Inc., I've become more aware of the problem of the "revolving door politics."  Our government officials are funded by companies, sometimes companies they've worked for, and they often protect their own interests and their companies instead of using their government position to protect citizens.  See examples below.

This was also a problem in ancient Rome.  According to 8 Striking parallels between the U.S. and the Roman Empire: Politics as the Road to Personal Wealth, "During the late Roman Republic period, one of the main roads to wealth was holding public office, and exploiting such positions to accumulate personal wealth."  

"Lawrence Lessig’s Republic Lost documents the corrosive effect of money on our political process. Lessig persuasively makes the case that we are witnessing the loss of our republican form of government, as politicians increasingly represent those who fund their campaigns, rather than our citizens." 

According to Lessig, Congressman, Senators and their staffs leverage their government service to move to private sector positions – that pay three to ten times their government compensation. Given this financial arrangement, “Their focus is therefore not so much on the people who sent them to Washington. Their focus is instead on those who will make them rich.”

I find this pretty disturbing...anyone agree?!? 

Peeking Behind "The Veil" of the Food Industry

Last night my husband and I watched the documentary Food Inc, where Michael Pollan and other narrators try to help consumers peek behind the veil that hides our food industry.  After all the reading we've done in the past few weeks, I wasn't surprised to find that it was a disturbing view of our food industry.   

Though I didn't think the documentary had much of an effect on my husband, who fell asleep for a few minutes in the middle of it (my fault...I started watching it at 9:00 pm and my husband gets up very early in order to greet middle-school students getting off the school bus at 7:00 am every day in St. Joe), I found him searching his ipad after the documentary for health information about the Boar's Head deli meats he had purchased at D &W that day.  Oddly, the first statement on the Boar's Head Q and A page says, "American Meat Institute refutes the myths presented in the new film Food Inc. Please click on the link below for more information."  The link led to a blank page.  Wow! The American Meat Institute is clearly on the defensive, and they should be afraid as more and more people become aware of what's "behind the veil." We chose Boar's Head specifically for the lack of nitrites and nitrates that are dangerous for pregnant women and young children, but it doesn't actually sound like the meats are organically produced.  After watching Food Inc, that's definitely a concern.  

After the documentary, we sat in the kitchen talking about our food options and our baby on-the-way.  It's scary to think about how to feed your family knowing that the majority of the food products available at the store are factory produced with genetically modified corn syrups.  Though my husband commented that he is afraid my participation in this class will change me forever (thus also changing some of his food habits since we share cooking and food responsibilities at home), I think we both understand that we MUST change because we are no longer just responsible for ourselves.  I've recently given up chicken, mostly because pregnancy results in some strange food aversions and I can't stand the sight or smell of it, but I'm not sure I ever want to eat chicken again.  A vegetarian lifestyle is more and more appealing as we continue to learn about the meat industry. 

I am happy to report that the documentary ends on an optimistic note.  Though food industries are very powerful, consumers are more powerful.  If we stop buying cheap, manufactured meats  and food products and opt for organic and local products instead, the food industries cannot sustain their power.   

Consider the tobacco industry:
Michael Pollan reminds us that the tobacco industry, which was just as powerful as the food industry, was defeated when consumers started to fight back. According to the Center for Disease Control's statistics, adult cigarette smokers  decreased from 42% of the population to 19% in the last 50 years.  Clearly, educating people about the harmful effects of tobacco has made an impact. 

The more we educate people about slaughterhouses, e-coli, GMOs, laboratory-produced foods, the dangers of Monsanto, etc. the more power we have to fight back.  As Americans become more aware of the harmful effects of our eating habits, the dangers of advertising unhealthy foods to children, and the carelessness of the food industry, I believe that we will make changes for future generations.    When possible, we need to speak out by using the dollars that we have (few as they may be) to support better food.  

I was still thinking about the documentary and the importance of making small changes this morning in a yoga class I attended at KVCC.  At the end of the class, the yoga instructor read a poem, called "For a New Beginning" by John O'Donohue.  The third stanza especially spoke to me about safety and sameness vs. change and new beginnings.  Though change is always a challenge, it's also a beautiful part of life and a natural result of learning.  I know it's optimistic, but I think Americans will change as they learn more.  We have already begun to make important changes to school lunches for our kids, and parents are getting wiser about the dangers of fast food.  These actions are small steps in the right direction. 

Working in Produce

As I read the second section of Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating, I found myself relating to a lot of her retail experiences, and not just because she was in Michigan throughout those months.  I started working part time when I was sixteen as a grocery bagger at a small, Southwest Michigan chain (now owned by Spartan Stores) called Family Fare.  Eventually, I was promoted to produce clerk.  I LOVED working in produce, and I LOVED eating all of the expired stuff!  I ate a tomato and cucumber sandwich for lunch every day.  I bought a loaf of bread from the deli, picked up a bruised tomato (there were always bruised tomatoes!) and a cucumber, and sometimes grabbed an expired prepackaged salad to go with the sandwich.  One night, a customer dropped a 5 pound box of blueberries.   Some of the berries rolled onto the floor, so I took the package off the shelves and put it in the back room.  By the end of my shift, I had eaten at least three pounds of the remaining blueberries (after I cleaned the floors and rinsed off the rest of the package).  To be honest, I was sorry a few hours later, but fresh berries are still one of my favorite snacks. 

I worked a lot of different jobs from the age of 16 until I started teaching full time at just 22 years old.  During the school year, I was a bilingual tutor for Kalamazoo and Parchment public school districts.  During the summer (and over the holidays), I picked up lots of hours in the food industry.  I stocked produce and dairy for Family Fare for $5.25 an hour.  I worked overnights at Target, but that only lasted a few weeks.  Like Tracie, I found that the part-time overnight schedule made me miserable.