Human Interest

this is crazy

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  How does the freshness of the scallop even last a trip like this?  What is the transportation time back and forth? 

This type of nonsense only makes sense in a world where the bottom dollar is the only way to way to evaluate decisions.  However, resource conservation (think of the food miles!), fair labor prices, and the preservation of local cultural economies are certainly issues that should be considered. 

Tags:  food, economic, labor, globalization, food production, agribusiness, agriculture.

we work the fields for our families. 

It’s crazy to see how desperate some of these people are to get working and how much they do for such a little reward. These people are working longer and harder than probably all Americans and they are barely surviving. They work for survival. It’s hard for some of these people to stay healthy, especially in the harsh conditions and tight living spaces that these people have to deal with on an everyday basis. 

Corporations are always looking for the cheapest base product to import. Unfortunately for the laborers of Mexico, their country does not enforce globally accepted standards of labor. The US cannot police other countries' policies and procedures, but we can educate our own consumers about the working conditions behind the product they buy. The consumers then have a choice; do they want to pay 49 cents a pound for bananas or 99 cents. What is more important, the health and welfare of the employee who picked the produce or the financial well-being of the consumer who purchases it?

This obviously is big business for Mexico and the US should apply some pressure to motivate our friends south of the border to foster better working conditions for their employees. It would seem to me that Mexico could afford to pay their workers a little more and still be competitive given their proximity to the US. I think I will start buying my bananas from Ecuador....

how do these people not know what the crop they are producing is or tastes like? that is amazing to me how you can be so oblivious to what you are doing. and how the place that produces cocoa does not actually have access to it.

What is the geography of chocolate like?  This video was produced in the Netherlands, the global center of the cocoa trade, but the world's leading producer of cocoa is Côte d'Ivoire.  There is a dark side to chocolate production; the dirty secret is that slavery is commonplace on cocoa plantations in West Africa.  Although the worst of the situation is glossed over in this video, it still hints at the vast economic inequalities that are part and parcel of the global chocolate trade and the plantation roots of the production.  What are some of your reactions to this video?  

Tags: chocolate, Ivory Coast, Africa, poverty, development, economic, globalization, industry, labor.

Unit 5: Agriculture, Food Production and Rural Land Use 

This video is about how women make up the majority of the agricultural workforce and that giving them access to land, water, markets, and technology could increase food production by 30%. This in return would help boost the economy. Places such as Kenya have given women the same resources as men and have seen a 22% increase in crop production. In Brazil, programs targeting women in agriculture have helped cut the population in extreme poverty by half and malnutrition by 73%. This video encourages people around the world to help give women the resources they need in order to increase the food production and economy. 

This relates to unit 5 because it deals with agriculture and particularly women's roles in agriculture. This video explains how increased resources can help end world hunger. Women are not given as much opportunity as men and this video expresses need to invest in women's rights. 

This article relates to my topics development and agriculture by showing how important it is that how equipping women with the right tool can make so much more food and how other countries should accept women and give them rights. Just like the video states women make up a majority of the world and countries need to take that advantage. Just like the video states women make up a majority of the world and countries need to take that advantage. Sooner or later the population will take over how much food we make, even with new technology we still might not make it fast enough or enough to support life on earth. The video states that we need to increase food production to 70% by 2050

 In my opinion, this video really does touch base with how women are treated today in modern society and how they can become a really big impact on our food production if only they had the access to the same resources as men do. Then maybe we might have a chance to reach the goal what we need to in 2050.