I saw parts of an interesting British documentary/reality series this past week on Channel 8. The BBC series was called Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways, and followed 6 young Brit food consumers (one a picky eater, one a fast food junkie, one a rich gourmet foods enthusiast, etc, etc) as they were taken to Southeast Asia to:
“live and work alongside the millions of people in south east Asia’s food production industries. They must catch, harvest and process food products that we eat every day, seeing behind the scenes of the tuna, prawns, rice and chicken industries for the very first time.”
It was fascinating to see how our ultra-cheap chicken and seafood are caught and processed, and it was equally devastating to see how the people who caught and processed this food lived, how little they were paid, how hard they worked, and how much they sacrificed in order to even procure these “lucky” jobs. Even the underworld of the sex trade, so rampant in Asia, has many direct connections to the food processing industry.
The series was also incredibly annoying due to these exceptionally obnoxious British 19-22 year-olds constant complaining, whining, and getting grossed out at every other job they were demanded to do.
What I found poignant is that despite their whinging, each were changed, as we saw in the concluding “follow up” portion of the film. Some were simply more respectful in their eating habits, more open to trying new things, and were adamant about buying fair-trade products. One girl even went back to try and help some of the women separated from their families, and was writing to newspapers and magazines with pitches on the subject.
The real eye-opener, and the question this documentary raised, is what this says about locally grown food products. It seems common sense to buy from your local farmer, sign up for the local organic veg box, visit the farmers’ market, etc. How can supporting and getting involved in your local agriculture be wrong? In the US and Britain there have been what seem to be nationalist campaigns to buy British meat, or buy American beef (or cheese, or corn, or whatever).
One young man in the series was a young farmer, his family farm going generations back. A very nice guy, he was one of the few that made the show tolerable. He and he alone never complained, worked harder than the rest, and was often the only one working when others refused (e.g. gutting fish on top of one of the smelliest sewer-rivers imaginable and picking, packing, and lugging hundreds of kilos of rice).
Before the experience, he had been a staunch “Buy British” supporter. Being a farmer, this makes perfect sense. No complaints here. But upon his return, he had changed his mind and was educating his friends on the matter. Why? The food industry in Asia supports millions of people. Maybe more. There would be no big Western food companies, whether they be MacDonald’s or Lean Cuisine, without ultra cheap foodstuffs. Even fancy restaurants are affected. Not every eatery can afford locally caught fresh fish and shellfish. I know from experience at having to defrost and clean hundreds of prawns and scallops and mussels every day at a very high-end restaurant in Tel Aviv – one that specialized in seafood.
Now more than ever before we live in a global economy. Our smallest of choices can and do affect economics in other countries. Do the workers suffer? Yes. Do we want to pay less for our food? Most of the world doesn’t. But even for the idealist, does stopping to buy these “sweat shop” foods help anyone?
I don’t know the answers yet, but I will be seriously looking into this. I think that the best I can personally do right now is to look for “Fair Trade” products. This ensures good treatment and good pay for the workers. I like my local organic veg box, for the time being. And I have ALWAYS wanted to know who harvested the supermarket fruit and veg, where it all came from, what the names of the (potential) migrant workers were, pesticides used, genetic modifications made, how long it all even took to get here, etc, etc. Maybe it’s time to finally find out.
We owe it to ourselves (if not the world) to know where the nourishment we put into our bodies comes from, and who was involved in bringing it to us.
Hey Sharon!
There have been some studies that have questioned the overall greenness of the local food movement – for example
http://cabiblog.typepad.com/hand_picked/2009/11/is-local-food-environmentally-costly-.html
Great article, Mick. Thank you for the link.
It’s not. You should only buy local where there is a competitive advantage to do so (price, quality). If not, you waste resources and further enable the inefficient allocation of resources to non-competitive producers, which is bad for everyone (locally, globally).
This is a big tenet of economics (they have graphs and everything to prove it!)
Interesting point made by the British farmkid- being from the Garden State I am looking to buy supplement what we grow in our modest garden with fairly local farms(within 60 miles)
My biggest concern about farm raised food from Asian countries was the cleanliness of the process from water supply to the workers and I guess that still holds- fair trade it would seem is a way to go-
As long as Vegas exists and its huge buffets I am pretty sure those workers will have jobs for a while in Asia-
Enjoyed the article
Thanks for reading. I’m still a bit perplexed by the issue. Perhaps the best thing to do is buy local and buy international. We’re probably doing it anyway, without knowing. If we can be more aware of where everything’s coming from, I think we’d be in a better situation all around. Keeping informed is key.
This presents an interesting set of issues. There are so many factors that need to be examined such as: ecology, social benefit, the social conscience and economic situation of the buyer. Clearly, if all things were equal, buying local makes more sense as it would yield fresher product and support an economy closer to home. However, things are not equal.
For many families trying to make a go of things in this economy, cheaper food (often times NOT the local producer) is not only desirable, it is a necessity. Money is tightly budgeted and allocated, and expensive food, no matter how ecologically more beneficial, is not an option. In many communities, the fight is to find healthy food no matter where it comes from. Food deserts are a problem all over the world. The choice to use organic or local product is an option only to those who can afford it, meaning, they have made the rational choice to purchase the food and give up on other things if a choice is to be made.
From an ecological point of view, local does not mean better in all cases. All we need to do is look to mass producers of pork in the US who foul waters and land with waste from million-animal pig farms. These can be as local as right down the lane. Better ecologically? NOT!! I agree that fair trade certified products do present a better alternative, but these are limited (although growing) and hard to find on a day-to-day basis for most consumers.
From a social benefit perspective, what is better – to support a SE Asian family by buying cheap food, or a local family by buying more expensive food? This is a choice that the consumer needs to make as well. There is no easy answer. True, buying from a far off producer supports a family that may not have other options. However, by sending the money abroad, we are supporting a society of high growth (i.e., birth rate) and that is using more resources as their economic status improves. If we did not support these societies by buying their product, would they in turn not have such high population growth as their opportunities would be more limited? I do not think we could come to a quick answer for this. It is, indeed, a matter of chicken and egg.
An interesting question you raise is: “Does buying sweatshop produced foods help anyone? ” I would answer that it helps and hurts. It does help the family that manages a tight budget and for whom cheaper food is more important than buying locally produce, more expensive food. It also helps the far-away family to exist when they may not have any other avenues of support. However, it hurts the local producer, the earth (if the far off producer is not as “green” a producer, and the world as a whole if, by supporting the distant producer, we are supporting excess population growth.
I think most people would agree that cheaper food is desirable. There is a way to achieve a better balance in this situation. If more people bought local, thus increasing demand for the product, economics would dictate that there would be more supply to a point of equilibrium. As more supply of local produce came online, prices would drop. We would achieve cheaper (if not cheapest) local food, support the local economy and eat healthier.
Way to go, Dad. Great insights and analysis. I suppose what gets my goat the most is how illogical it is that foreign products are more cost-effective. For goodness sake, even the transport of these often-perishable goods cannot be all that cheap! When did local get so expensive? When did the whole supply-and-demand of the world flip-flop to 180 degrees? It’s evident in almost every consumer product. Business is going to Asia. I know we always want the cheapest product, the most bang for our buck. But it seems like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot sometimes. We help foreign economies…we are the rich folks now…but won’t that collapse soon after? All the money goes out. Doesn’t this mean our wealth diminishes? And if the Asian populations keep rising exponentially, it’s not like individual consumers there are getting any wealthier themselves. More mouths to feed. Is the world getting progressively poorer? How can that be? There’s so much damn food! Then again, I just saw another documentary about the Ivory Coast-area nations – Ghana, Nigeria, etc, and their major chicken crisis. It seems that this time it’s Europe taking advantage of a third-world country. France and Germany started selling frozen chicken in bulk at very cheap prices, and local chicken farmers over time couldn’t compete. Wiped out an entire industry. When a monopoly was established, the European companies started hiking up the prices. Now the Africans are dependent on cheap frozen (often dangerous – as the refrigeration cannot be guaranteed after arrival) chicken whose prices are now rising steadily. That is a seriously awful situation.
Irene you have this unique way of presenting these topics in such a non controversial manner that even I, who would normally have grumbled at this, is stopped in my tracks.
Unfortunately for now we in American need to focus on our local food supply more heavy than ever. However, that is both a product and a symptom of a lot of artificial price adjustments and dependencies that have become built into our, now broken, system. Because of price supports on nearly EVERY major commodity we do not see true price reflections anywhere… and it also means we do not benefit as easily from globalization.
You want to feed the world? Tell my American goverment to stop dumping millions of kilos of grain into the ocean every year to remove it from the market as a “price support” to assist farms. Let us see the REAL cost of our food, and let us use this price support grain to feed those that need it.
Let us compete fairly, free of regulations that confuse matters, with the right to be proud of buying from our country. Let our ability to produce goods and services – or not – control our population issues instead of artificially allow them to boom where they should not be.
Yes we’re a global world and its becoming more apparent every day, but until the barriers to seeing real prices come down, the true impact of that will be skewed in WAY too many directions to make even simple assumptions!
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