When you wander through the produce department of the supermarket, how conscious are you of the workers who harvest the food you consume? Will films like Food Chains affect the choices you maker as a food consumer?
Week 11 Day 2 Discussion Question 2
April 25, 2016 | 4 Comments
April 10, 2019 at 2:13 pm
When walking through the produce department of the supermarket, I rarely think about the workers who have harvested the food I consume, except when I am buying locally. Like Bridget mentioned, I have heard of many movements in the recent years regarding food, but my attention has not been pulled to anything about the harsh and unjust conditions of the farm workers who bring our food to the table. This documentary highlighted the harsh realities of millions of workers in the United States who are barely making enough money to survive. There were many statistics throughout the film that did an excellent job of capturing the inequity between the supermarkets and farmers, like the fact that if tomatoes were made to be just one cent more, the worker’s wages could double, and this would mean that four-person families would only be paying 44 cents more than they are now. In Napa, many workers are homeless even though they are working 10 hour every day, so the change in pricing of tomatoes would be the difference of putting a roof over worker’s heads.
My best friend in elementary school owned an apple orchard that we would go to every day after school, sometimes helping the workers with getting the apples prepared to sell. This was an amazing experience because I learned about the work that went into farming from a young age, and saw process first-hand from start to finish. The interesting thing about this example is that whenever I buy apples from their orchard at the store, I am conscious about how they got there, but I don’t think about that with other produce because I have not experienced it or been exposed to it in the same way. This documentary was very hard to watch, but I am glad I am being exposed to this because it will help me make a conscious effort to think about the things I am buying in the future.
April 10, 2019 at 11:26 am
I wanted to endorse Bridget’s point, and also bring in another piece of work which struck my mind after watching “Food Chains”– at UVM, I took a Cultural Anthropology class in which my professor actually was working on publishing her work on Latino/a farmers in Vermont, in specific, called “Eating Far From Home.” My professor, Teresa Mares, showed us tidbits of the participatory observation and interviews with various farm workers across the state of Vermont, and much of her work emphasized the disconnection between the food we buy and consume, and the people whom it starts in the hands of. After this discussion, we read “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies,” by Seth Holmes– the title of this novel essentially says it all. The fresh food we may see and buy at the Middlebury Hannaford, for example, has traveled a long path before making it onto the shelves, and could have come at a cost. “Broken bodies,” is a line that will always stick with me, as it emphasizes the (when thinking about it in terms of social class and culture) the deep divides in class (and race) and how it manifests in food culture. “Broken bodies” also closely embodies the content in “Food Chains” as the conditions in which these migrant farm workers pick fruit and vegetables are certainly less than favorable, and due to this divide in social class, the issue of how much voice/how much people may know about these conditions, are up to question.
There is broken-ness of not only the bodies/lives of these people in order to harvest this food that we buy with no stress on shelves, but also the connection between the farm and the food, and upper-middle class shopping at these stores and the class which works to harvest these goods. I, to be completely honest, had not thought about my food choices as much as I should have until I read the book I mentioned, and now have been reminded after watching “Food Chains.”
Food culture is extremely key and often forgotten when discussing class inequality across America.
April 9, 2019 at 6:43 pm
In recent years, a clear food movement has occurred. Our conversations around food often target the chemicals applied to food, how it impacts the environment, waste, excessive packaging, transportation, GMO’s, farming practices and the list goes on. I personally consider a lot of these factors when I am purchasing food in the grocery store. However, I admit, I rarely consider the people involved. Our entire food system is dependent on cheap labor, this is something many of us are aware of. As it was stated in food chains, “The history of farm labor in the United States is a history of exploitation”. I do not believe this has changed. In our local Vermont economy, migrant farm laborers support the Vermont dairy business. Movements like Milk with Dignity bring attention to the scale on which we rely on migrant labor. The working and living conditions depicted in Food Chains, such as the housing, or lack thereof, for workers in Napa, shows the how pervasive these inequities are in communities all over the United States. It is in our backyard, even in Vermont. The invisibility of these communities is furthered by their location in predominantly wealthy regions. Again, this is demonstrated by the case in Napa CA where the overwhelming wealth disparity between consumers and workers is so vast there is little to no recognition of the circumstances.
In 10th grade I read a book called Tomato Land, which detailed the invisible life of a tomato before it arrives at the store. I distinctly recall a story of a migrant farm worker who gave birth to 3 daughters during her time as a laborer in Floridian tomato field. Two of her three daughters had birth defects. As a result, she could not afford to care for the children, whose birth defects were a product of her working to provide them with a better life. My memory of this is a testament to the importance of work like Food Chains, which pulls aside the curtain and provides a glimpse of the people who make our lifestyles possible. I do not think the culture of food has effectively incorporated the issue of migrant justice in the conversation about ethical and healthy foods. I believe continuing the conversation demonstrated in Food Chains may change this.
April 9, 2019 at 9:49 am
The documentary food chains furthered my knowledge on the struggles many farmworkers face in an attempt to earn a living wage. The tomato farmers’ hunger strike against Publix really drew me in because what they were protesting for seemed so simple (a penny more per pound to double farmworkers’ wages) and easy for such a large corporation to accommodate. They were simply asking for means to live a dignified life – something all human beings should have access to.
The documentary draws upon the 1960 film Harvest of Shame to demonstrate how the fair treatment and wages of workers has not been remedied but rather has evolved into other problems. Because of the large supply chain farmers and their workers struggle while large corporations like Publix thrive. This one quote from the film stuck out to me, “agriculture is doing great as long as you’re not a farmer” – because the sale of a product and its production are so disconnected, it leads to one end of the supply chain thriving while the other suffers immensely. The supermarkets are able to do this because they do not take on the risk of producing the food; they merely buy the cheapest and best products based on demand. Jacob, the farmer from Florida, is negatively affected by this situation. His support contract ended after the supermarket found a better deal in Mexico. Because of this, Jacob let his tomatoes rot as packaging them was far too expensive. This in turn, leaves workers without work to do and subsequently leaves them unpaid.
Additionally, the lack of affordable housing in Napa for workers astonished me. Even though these workers labored in the grape fields, they could not find a place to live remotely close to their work, and instead they camped along the river, emphasizing the disconnect between those who consume and those who produce. When I go to a grocery store I do not always think about where exactly this product came from or who played a part in producing it, but it is clear that major reform must occur in the farming industry in order to adequately pay workers and improve their livelihoods.