Looking on the lectures and the readings for the past two weeks, some of the most intriguing things for me would be the roots of our modern world system and the ongoing food related problems we are facing now. Personally, for me, colonialism has a negative connotation. The reason for this is because in many modern-day movies, colonialists were always portrayed as “conquerors” or people who treats and forces their colonies commit to their way of life. But as Professor Litfin presented, the world would be a much different place if it wasn’t for these colonialists. Without these expansions, there wouldn’t result in the abundant diversity of food and other agricultural goods like we have today. Even though the methods of these expansions were harsh as the colonialists often mistreat the people in these colonies, it is because of them that we have the things today.
I was also especially shocked at how the world changed just in one century. For example, in class professor Litfin talked about industrialization and how it drastically changed agriculture from having “60% of the US population as farmers in the 1900s to less than 2% in the 2000s”. As much as I’m excited about the technological advancement, I’m also curious at the fact even when we are technologically and agriculturally advanced, why can’t we fix the starvation issue? Is it because everyone in the industry is focused on profits? Or we just can’t produce enough to feed everyone as population grows exponentially? Not only that, even when we are starting to move towards robotics and machineries for aspects of production, why do we still use illegal sweatshops and underage/child labor as mean of production? Hopefully I would be able to find solutions to these solution in class.