Inequality of Food Systems: A Paradox of People and Plants

Inequality of Food Systems:
A Paradox of People and Plants

One of the greatest paradoxes present in our society today is the fact that the people who hold, care, nurture, and harvest plants available on inviting shelves at your local Trader Joe’s or Wholefoods, are the very ones suffering from malnutrition. In Sandy Brown and Christy Getz’s article, Farmworker Food Insecurity and the Production of Hunger in California, they effectively illustrate this paradox, its possible origins, and current effects in Oakland, California. While they primarily point a finger at the “historical role of racism in legitimating the exploitation and exclusion of immigrant workers” (135), I think one of the additional problems in understanding how this paradox has come about is the evolution of agri-definitions. In class we have investigated how the words ‘sustainable,’ ‘genetically modified’ versus ‘genetically engineered,’ and even ‘local,’ or ‘organic’ can be used in misleading or confusing ways. Brown and Getz introduce the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s definition of food security as the “means of having access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members,” but also define food security themselves as “more than an individual or household condition…but rather a lens through which to consider the highly unequal, uneven dynamics of global agricultural production, trade, and consumption” (121). One could argue that both of these definitions are correct on a micro or macro scale, but I think it is also an example of how confusing agricultural issues can be when one thing does not simply mean one thing.
	
I didn’t mean to write this blog about how convoluted terms and their definitions have become, as that is not the focus of Brown and Getz’s article. However, it would be a paradox within itself to write about paradox when the logic behind why the results are contradictory to the means (as that is what defines a paradox) is not sound because the words being used to frame the position of plants and people are not securely defined themselves.  The presence of paradoxes and inconclusive definitions make this article both weaker as an intellectual review, but stronger as a revealing of deep-rooted problems in society. Brown and Getz were both educated in California. So, I assumed they would have more personal experience and knowledge of the Mexican immigrant farmers than would seriously allow them to suggest that “undocumented immigrant farmworkers must be visible…in order to resist exploitation” as a solution to the plant and people paradox (240). I believe they mean in this statement that the importance of undocumented farmworkers must become visible so they are fully appreciated, not they should reveal themselves as illegal immigrants – which I agree with. From a personal perspective though, experiencing family members of friends being deported, this statement strikes a true and also impossible chord. We are all people of (I believe most Americans would agree) inalienable rights, yet our government, societal, and agricultural systems do not reflect this even though it is what we believe. This becomes the underlying paradox, portrayed as we pick from the soil or the shelf.