Neoliberalism and capitalism have created a plethora of issues in our food systems. These issues range from accessibility/affordability of healthy foods to minorities, to the use of dangerous pesticides, among many others.
As we discussed in more detail last week, many racial and economic minority groups have very limited access to healthy, whole foods and have been forced into food deserts. I did my GIS project on this topic last semester, titled, "Minority and Low-Income Access to Sustainable Agriculture in Pennsylvania". Below is a pie chart I made of some of my findings - 85% of sustainable farms in Pennsylvania are located in counties that I considered to have Very Low (1.69%-11.97%) to Low (11.98%-22.25%) racial minority populations (sorry if the quality is bad). A limitation to this is that the website I used to gather sustainable farm data is user-submitted and not inclusive of all sustainable farms in Pennsylvania, and there is not a standard for what is considered "sustainable". However, I think it is still jarring the disparity in this small sample I collected and I would be very interested in delving more into this. I did not incorporate a financial aspect to this, it is simply based on location of farms and minority representation, however it is evident that sustainable, organic agriculture tends to be more expensive that it's counterparts, furthering hindering minority populations from accessing it.
Pesticide (and other -icide) use comes with a great cost to our health, which many scientists warned about to policy makers in California regarding the use of methyl iodide. Policy makers and large agribusiness companies ignored these warnings and approved the use of methyl iodide anyways, despite the knowledge of the negative health and environmental impacts that go along with it. It wasn't until a lawsuit that would have hindered future use of other pesticides that the company pulled use of methyl iodide. Which was a big win, but had the judge in the lawsuit voted against the company, as he intended to, they would have been faced with hurdles using pesticides in the future. It was not out of care for the community or workers that they stopped using this pesticide, it was so that they could continue their detrimental practices, just in a different font.
Changes to our food systems will not be able to be substantial whilst still following neoliberal rules. "Voting with your dollar" is great in theory, however it is still perpetuating the system that got us here in the first place. Additionally, many people can't vote with their dollar. The neoliberal capital system is designed to prevent change from being made, as the people and corporations at the top will lose their wealth. As we saw in the article, many groups are working towards developing alternative, mixed economical systems that do not solely rely on business-as-usual capitalism, which I think is great. However, I don't think it is the end all solution. In my opinion, a new economic system is required where money is not the basis. I am not sure what that would look like, but you cannot heal in the environment where you got sick, and the environment we are getting sick in is neoliberal capitalism.
2 comments:
The chart you created really puts into perspective of how difficult it is for minorities to have access to healthy foods, basing your chart on Pennsylvania specifically also shows that this happens everywhere including here. I also find it very disappointing that policy makers and big businesses continue to ignore experts and instead choose to keep poisoning us. The last sentence of your second paragraph really calls out the selfishness of big corporations, money is always more important to them than the people they're selling their products to!
I agree with the reduction (and with the end goal of removing entirely) the use of pesticides on crops. There have already been proven methods of combating pests, for example the regular release of millions of sterile male mosquito's to control their population. Also the graph on Pennsylvania sustainable farms is enlightening!
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