{"id":1352,"date":"2018-05-07T06:13:03","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T06:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2018-05-07T06:13:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T06:13:03","slug":"sweetly-savage-inequality-in-the-chocolate-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/05\/07\/sweetly-savage-inequality-in-the-chocolate-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweetly Savage: Inequality in the Chocolate Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is like a box of chocolates. This might mean something to your average first world consumer but to cacao producers in Africa the saying has no context. If it’s not obvious by the title the contemplative practice I found the most helpful was the chocolate practice. The combination of having both raw cacao and a piece of chocolate itself to taste and compare helped actualize the stark difference between the raw product and the processed product that consumers see. Tasting both also helped explain why chocolate is much more of a luxury than cacao. Cacao at best is flavorful but nowhere near as sweet as chocolate which is primarily composed of sugar and milk. So it is not hard to imagine that those that produce the essential component to chocolate, cacao, never get to experience the melt in your mouth product of their hard work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, seeing the video in class of the cacao farmers that were so amazed at the sight and taste of chocolate made the economic reality of farming and agriculture more real. This was not the first time I had seen the video but to imagine that these people work day in and day out to produce raw material that they never get to enjoy in its final form is a good show of the chain of command in the food system. Producers are generally not payed or respected for all that they provide to consumers. In fact, producers in the food system are often neglected to the point where they struggle to be consumers in the food system they help perpetuate<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Color of Food \u201cit was stated that <\/span>in 2007 47% of agricultural workers in California were food insecure.<\/span> The lack of proper payment and respect that these workers get for performing such a vital task in our economy seems outrageous. Especially when considering fact that food is a universal need. If we apply systems theory it can be easily said that the the way agricultural workers are treated is in line with a linear system rather than a living system. That is to say, agricultural workers aren’t paid or compensated in a way that allows them to sustain their work over time and that can lead to dire consequences in the U.S as the number of domestic producers continues to decline.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life is like a box of chocolates. This might mean something to your average first world consumer but to cacao producers in Africa the saying has no context. If it’s not obvious by the title the contemplative practice I found the most helpful was the chocolate practice. The combination of having both raw cacao and a piece of chocolate itself… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemplative-practices","category-other","category-systems-theory","category-world-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}