stalking the vegetannual 67someday to my grandkids) the end of the world. I ate them and said
“Thank you.”
Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people before me
have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we’re al-
lowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do
that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to
point this out. The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet
to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners.
Our culture is not unacquainted with the idea of food as a spiritually
loaded commodity. We’re just particular about which spiritual arguments
we’ll accept as valid for declining certain foods. Generally unacceptable
reasons: environmental destruction, energy waste, the poisoning of work-
ers. Acceptable: it’s prohibited by a holy text. Set down a platter of coun-
try ham in front of a rabbi, an imam, and a Buddhist monk, and you may
have just conjured three different visions of damnation. Guests with high
blood pressure may add a fourth. Is it such a stretch, then, to make moral
national company that has burned countless acres of Amazon rain forest to
grow soy for export, destroying indigenous populations. Global trade deals ne-
gotiated by the World Trade Organization and World Bank allow corporations to
shop for food from countries with the poorest environmental, safety, and labor
conditions. While passing bargains on to consumers, this pits farmers in one
country against those in another, in a downward wage spiral. Product quality is
somewhat irrelevant.
Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweat-
shops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country
on earth, the most humane scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who
live nearby—if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport
has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that’s no longer really
about feeding anyone: in our own nation we export 1.1 million tons of potatoes,
while we also import 1.4 million tons. If you care about farmers, let the potatoes
stay home. For more information visit: http://www.viacampesina.org.STEVEN L. HOPP