Food is life. Nonetheless, 25% of global food production is traded internationally like any other commodity. This huge movement of food comes with consequences. Trade liberalization can disrupt the economy of a developing country in many ways, but especially by disadvantaging domestic farming by importing cheap food from more developed nations where agriculture is more industrialized. Consider peasant farmers… Read more »
Any significant drop or raise in population would dramatically change the state of the economy, and ultimately, the function of the market. If something simple, such as wheat, were to suddenly become scarce, the impact would be dramatic. Since wheat is used in such a great many other products, those products relying on wheat would also become scarce and would… Read more »
The complexity of the different systems that are involved in climate change is daunting to think about. Billions of people that live downstream from glaciers that are disappearing are the most threatened by global warming and changes to the climate. The triple-inequality of the people who will be hardest hit by climate change is compounded by the inability of people… Read more »
Agriculture, value added (% of GDP). (n.d.). Retrieved August 19, 2017, from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS?end=2016&locations=KE&start=1960&view=chart For me the greatest insight from my research is how developing countries can fight back against SAP’s. My research focused on Kenya where the agriculture had been successful for two decades after independence. However, since Kenya was one of the first countries to agree to SAP’s… Read more »
Bananas are found in every grocery store as cheap, affordable produce, but the fruit represents more than just something we eat and enjoy. It is symbolic of the many economic, social, environmental and political problems where the cheap price-per-pound label on the banana comes at the cost of the lives of workers in the banana industry in order to keep… Read more »
The political ecology of today’s world food system is continuously being shaped by countless influential factors. The world food system is in an utter state of imbalance in terms of waste and environmental degradation. The foundation from which these issues arise can be traced back to governmental and social dimensions and or decisions that took place in the recent past…. Read more »
In the past three weeks, we have looked at how big of a role economics plays in the food trade. From sugar becoming more than just a luxury good to being a staple in households to planting crops for a drug enterprise because it is the only way to keep families fed. Sugar being a staple is counter-intuitive because it… Read more »
The photos of what an American family and what an Ecuadorian family eat depicted in the photographic project Hungry Planet show sharp contrasts in the lifestyles and the food systems of those countries. Firstly, the Ecuadorian family lives in a traditional, rural village in the mountains in a thatch-roofed adobe-brick-walled hut. They don’t appear to have electricity, and their method… Read more »
In his photographic essay Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, Peter Menzel provides an intimate look at what families around the world eat. Of the many places featured, two countries stand out in particular: Chad and the United States. In Chad, refugee families subsist on rations of various grains provided by the World Food Program. Families pose by large bags… Read more »
The modern world is divided economically into the global north and global south, or simply put, developed and developing nations. Due to the economic inequalities between developed and developing countries, there are vast disparities in the daily lives of the citizens of France for example, and those who call Chad home. While families in France visit a local market… Read more »