The Strip District (Event Write Up)

Our class took a trip to the Strip district where we spent most of our time at La Prima Espresso and also visited La Reina and Lotus as well as a few shops along the way. I am going to be writing about the La Prima visit since that was the bulk of our trip and where I learned the most.

One interesting thing we saw at La Prima was how coffee is roasted. I studied abroad in Central America so I’ve seen the coffee plant before and been to coffee farms; however, I had never actually seen coffee roasted so this was a new experience for me. I learned a whole lot about the process of roasting. The roaster, who showed us his job, told us that his goal is to let the coffee speak for itself. Too much roasting is bad because it takes out the caffeine and makes the coffee too bitter. His job is to bring out what is inside the bean, to maximize the sweetness and minimize the bitterness. He roasts about six to seven hundred pounds of coffee a day!

Different people roast coffee differently so he shared with us how he does it for La Prima. He usually lets the coffee roast for about fifteen minutes or until he hears the second cracking sound. That is when he knows the coffee is ready. Then he has to let it cool for a few days to air out because the gas used to roast it makes it not taste good. One thing I realized is how much of an art coffee roasting really is. Also, it is not simple. It seems simple and straight forward enough but it’s actually pretty complicated. He said there is about a three second difference between coffee being right where he wants it to be and not where he wants it to be. It is not garbage at this point but it is not as good as it could be. He said that if he’s twelve seconds too late the coffee would go to the dumpster. Later we learned though that they don’t like to throw it away and use it for flavored coffee, because with the flavoring you can’t tell.

In relation to what we have been talking about in class, coffee is an interesting product to examine when talking about globalization. The owner said we have to remember coffee is an agricultural product. The beans come from all around the world. There is trust involved in picking vendors since their coffee is fair trade and organic certified. The owner talked a lot about local food. He said he hates the idea of strawberries being sold all year. We should pay attention to what’s around us and buy local. There is an idea of traceability behind this which is what he tries to do with all of his coffee, to be able to trace it.

This is interesting because coffee is a fruit that is not grown locally. This leaves me to question if it is justified that we expect to have coffee year round in the US or even at all since it is not local. To be honest, I don’t like the thought of not having coffee all year though since I drink it every day. I think that even though the coffee itself isn’t local, La Prima makes it local by rooting it in the Italian tradition and in their own way of roasting it. This is different from Starbucks because it is not about standardization, which is what globalization is all about. He said coffee should be about individuality which gives it a mosaic of richness from different cultures in America. He has been in business since 1988 as a micro-roaster and doesn’t want to go big like Starbucks and distribute coffee all around the US. La Prima has its own style and doesn’t want to be like anyone else. There is about a two hour region that they distribute to, which is part of this idea of being local even though the coffee itself is from far away. He wants La Prima to be unique to Pittsburgh, something that belongs here.

Also in class we have talked about sustainability and especially in reading The Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed and with Women Working the Nafta Food Chain, we have questioned the sustainability of our current food system especially in regards to globalization. The owner of La Prima talked to us a bit about his idea of sustainability. He sees sustainability as maintaining their uniqueness and roasting a needed amount of coffee each week. It’s not about going big, as Butz would have pushed for as he did during the Green Revolution, its about being sustainable. First, they have to be sustainable in the sense that they are a business and have employees with families and healthcare to pay, so they really have to pay attention to that. Secondly, sustainability is important to them as it relates to mother earth. This is why they have chosen to be organic. Also, sustainability relates to workers around the globe who need to sustain their own families, which is why they are fair trade certified as well to ensure a fair price to farmers that supports raising a family. One thing that stood out to me is that he said more people these days are interested in making money at other people’s expense, people take advantage of other people. This I believe is a result of globalization’s go big or go home message. People have lost concern for other people and are only concerned about making money and their bottom lines. It was so refreshing to see a local company that is very grounded in their unique identity and in their responsibility in being sustainable.

Some questions I was left with were mostly about the organic and fair trade labeling process. The owner seemed almost doubtful as he talked about it saying there is a lot of trust involved. I wonder what could be done to make labeling for these things more accountable. Also there is the question of how fair labeling is, especially for small roasters who may be organic and fair trade but can’t afford the labeling. Lastly, in one of my other classes we discussed how we are almost desensitized to labels now because there are so many and they all mean different things. People are starting to ignore certification labels because there are too many out there. I myself am a big label reader and like that I am more informed on what I buy, although I realized smaller farmers and companies may be the ones losing out in all of this. In my opinion, it is sad that our food system has become so out of control that we even need labels to certify that things were naturally grown and workers were fairly paid. Labeling is something that I will definitely continue to think about.

Some things that really stood out to me though were how much of an art coffee roasting really is. Although it is such a globalized product, the second most traded commodity after oil, it still can be so unique and unstandardized in so many ways. I was amazed at how much work and expertise goes into making what I put into my mug every morning. It made me feel more connected to my coffee which is a good thing and what the slow food movement talked about in the Manifestos is all about. It was really good for me to go down to the strip district and see some of the unique things that make my city what it is. I really haven’t spent any time there and now I want to go back all the time! It is great to see local places like La Prima, still seeking to be unique and let their coffee speak for itself even in this highly globalized world that we live in.

King Corn (Event Write Up)

I attended a showing of the film King Corn at Chatham University, it was directed by Aaron Woolf who was actually there to present his film. The documentary was about two recent college graduates who took a journey to Iowa to grow one acre of corn. They then follow that acre to see where it ends up. It starts out with the recent grads get their hair examined by a scientist. The scientist tells them how what they eat eventually ends up as their hair and after analyzing their hair he tells them that the carbon in their hair is all from corn. This seemed odd because it wasn’t like they ate corn on the cob for every meal but as the journey continued they realized how much corn was in everything they ate. “We are people made of corn.” This was my favorite line of the movie because it is so strange and unnatural to think about but corn really is in almost everything you can buy at the grocery store which is what we put into our bodies. As the tagline of the movie states, we are what we eat, making us people of corn. There is a scene where they go to a supermarket and go down all the aisles and everything they look at has some form of corn in it. One of their goals in this endeavor was to find out the reasons behind this and how corn ended up in everything including their hair.

They rented their acre from a corn farmer in Iowa who showed them how to plant and harvest. The corn was genetically modified to produce the biggest yield possible. Corn farming in the US is all about quantity over quality. At one point, they taste tested some of their corn and realized it tasted like cardboard. The corn they were growing wasn’t even edible. Corn farmers don’t even eat the corn that they grow. One funny part was when the farmer they worked with said they are growing crap. He said he has to do it to stay in business and to keep those subsidy checks coming otherwise he wouldn’t be able to turn a profit and would actually lose money growing corn.

So where did their acre of corn go? They realized it would be impossible to follow since there is so much corn produced in Iowa, mountains of it. So they looked at statistics and probability to see where their corn would most likely go. Most of it was sold for animal feed so it went to feedlots. The sad thing is that cattle aren’t meant to eat corn; it makes them sick so they have to be injected with a ton of antibiotics to be able to eat it. Most beef we eat is from cows that were fed corn not grass; this is one way that corn ends up in our hair, from meat. Another way is through corn products such as high fructose corn syrup which is where most of their remaining corn went. The two even make high fructose corn syrup themselves which was a humorous scene. Now it is cheaper than sugar so almost everything is sweetened with it, another way corn ends up in our hair. A side affect is that consuming large quantities of high fructose corn syrup leads to health problems such as obesity and type II diabetes. This is where our food system has ended up. It is no longer concerned with health but is about the bottom line which is why cheap corn is in just about everything. The students come to realize how unsustainable the US food system really is and in the end the two students buy their one acre of land from their farmer. Instead of planting more corn, they turn it into a baseball field.

This movie relates a lot to what we are talking about and reading about in class in terms of globalization. We about former Secretary of Agriculture Butz and how in the 70’s he changed the whole US food system with his go big or go home message to farmers. In the documentary Butz is interviewed and explains his rationale. Part of it made sense to me. He said they were paying farmers not to produce which was the worst thing they could do. So instead, he thought farmers should be paid to produce so that the US will always have food security. However, in emphasizing quantity over quality it led to a corrupt system with perverse incentives like what we see today with corn. Globalization has led corn to be completely overproduced. Instead of the US focusing on growing a diverse variety of crops, it is all about specializing and growing massive quantities of one crop while importing everything else. This makes it difficult for small farmers who grow diverse crops to stay in business.

Final tidbits from food class

I thought my last blog should reflect on what I learned this semester in my class on food as it relates to race, gender, and class. Food is something that we eat every day but rarely do we make the connections that were made in this class. I think that is the biggest thing that I learned, connection. The first way I learned about connection was through people bringing in food to class. They shared how they were connected to that food, the story behind it, and why they chose it. I learned a lot about each person’s individuality as they shared their food with us.

In Women Working the Nafta Food Chain I read about the journey it takes for food to get to my kitchen. From the tomato fields of Mexico to my local grocery store, there are so many people involved and also so many injustices happening, especially to women. From the maquilization in the south to Mcdonaldization in the North and both spreading in the other direction, the food system is more globalized than we even think about when we sit down to eat dinner.

Not only that but My Year of Meats opened my eyes to some of the injustices of the meat industry. I had seen some of these images before in Food Inc. but this movie really made me think about the meat that I buy or choose not to buy now. I learned about the connection between meat and the media and meat and pharmaceutical companies who sell the majority of their antibiotics for livestock use. These are connections that I wouldn’t typically make and honestly that most people would prefer not to know about. I think it is better to be informed though and aware of our connection to the food we eat in order to make better and more informed decisions.

In a positive light, studying soul food made me think about food as a connector for families and communities. It truly does have a mystical ability to bring people together in many ways. The communal aspect of food is probably one of my favorite things about it. I find in my own life that cooking for people or sharing a meal with people brings us much closer together. Although, my thoughts on what makes up a meal are much more complicated now after taking this class, as I still don’t really have a working definition, except that it means different things to different people.

We ended the semester by reading The Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed which was probably my favorite of all the books we read. Terra Madre connects farmers from all over the globe who are seeking to make our global food system more sustainable. This shows what we can do when we connect with each other and work toward solutions. Although this book pointed out a lot of bad things with your current food system, it also left me with hope that if enough people care and act, then things can change.

So that is where I’m at now that it is the end of the semester. This class has been so interesting to me and I feel more connected to the world around me and the food I eat in just being aware of all these things we learned. I am working on changing some habits of my own and hoping that in my future career I can work toward some policy solutions that involve this hugely understudied but greatly interesting and intertwined issue of food.

Cuisine

Cuisine is described as the core of “adventurous eaters.” The word itself sounds fancy and exotic. When you think of certain cultures there is sometimes a national cuisine that is associated with that culture. Who determines this? Can subordinate groups in a culture have their own cuisine? Is cuisine only for the elite?

To answer these questions I will look at the case of Mexico as seen in Que Vivan los Tomales. In my opinion, the wheat of the Spanish elites never became the national cuisine. Although there were hybrids of European and indigenous foods such as the torta, the tortilla is what comes to mind when I think of Mexican cuisine. The tortilla wasn’t from the Spanish elites but from the mestizos, the subordinate group. “The most articulate response to the tortilla discourse appeared in the work of Andrés Molina Enríquez, a liberal intellectual and fervent nationalist. He considered mestizos to be the true representatives of the Mexican nation, and observed that ‘maize constituted the principal base of the daily diet, and represented in an absolutely indubitable manner the national cuisine.”I agree with Enríquez, the tortilla in my opinion is without a doubt representative of Mexican cuisine.

So yes, given the Mexico case, I think that a subordinate group can certainly have their own cuisine and in most cases that cuisine will be way more representative of national identity than the food of the elites. Now some may ask if a country needs elites to develop cuisine. The elite class is literate and can write down recipes and also in many cases creates a hierarchy on food. I don’t think a country needs an elite class to develop cuisine, Mexican cuisine already existed before the Spanish came over and started writing things down and making a hierarchy out of food. Cuisine existed in the taste of the community, in cooking, and in kitchens. Cuisine existed for both the peasants and the elite but one group wasn’t in my opinion necessary for it to develop, it was just necessary for someone to take notice of people cooking in a different way than their own group.

In a similar fashion I would say that soul food is definitely a cuisine. Cuisine, as we have seen in the case of Mexico, is often the elevated food of agrarian communities. Soul food took African traditions of agrarian communities and recreated them with a new spin in a different setting, the US. It represents a culture, a collective identity for the African American community which is why I think it is certainly cuisine. In my opinion, cuisine isn’t necessarily the food of the elite but a subordinate group in society can have its own cuisine. I’ve gone this whole time without actually defining cuisine but I guess I should say what I think the definition of cuisine is. I see it as food or way of preparing or cooking food that is specific to a group or particular region. It doesn’t have to be fancy; it just has to have a representative quality in that it represents a collective identity.

Is there such a thing as American cuisine? That is a good question. It is hard to say because the United States was founded by immigrants who all had their own cuisines that they brought with them. So within the US we have Italian, Mexican, and Chinese cuisine to name a few. All of those are based on the cuisine of specific groups within our country. It is hard to think of something that is purely American. Some might say hamburgers are American cuisine. That is a possibility but it almost lacks a representative quality because we don’t eat them all the time and not everyone eats them.

I think there are definite regional cuisines though within the US. For example, when I think of Pittsburgh cuisine I think of Primanti’s and Heinz Ketchup, among other things. If you go across the state to Philadelphia they might say that the Philly cheese steak is their city cuisine. This is probably true for cities all across the US and of course different regions have different cuisines as well, such as Cajun food for example. I think the US is so diverse that it would be very hard to come up with a national cuisine. Can anyone think of a food that could be labeled the national cuisine of the US? I’d love to hear comments if anyone can think up something.

“Choice and Flexibility” for Women Workers in the Tomato Food Chain

As mentioned in my previous blog on globalization, McDonaldization has a focus on flexibility. In order to explore this idea we will look at an example from Women Working the Nafta Food Chain. Specifically I will look at women working the tomato food chain from Mexico to Canada to see who is really choosing flexible labor and who it is really benefiting.

Flexibilization is being pushed by corporations as a matter of choice arguing that a flexible labor strategy is more fitting for women who choose to spend more time with their families. While there is some truth to this, women have their own meanings of flexible labor as the juggle their time between being producers and consumers of food and as both part-time, salaried workers and full time, domestic workers having to manage their household. For many women flexibilization is not a matter of choice but based on an assumption that it is the women who will take care of children and feed their families. For indigenous women in Mexico it is even less of a choice because they are at the bottom of the social ladder. These workers live and work in terrible often unsafe conditions and move from harvest to harvest looking for work to survive. Often times their work is cut off or cut short unexpectedly. Many times they don’t know when or where they will work. But this is flexibility for the Mexican migrant worker from a corporate perspective.

At least Canadian cashiers and fast food workers know when they will work in advance. However, Canadian cashiers have their own issues with this system as Wanda a cashier at Loblaws in Canada shares. She says that part time cashiers depend on seniority to choose their hours, so new cashiers like her are lucky to get any hours. She said they might call her in once every two weeks for a four hour shift. These restricted hours affect her earning power because a cashier has to complete 500 hours to be eligible for a raise. At this rate she says she will probably work at her starting wage for at least two years. This flexible labor to the company is a strategy of lean production.

So who benefits from this strategy based on flexibility? I would say it is the multinational corporations not women themselves who are at the mercy of such corporations. This strategy emphasizes the maximization of efficiency and profits and often leaves the most marginalized workers with no time of their own and no earning power.

“I feel an overwhelming sadness and connection to all the women in the ‘tomato food chain.’ We all play a seemingly small part, but the ramifications of our work are enormous… We are all entrapped in the corporate workings of flexibilization. However, the dilemma still exists for all of us in the food chain: we’re trying to survive.” –Wanda Loblaws cashier in Canada pg 76

From women in Mexico to cashiers in Canada it seems that this system of flexibilization doesn’t leave them with many choices. Which is why I’d say that this flexibilization of labor that globalization has pushed on women is not a choice but rather an unwelcome imposition. It is pretending to appeal to women’s interest while really only being about the corporations who push this strategy and their bottom lines.

Maquilization and McDonaldization in the NAFTA Food Chain

When reading Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain I found it so ironic that globalization and trade liberalization, brought by NAFTA, has made what I see as bad systems, McDonaldization and Maquilization, spread from one end of the NAFTA food chain to the other. To explain these terms, McDonaldization is the fast food model that has served to reorganize work in all other sectors. It’s based on efficiency, predictability, calculability or quantifiability, substitution of non-human technology, control and the irrationality of rationality. Central to this model is “flexible” part-time labor. McDonaldization focuses on quantity not quality, which is one of the biggest problems I see with our food system today. This strategy became a whole way of organizing work, processes, and culture.

Maquilizaton originated in the maquila free trade zones of northern Mexico, it now refers to a more generalized work process characterized by the feminization of the labor force, extreme segmentation of skill categories, the lowering of real wages, and non-union orientation. NAFTA has opened the doors for maquilas throughout Mexico not just on the borders especially agromaquilas, like those that grow tomatoes. Agromaquilas specifically depend on temporary, part-time, primarily female labor.

Due to globalization and trade liberalization, McDonaldization initiated in the north is now spreading south while maquilization initiated in the south is now spreading north. In my opinion neither of these systems should be spreading anywhere. Free trade has carved out these two ways of structuring work based on cheap production and labor and both have so much gone wrong with them. NAFTA was supposed to bring great benefits and maybe some benefits have come but I see the spreading of these two systems as a definite negative side effect of NAFTA. For example, highly important in both the McDonaldization of retail and service sectors and the Maquilization of agroindustrial and manufacturing sectors of the continental food chain are the “flexibilization of labor” and the “feminization of poverty.” Women workers have become hugely important to the new global system of flexible labor although they are grossly overlooked and more than often marginalized. Women and multinational corporations have their own ideas on what flexible means as I will explore in my next blog.

The Tomasita Project, which follows the journey of a tomato from the Mexican field through the United States to a Canadian fast food restaurant, explores the contradiction of this food process. Fresh produce is grown in Mexico like tomatoes that are moved north to US and Canadian retail markets and fast food restaurants while these same markets and restaurants are increasingly moving south a direct result of globalization. So machilization and McDonaldization as spreading passed borders as trade barriers are broken down.

While this might seem like geographic distance is getting smaller and like our system is getting more efficient we often don’t consider the hidden costs to this globalization of the food system. For example hidden costs include: appropriation of Indigenous lands, degradation of the environment and the health and dignity of workers, increasing poverty, deepening sexist and racist employment practices. Which leads me to my next point, this system isn’t cheap at all as mentioned in The Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, “Globalized, industrialized food is not cheap. It is too costly for the earth, for the farmers and for our health. The earth can no longer carry the burden of groundwater mining, pesticide pollution, disappearance of species, and destabilization of the climate. Farmers can no longer carry the burden of debt inevitable in industrial farming.” So while McDonaldization and Maquilization, direct products of globalization, create the image of being cheap and efficient, we have to consider the hidden costs that these systems that favor quantity, cheapness, and efficiency inevitably bring with them. More of these hidden costs will be explored in my next blog focusing on choice and flexibility in the NAFTA food chain.

Globalization

What comes to mind when you hear the word “globalization”? We did this exercise in class and people shouted out things like Coca-cola and McDonalds being everywhere, which reminds me of how globalized food really is. When I think of globalization I think of space and time getting smaller. We can travel faster, we can communicate in an instant, and geographical distance isn’t as much of a detriment. In class we called this a “lack of borders.” There are both positive and negative aspects to globalization. For example, I think it’s great that I can communicate with whoever I want whenever I want via email, cell phone, Skype, instant message, etc. I can also travel, see the world, and visit friends much more easily than in the past. However, one negative aspect of globalization is the disconnect that comes with it. When trade is globalized we are disconnected from where the things that we consume actually come from and this can be a problem.

We see the issues that globalization has brough when we examine our current food system. For example, the Green Revolution pushed in 1973 by Secretary of Agriculture Butz sent a message to farmers telling them to get big or get out. The idea was to grow one commodity crop and grow it well. This led to standardization and a centrally controlled food system.

As a result genetically modified seeds were made to produce huge yields. In fact, Monsanto owns 95% of all genetically modified seeds. Some people don’t see anything wrong with GMO’s but I disagree.

Here’s a quote from the Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed on this topic:
“Let us become coproducers,” he said. The consumer means to destroy. That’s why “consumption” was the name given to tuberculosis. In the act of eating, we are already participating in production. By eating organic, we are saying no to toxins and supporting the organic farmer. By rejecting GMO’s, we are voting for the rights of small farmers and people’s right to information and health. By eating local, we are taking power and profits away from agribusiness and strengthening our local food community. Eaters are, therefore, also coproducers, both because their relationship with small producers is a critical link in creating a sustainable, just, healthy food system and because we are what we eat. In making food choices we make choices about who we are.”- pg 4

We need to be coproducers, not just consumers, and make responsible choices about food. As the above quote says our food choices are choices about who we are. While GMO’s may not actually harm your health (at least that we know of yet), I don’t agree with the system. Seeds represent life, and we can’t copyright life. Companies like Monsanto are suing small farmers and local groups for using seeds that they have been using for generations because Monsanto has the property rights to that seed. Also, GMO’s are taking over and spreading (as seeds do) so that soon many natural varieties of seeds will be gone. This is a problem for many organic farmers who do not want to use GMO’s, the GMO seeds are spreading onto their land and some of them are even getting sued! This is a result of globalization and the get big or go home message of the Green Revolution.

Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed compares this to fascism:
“Food has become the place for fascism to act. This fascism is seen where the seed is patented and turned into the monopoly property of a handful of corporations – 95% of genetically modified seeds are controlled by one corporation, Monsanto.
This is another element of fascism – fear of the small, the decentralized, the local, the free.
In fact, I would say fascism is about fear of freedom. And we are about love of freedom – passionate, deep, uncompromising love of freedom – the self-organized freedom that Terra Madre is about. “- pg 36

Terra Madre is a network of food communities around the world, each committed to producing quality food in a responsible, sustainable way. They are an example of a group that is responding to this fascism of food and seeking a different future. After reading the Manefestos I looked more into the Terra Madre Conference and found that it is organized by the Slow Food Movement. I think this movement is great because it basically confronts the disconnection with our food that globalization has created.

Here is a bit about the movement from their website:
“Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.”

Be sure to check out their website for more interesting things about the Slow Food Movement: http://www.slowfood.com/
Slow Food stands in direct opposition to the globalized food system we have now, which is focused on fast, efficient, and big. I think it is inspirational that people are joining together and pushing for a different future of food. It is also so important to remember our role in all of this. We shouldn’t just be consumers, we are coproducers. The food choices we make should reflect who we are and the future food system that we would like to have. I want a food system that is good, fair, clean, and sustainable so my choices should reflect that. Globalization has disconnected us and made us think that our food choices don’t affect anything. I would challenge everyone to think of how our food is connected to the rest of the world and to practice slow food!