In a world that is ever increasingly subjected to the consequences of climate change, weather patterns have not just become a bigger part of public and private discourse, it is having real effects on our lives. One of the many manifestations of climate change is severe drought. This is evident across the globe from Southern California to the Middle East…. Read more »
The earth is a living system with incredible power to self-correct. Through our collective extraction and consumption of oil, we are accelerating the demise of our culture, at the cost to our survival. The warming of the planet caused by greenhouse gasses are enough that we are beginning to witness the effects now. The earth is responding to the altered… Read more »
Water is the new oil…meaning that moving forward conflicts over resources will concern water. The finite amount of water, growing world population and continued climate change will force us to make some tough decisions in the near future. One of these tough decisions involves poppy farmers in Afghanistan. It is easy and not necessarily wrong to conclude that growing poppy… 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 »
While reviewing Peter Menzel’s photographic essay “Hungry Planet”, I was struck by the dramatic differences in food culture between developing and affluent countries. For my paper, I wanted to find two countries that unparalleled each other. One of the countries I chose for my paper was Chad, a country that is extremely under developed and is facing a food crisis… Read more »
While clicking through the slide of each photo within the Hungry Planet gallery, I instantly felt a sense of sadness and even shame when I stumbled across the photo of the Aboubakar family from Eastern Chad. Their weeks’ worth of food supply was practically less than what my two-person household consumes on a daily basis. There were no processed or… Read more »
In today’s monetary world, economic troubles are due to a number of political, ecological and cultural factors, where one may seemingly blame one more than the other. The international food system and political hierarchies from leader to pawn are certainly both economically intertwined on a worldwide scale. Coming from a global background, I have been able to see the effects of… Read more »
I have a precarious relationship with hunger as a physiological and mental phenomenon. Because of my past experience with and ongoing feelings around hunger, I live my life in such a way to avoid encountering this sensation. Hunger creates tremendous panic in me. It’s the harbinger of certain and impending loss of safety, stability, and control. I developed anorexia in… Read more »
Have you ever experienced hunger? Of course you have. But have you ever experienced the kind of chronic hunger where you can’t physically move because you have no energy? Where you can’t go to school or your job? Where you are so terrified because you know you are a few short days away from death? Malnutrition and hunger affect about… Read more »
Check out Tristram Stuart’s TED talk on the global food waste scandal. I felt that it really accentuated a large bounty of the political ecology of the world food system. It also touched upon Peter Quinn’s work in his article Hunger Games: Who Gets to Eat & Who Decides. Essentially, as Stuart described the modern-day realities of the world… Read more »