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Are alternative food systems racialized, classed? (self.SRSDiscussion)

hatersgonnahatex5 が 投稿

This is relevant to a class I'm taking so I wanted to hear peoples thoughts.

Are alternative food systems like farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSAs) and the like a good thing? If productivist, industrial agriculture is not a good thing (let's say), then are these alternatives something that should be supported?

What happens when they predominantly target and benefit white people of higher socioeconomic class? Do we take steps to make them more equal, or should we work to improve the conventional system?

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[–]bacchianrevelry [非表示スコア]  (1子コメント)

A few things you need to consider:

1) Do the poor have easy access to these alternatives? If I have to wait on a bus for half an hour, then ride for 20, then only be able to buy as much as I can comfortably carry back, then the health/nutrition benefits are not going to seem worth it.

2) How are the alternatives perceived? A person who has never heard of quinoa, much less how to prepare it, is not going to spend what seems to be a lot on so little.

3) Picky eating is a luxury. How many poor people can afford (time/effort/money) to be gluten free? Meat is relatively cheap for how filling it is. Vegetarianism is not a viable option for those who scrape by to get any food.

4) What is the effort and cost of preparation? If it costs me $5 and 5 minutes to get dinner at McDonalds, how are you going to convince a mother working two jobs that it is worthwhile to spend an hour cooking even moderately priced ingredients? Spices cost money, even more so when you aren't familiar and don't know how to use them.

The issue is pretty troublesome and hard to fix for many reasons.

[–]gerre [非表示スコア]  (0子コメント)

Great points.

[–]gerre [非表示スコア]  (0子コメント)

Are alternative food systems like farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSAs) and the like a good thing? If productivist, industrial agriculture is not a good thing (let's say), then are these alternatives something that should be supported?

Are they good things? Well do they address some of the problems with traditional food production systems? I would say yes, to varying degrees.

What happens when they predominantly target and benefit white people of higher socioeconomic class?

In my experience, moralizing and even more separation between the haves and have-nots. Much like education, clothing, childcare,and so on for all systems under capitalism.

Do we take steps to make them more equal, or should we work to improve the conventional system?

Why not both? The answer is the balance of forces. Right now citizen activists have different strengths in different regions. Residents of rich cities can work to broaden access to these alternatives E. G. in Seattle food stamps count double at farmer's markets. Similarly methods to change the conventional system, like animal cruelty prevention or genetic engineering labeling, relies on the power of activists compared to the food giants.

What one soon discovers is the might and power corporations have under capitalism. It becomes impossible to change conventional agriculture & processing because the system is inheriting antithetical to citizen control of resources. 60% of a state can support GMO labeling, but it can still fail. Fundamentally the control over the resources of food production have to be wrestled from the companies and into democratic hands. Until we have such a systemic revolution the lowest price commodity form will still prevail.

[–]TheSpaceWhale [非表示スコア]  (0子コメント)

I'm just going to comment on the class issue. In brief, yes, but significantly less so than industrial food systems, and not in as simple a way as lots of SJ people talk about.

Alternative food systems exist within the dominant capitalist food system which is classist, racist, and exploitative. The industrial food system allows for the production of massive quantities of cheap, low-quality food. It does this through a system of perverse subsidies, economic exploitation of the working classes, and colonialist global trade. Alternative food systems are definitely classed, but their relatively higher costs are inflated by this immense subsidization and institutionalization of the industrial system. In other words, they don't exist in isolation; current alternative food systems are a part of the global food system & economy are strongly affected by it.

Likewise, there's a difference between who has access to farmers markets (mostly the upper classes) and who receives the economic benefits of purchasing from farmers markets (mostly working to middle class farmers). Likewise, who has "access" (not quite right in this case, since upper class also have access but chose to not use it) to industrial food (working class) is not the same as who receives the economic benefits from it (capitalists owners of massive industrial operations).

A truly alternative food system modeled on universally empowering working class smallholders (farmers markets, CSAs, etc.) and taking control of the food system back from capital owners would be significantly less classist. Alternative food systems as they currently exist can serve as models and foundations for this sort of thing, but aren't really the end goal.

[–]LordBufo [非表示スコア]  (0子コメント)

Disclosure: I'm not very knowledgable about social justice theory, but I have done a bit of research on agricultural economics. Apologies if this isn't on target.

I think they are not really separate systems. At least in the US, Industrial agriculture is geared to mass produce 3 products: cheap meat, fuel ethanol, and sugar. This is encouraged by corn subsidies, sugar tariffs, and fuel ethanol mandates. Poor people do the best they can with their limited resources, and end up eating a lot of cheap processed unhealthy food out of necessity. Access to affordable healthy food should be the priority. Telling poor people to eat healthier is pretty patronizing.

Wealthy people have the luxury to eat better quality food. They also can eat certain foods as a status symbol. You end up with things like organic and fair trade being marketing ploys from companies like Whole Foods to price target wealthier people. I'd be concerned that demonizing food like McDonalds is at least partially classist. Eating locally has problems too, as wealth people tend to be in gentrified locations, which can hinder poorer people from getting into the market for local produce. Finally, when some things are imported from far away, it is often done in ways that are harmful. e.g. I've seen people raise concerns that the quinoa fad is cultural appropriation.

Industrial agriculture is good at mass producing cheap food, and it would be hard to support the world's population without it. However, the current regulatory environment encourages cheap bad food. It seems to me that changing regulations and subsidies to promote good food would be the best solution. Trust busting monopolistic agribusiness would be good too. Ideally, non-local agriculture could provide poorer people a good source of income by selling directly to the wealthy. Also, GMOs can bring down price of healthy foods, like golden rice, but the market is rewarding things like starchier corn. Then again, I am probably biased towards big picture systemic solutions, so maybe small scale action would be better.