text response

“’We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.’” (p. 98) As Patel references Renato Ruggiero I cannot help but be moved by the statement. Our world is ever changing, growing, and becoming vastly diverse yet power and money seem to be taking over. The global food system is in bad order primarily because of the corruption within our governing systems. Rhodes’ idea was that to keep a community or society intact, outsourcing was the only way. His idea of getting food from other countries better the situation at hand this was because a civil war would inevitably be worse. Soon the outsourcing caught on and goods from other places were the norm. I can see how his points made sense. If the only way to keep from war was to find food elsewhere, what’s the problem? Unfortunately, the problem is greed and money. Money takes a very innocent idea and makes it into a problem. Tea, wheat, corn and many other things turn into a product that does not bring in a profit for the farmer and labor workers, rather turning into a burden. The upsetting part of the situation is only the big corporations get value from these cash crops. The land, workers and culture is greatly impacted and affected in negative ways. They end up having no other option but to allow the big corporations to do what they want. Before global trade, farmers of the community would produce and earn a profit that was sustainable. This is no longer very evident.
Corn has been slowly taking over our nation and what we ingest. “The justification here? That the continued support of corn farmers, and the use of their output, lies in the national interest.” (p. 115) High-fructose corn syrup has turn into a major national interest making it a necessity for the majority of production companies. I think this touches on whose interests are really prevalent. The consumer doesn’t really benefit from all of the production and product contamination. It is just a way to gain money off of a cheap crop. I think it is very upsetting almost every food has high-fructose corn syrup in it, even when all of the research done proving its badness, but it does go back to the “national interest.” The national and global interests need to rethink what sustainability is and produce change or our nation will continue to plummet down hill.

Brooke Thornberry