This Little Soap Box of Mine

This past week my AP Environmental Class was watching Food Inc. in class.  When we finished, we had to write a reaction paper.  Since some of the topics mentioned really pissed me off, I figured I'd get on my soap box once more and advocate for those who are being hurt the most.

**It should be noted that these were not the only points that disgusted and angered me, but many others.  Maybe if I have time, I'll dust the box off once more and share my thoughts with you.

Below is my reaction paper, please feel free to comment your thoughts.

Also, if you feel moved by my words, please watch the documentary and visit its website  in order to find out ways you can help ignite a change.

The Blood, Sweat and Tears of Food

For centuries, humans lived nomadic lives by traveling in order to follow their food sources and survive.  However, as humans began to evolve, that lifestyle was traded in to form the foundations of agriculture.  This change in humanity set of a chain of events, causing the human population to grow exponentially.  Over time, the increase in demand helped revolutionize the way people look at their food and how it’s grown, but not every revolution ignites change for the better.  Today, the simple task of growing food has transformed into a multi-billion dollar industry that is more protected than the people whose mouths it feeds. After watching the documentary Food Inc., I walked away realizing that the food system that should be nourishing and helping our population prosper, is harming the people who feed us.

Currently, only 3 or 4 companies control the meat market.  In comparison, only a handful of corporations control the rest of the food we eat (Food Inc.).  When looking at it from a farmer’s point of view, there aren’t a lot of options when it comes to finding employment; it’s either to run a small-family run farm with an unsure financial future or work for one of these corporations and know that a paycheck is going to come on a regular basis.  For many farmers, the former isn’t an option; these large corporations produce so much food on a large scale, it drives down prices to a point where the small town farmer can’t compete.  So, these farmers enter contracts with these corporations, which then set guidelines for the way they want their produce or product produced; they have to have a certain amount and type of tractor or seeds.  As a result, these farmers end up borrowing money from banks in order to enter into these contracts (Food Inc.).  What bothered me the most however, was that the borrowing didn't stop there. These companies keep expecting these farmers to upgrade their equipment on a regular basis, even though the new equipment costs a lot and the old ones work fine.  What is the point of getting a $50,000 harvester to harvest 100 more corn stalks a year, if the farmer only makes $20,000, a year and already has a good harvester that he is still paying off?  To me, it seems that these corporations are trying to find as many ways possible for them to make the the biggest profit possible.  Which from a business standpoint is fine.  after all, the sole purpose if for a business to make money.  However, that profit should not come at the price of compromising a man or woman’s livelihood.  These farmers work hard; they deserve to keep every penny they make.

Besides the massive amount of debt these farmers are in, they are still expected to purchase seeds annually.  A few years ago,  the supreme court ruled that an individual can own the value or right to life, paving the way for corporations to genetically alter life and patent it.  As a result, 90% of the nation’s soybeans are genetically modified and owned by Monsanto (Food Inc.).  In order to ensure that their monopoly over the genetically modified seeds remains in place, they have altered their beans so that they do not produce sterile seeds.  Yet, some cash-strapped farmers still harvest the best seeds and clean them anyway in hopes of saving some money.  Honestly, if I were a farmer I would do the same thing; it’s both practicable and reasonable.  Why would you want to spend money buying something you already have at your disposal?  It makes no sense and yet Monsanto wants the farmers to do exactly that.   Knowing full well that farmers harvest their seeds, they have a team of lawyers  and private investigators that are ex-members of the military who track down people to sue them for patent infringement (Food Inc.).  To make matters worse, they even have a 1-800 hotline where people can turn their neighbors in.  This has caused not only mental distress to farmers, but put hundreds of seed cleaners out of business. And for what?  So that one corporation could make an extra $1,000 or $2,000 a year?  In a way, the company has turned the humble agriculture industry into a greedy game of cat and mouse.

Another gloomy place on the board game of horrors created by Monsanto is where the humble small town farmer has his life shatter before his eyes.  Currently, Monsanto has a list of all the farmers that purchase their products from them.  They also keep a close eye on the farmers that don’t purchase from them or discontinue purchasing their product by sending investigators in the middle of the night to test fields for traces of their GMO gene (Food Inc.).  After, they  look at that list to see which category the farmer falls on.  If they have traces of the gene in their yield and don’t purchase their seeds from them, they sue them.  This is completely unfair, especially since the gene can be carried by the wind by pollen.  Is it really the farmer’s fault that the wind contaminated his crops?  What are they expected to do, build a dome over their crops to prevent the cross contamination?  It’s inhumanly possible to control the direction of wind!  Yet, Monsanto decides to sue them anyway and more often than not, they win because they can afford expensive lawyers and force the farmers to settle out of court.  This then leads the farmer to take out even more loans in order to pay Monsanto for patent infringement.  Sure the corporation won and got it’s money, but what does this loss really mean to the farmer?  Sometimes, everything.

Many of us, myself included, don’t really sit to reflect on the food that we eat.  We don’t think about where it came from or who helped grow it.  More likely than not, all of the food we eat has been genetically modified in some way or another.  As a result, our food is lying in the hands of a few corporations just like Monsanto.  The sad part is, the problems farmers face aren’t only faced by soybean farmers; most of them face the same challenges each day.  While Monsanto has a bunch of big shot lawyers to defend them, who do these farmers have?  Its documentaries like this that remind me why I want to go into law.  I want to ignite change, make a difference and give a voice to the people whom are often forgotten.  Yet, we don't all have to be lawyers to spark this change.  The solution is education.  If more people were to see this documentary and learn about the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing our food, I know that a revolution will occur.  Let’s just make sure it’s for the better this time.

Citations

Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Prod. Elise Pearlstein. Perf. Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. Magnolia Pictures, 2009. DVD.

My Day with Wires

Close your eyes and think of this:

There is a beeping in the distance and a stiffness in your muscles.  Every time you move, the sound of metal clinging together echos in the room.  On the left side of your heart, there is a box from which wires snake out.  Each connects to a receiver taped to your chest, that sends signals through your body.  Are you human?

These past few months I've been having chest pain and finally got an appointment to see a doctor.  It turns out that the pain wasn't caused by heart problems, but randomly due to stress.  Yet, to be sure, they hooked me up to a heart monitor.  So, yesterday I had to spend the day attached to a bunch of wires.  It's safe to say, that I felt like a robot.

The purpose of the monitor was to see how fast my heart beat was and track the activities that causes it to increase rapidly.  As a result, my time with it helped me realize just how many times a day I got stressed out over college and other things.  More often then not, that stress was caused by things that didn't matter when looking at them from the grand scheme of things.

Why is it that we always stress over the small stuff?
Why is it that the things that seem like nothing to someone else have the power to make us cry and get anxiety?
Why is it that even though we know that the things that stress us are minuscule, we still let them get to our heads?

These thoughts have been flowing through my mind for a while, but I've never really paid attention to them until recently.  A few days ago, a beloved staff member at my school passed away.  Although I do not know the specifics about her passing, I do know that the world was robbed of someone who always put others before her self.  She was kindhearted and always said good morning to everyone.  If I had to describe her in one word, it would be inspirational.

Her passing has helped me realize that life is short.
That every moment should be treasured because we do not know if it's our last.

As freshman year of college approaches, I will keep both her memory and the lessons she's taught me in the back of my mind.

I will not stress out about my classes or finding a person to sit with everyday at lunch.
I will not worry about how to manage a long distance relationship.
I will not worry about if my friends and I will still talk after June 25th.
I will get involved in my campus and take as many electives as I can.
I will study a semester abroad and learn the nation's native language fluently.
I will live in the now.

How will you live life to the fullest?

Politics Vs. Religion: A Never Ending Saga

Many people believe that slavery ended with the conclusion of the Civil War.  While that may be true in its traditional definition, slavery is very much alive in other forms across the world.

Each day, thousands of girls are kidnapped, transported to other nations and sold into slavery.


More often than not, that slavery isn't associated with traditional chores, like cleaning or cooking, but rather involve sexual actions, where these victims are turned into prostitutes or raped on a daily basis.

Although I have never known anyone whom has been affected by human trafficking, it's still a topic that I hope near and dear to my heart.   Especially since we live in a nation where freedom for all is preached and on the most part, exists from west coast to east coast.

Knowing what I do about human trafficking, it hurts my heart to learn about 276 girls in Nigeria that were kidnapped from their boarding school by an Islamic extremist group called Boko Haram. (Below is a link to the article I read recently.)

Luckily, 50 girls were able to escape, but the remaining still remain captive.  Below is a quote from one of the brave young women who risked her life in order to return to her family.

 "Don't worry, we're soldiers," one 16-year-old girl recalls them saying. "Nothing is going to happen to you."

 -ABC News

 Unfortunately, those men were not soldiers.  Those men lied.

Once the young girls exited the building, they were surrounded by armed men and were forced to comply to their orders since they were outnumbered.

While it's shocking to some, this is an event (maybe not on this large of a scale) that occurs almost as often as human trafficking; there's a lot of political unrest in other nations where resources are scarce, ideologies run strong and education is on the back burner of society's priorities.

Last year, in AP World, we learned about the Rwandan genocide and how because of past events, their is political upheaval. Instantly, I connected the two events since both involved different ideologies that sparked extremist groups to form and try to impose their beliefs on others.  Why?  Because when the European nations first decided to colonize in Africa, they based their colonies on geographical square footage, many did not take into account the different tribes that lived in these areas.

As these colonies formed, many mother countries, such as Spain, decided to convert all of their colonists and natives within their proximity to Catholicism, forcing them to leave their traditions behind.  However, during this same time, Islam began spreading across the world and eventually reached the colonies as well.  Now, each area has people whom are Catholic, Islamic and countless other subgroups based on native roots.  Oh, those people with different native roots?  Well they all come from different tribes with different relationships to one another.

Unfortunately, some of the tribes group together have had bad experiences/feuds in the past that still continue to this day.  Sometimes, those feuds are caused by the controlling nation who pick one tribe over another and make them the sole controllers of the government, like what happened in Rwanda, causing the two groups to naturally hate each other due to divide in the social classes and wealth.

Around the same time I learned all that information in school, I sat in on a Political Science class at Hofstra and discussed with two professors the effects religious beliefs have on society.

I came with the conclusion that many of the world's warfare is led by a disagreement between religious institutions, such as the Crusades, WWII, etc.  However, it's not the institutions in themselves that are bad, it's the need for people to take their beliefs and impose them on others that is the problem.  This also doesn't just occur with religion, but can be applied to any political policy.

Take the United States for example.  It's main belief is that everyone deserves freedom and the right to follow what ever type of government or religion they choose.  Although this seems innocent, with every solider that they are sending overseas, they become hypocritical.  This is because they send soldiers into areas to stop rebel groups from imposing their beliefs on a nation, but in that same process, they impose their own beliefs of democracy.  What if the people of that nation want freedom, but not democracy?  What if they're okay under a monarchy?

No nation has a right to tell another nation what they're doing is wrong unless lives are being lost.

If in the process of stopping, say peaceful protestors in order to being a nation democracy, lives are lost, was it really worth imposing your belief on that nation?

Was it worth getting their blood on your hands? (hypothetical of course)

Although it may sound harsh, sometimes we need to back away from situations and accept that other groups of people have different ideals from ours.

We shouldn't impose our beliefs on others, but let others belief what they wish.

If humanity decided to adapt this principle before hand, maybe there wouldn't have been a Rwandan genocide and maybe those girls would have been able to finish their education.

It's events like this that make me want to make a difference in the world.  Make me want to change it.

With this in mind, no person, no matter where they live, deserves to be taken from their homes, killed or persecuted solely based on the religion they practice, gender, or race.

We all live in the 21st century and have modern ideas.  For the most part, I'm a strong believer in the principal that history repeats itself.  However, if society stops remaining ignorant to the realities before us, maybe that wouldn't be the case.

We need to look into the future, not the past.

While the battle against human trafficking and the one between political and religious control is far from over, all we can do is Hope that people stand up, one at a time and demand action.

Action against one group of people forcing their beliefs on another.
Action against human trafficking/slavery.
Action to bring those 276 girls home.

It's only through the voices of the few that the many can stand up and make a difference.