Summary Of Food And The City By Jennifer Cockrell-King

Traditionally, the produce we buy in a grocery store is grown miles away from the city in which it was purchased. Sometimes, it may even originate across the country. Food and the City by Jennifer Cockrell-King explores an emerging concept referred to as "urban agriculture". A host of problems exist within industrial agriculture, such as green house emission from transportation, inadequate food supplies, and an abundance of processed, unhealthy foods. Urban agriculture is a system in which cities across the globe are counteracting industrial agriculture by finding ways to grow fresh produce locally, within their own cities (Cockrill-King 2012, 9). Through creativity, research, and practice, people have found ways to grow foods in backyards,
on rooftops, and an assortment of other unusual places. Residents of major cities such as London, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Chicago are devising a number of ways to have fresh produce and livestock in the city, all the while bettering their communities. As illustrated in Lentil Underground and Food and the City, the food systems within our country, and even our planet, have become incredibly flawed. A handful of corporations rule the industry and family farms barely scape by. At any given moment, there is only enough food in a city to survive three days. The market is rife with genetically modified, pesticide covered foods. Although there are many problems, there are no definite solutions. As with most issues, there are any number of things that can both help and hinder. Farming has become so industrialized that only a handful of companies supply the large majority of our foods. In fact, it has been estimated that five corporations are responsible for 90 percent of food production in the United States(Cockrill-King 2012, 29). The monopoly of food production leaves little room for family farms to make a profit and survive. For those that still choose to battle against these massive corporations, there isn't much room for mistakes and mishaps. A bad growing season could cause a farmer to lose their livelihood. In many nations, the expansion of large farming corporations has taken the livelihood of farmers. With no room to compete with multimillion dollar companies, some have even turned to suicide. In Korea, India, and Pakistan, farmers rack up debt by buying genetically modified seeds. Faced with insurmountable debt and no foreseeable solution, these indebted farmers commit suicide in protest of the flawed system. Startlingly, the Indian government estimated that as of 2010, over two hundred thousand had committed suicide in approximately thirteen years (Cockrill-King 2012, 45). With such shocking statistics, it's a wonder any farms are still willing to go against the grain. Because industrial farming has stripped soil of all its nutrients, the same large companies that produce the chemical laden fertilizers have been tinkering with genetics.
Genetic engineering has been a useful technique to change the characteristic of crops. Through genetic modification, favorable traits such as resilience and resistance to insects can be amplified within a species. In some areas of the planet, this sort of experimentation has been the difference between fruitful harvests and starvation. Some areas are so dry and desolate that citizens have struggled to provide adequate food for survival. Genetically engineering crops has allowed people to grow food in areas that were otherwise barren. But toying with genetics can be risky: when changing the genetics of a plant species, the repercussions can be unpredictable. Altering a gene in a plant in order to produce a specific outcome can sometimes create a host of other unpredicted outcomes. Genetically engineered foods are not thoroughly tested before being deeming safe for the market. In the long term, we have no idea what these franken-foods are doing to our bodies, as no serious testing has been done (Domingo 2000). Although genetically engineered crops can be beneficial to areas in which natural species are almost impossible to grow, there simply isn't enough scientific evidence to decide whether or not the risks are worth the
benefits. Although the development of genetically modified crops has benefitted some areas by providing other impossible crops, the reality is that many areas still have a startling number of malnourished citizens.
Ethiopia is well known as a nation of famine. Despite the overwhelming poverty of its citizens, land in Ethiopia is frequently leased or sold to rich nations in order to farm. Approximately thirty tons of produce is farmed in Ethiopia every day, but none of this goes to its starving citizens. Instead, it is sent to countries of the Middle East (Cockrill-King 2012, 65). Although thirteen million citizens of Ethiopia are not currently getting enough food, most produce is exported to other, richer countries. Ethiopia isn't the only country suffering; across the globe, over 125 million acres are being farmed outsourced to rich nations (Cockrill-King 2012, 66). Because many developed nations have industrialized beyond their means, they now rely on the cheap, fertile farmlands of other
countries. Groceries stores and industrialized agriculture allow us to enjoy varieties of food that would not normally be available to us. If not for the importation of exotic foods, most of us would never try a dragon fruit. If we craved a fresh strawberry in the winter, we would be out of luck. But because there are industrialized farms all over the country and even across the globe, we have access to a wide variety foods all year round. However, we are exchanging one variety for another. Although we've been allowed variety in the sense that we can buy dragon fruits in Minnesota, and strawberries in winter, we've lost the variety of individual fruits and vegetables. Unbeknownst to most consumers, fruits and vegetables all come in an array of species. Various forms of apple all serve a different purpose; some are better for juicing, some are better for baking, and some are best raw. Unfortunately, most grocery stores don't carry a wide variety of apples (Cockrill-King 2012, 28). In fact, it has been estimated that approximately 2 percent of biodiversity within the world’s crops is lost each year (Cockrill-King 2012, 27). Although industrial agriculture has allowed us the opportunity to enjoy foods that would otherwise be unavailable to us, it all comes with a cost.