Trader Joe's Observation

For this activity, I chose to go to the supermarket I go on a weekly basis, Trader Joe’s because they sell affordable organic foods. Since I lived on campus, Trader Joe’s, New Leaf and Safeway are the closest and most convenient grocery store options for me, although Costco offers cheaper foods. During shopping I paid attention to price, variety and foods higher in calorie, nonetheless, the contrast between calories are subtle and have little to do with the amount of money spent. The results reveal that processed food basket has higher calorie/ dollar than the fresh fruits and vegetable basket. It is also noticeable that the one with fresh fruit and vegetable is much heavier than the processed food basket. This reminds me of my freshman year when I loved to buy processed food. One main reason is that living in a college dorm with only one microwave in the lounge made processed foods a better choice. Not to mention how painful it
When technological advancements gave possibility to mass production, also called Fordism, the American agriculture system has ushered in a new era of rationality and standardization in production. In a profit-driven and efficiency-oriented, farming was gradually getting mechanical, chemical, and biotechnological. In addition to delivering the knowledge and techniques to farms, economists found “it was necessary to decontextualized the farm enterprise from the community and household setting in which it was embedded” (Lyson, 2004). There used to be mostly family labor in family farming. In order to overcome the problems in labor division and transform farming into a fully functional assembly line, social relations must be separate from the production and viewed as “externalities”. Thanks to three agricultural revolutions, in late twentieth century an increase in production can be finished with less labor as well as less