The Anthropocene, encompassing our impact on the world’s ecosystem and climate through human action, stands out to me in a very polarizing way, in that we have clearly monumentally altered the course of earth, and yet there is this vulnerability to the entire process that is screaming for attention. For one thing, as Michael Carolan discusses in The Real Cost of Food, forcing developing nations into dependency on food via food aid is hardly sustainable and morally suspect. As he says, “Giving food without also working to build infrastructural and institutional capacities is a bit like giving someone water but without a cup to drink it from…”(Carolan, 28). Developing nations are already exceptionally vulnerable through this widespread political instability, economic instability, as well as population health and much needed agricultural expansion in spite of austerity measures, etc., and so I am having trouble grappling with how the neo-liberalistic mentality of the 80’s and 90’s was ever able to proliferate amongst such organizations such as the World Bank and IMF, if what we are seeing is that people’s lives are often put more at risk, not improved, which logic says would be the better solution for all. Further, once one factors in the micronutrient malnutrition plaguing literally billions around the world (Carolan, 62), the vulnerability of any link in our vast food commodity chain seems not only a huge risk for a particular small farming family in a far off land, but ultimately on a global scale where rich and poor nations alike face what seems like insurmountable, irreversible problems as the global population continues to rise.
As discussed in lecture, low population density equals a comparative advantage, and the US and the EU sit right on top, and yet even they are both vulnerable to political and economic instability that if played out, could alter the course of so many dependent, developing nations all over the globe, a dependency that we’ve manufactured! Our introduction into systems theory thus far has me believing that there are real, identifiable solutions, however complex, to this so called ‘cheap food’ proliferation that is hindering development, and so I am shocked that efforts to reverse course are so entangled in bureaucracy and left questioning how much it would take to actually rid our systems of all this vulnerability as it exists now.