This week’s unit made me think more about the reality we live in and how much we actually do not know about the process behind things. The article by Peter Benson called “Broccoli and Desire” showed me how we as people can be easily convinced and unaware of things happening around us. Up till this point I have never looked into how much effort, hard work, insecurity and how many wrongs can be behind the story of just one vegetable: in this case broccoli. This one vegetable tells us a story that people normally don’t see if they don’t decide to dig deeper. It tells us a story of the land being used, a story of the people who harvest the land, a story of the people who sell the crop and a story of how the whole system around that one crop in reality works: it shows the harsh truth. As any other consumer I also walk in supermarkets and I have never wondered how did this vegetable get here in particular. Peter Benson helped me realize that the way I consume automatically affects the producers of that good or at least he reminded me of it. So sometimes by us forgetting that every good has its own story, we unknowingly may support a cause that we in reality disagree with but due to our unawareness we keep supporting it. As Benson affirms “American visits a supermarket about twice a week and spends half of his or her food budget there” (p.808). We can see how much power we as consumers have. As we change our shopping behaviours the market will respond. Thus, thanks to this article I realized that as responsible citizens we should start learning about the stories of at least some goods that we buy. In this case now we know at least one – “the story of broccoli”.
This is a great approach to engaging with the article. There are a couple of theoretical lenses that advocate for this type of reading: new materialism and thing theory. In different ways, theorists examine what an object can tell us about human thought and values (among other things). By tracing the history of broccoli, you (and Benson and Fischer) can tell us a lot about the priorities of the economic system we exist in and the ethics of our food shopping and consumption. En fin, ¡bien hecho!
Hi, Grey here!
Yeah I left with the same impression from the reading of “Broccoli and Desire”. It made me REALLY think about my role as the consumer who has little idea where their food comes from and that’s sort of the point in a lot of our readings, the overall disconnect from seed to table because of globalization. I have always tried my best to eat sustainably and consciously and in my own opinion, I thought I was doing a better job than most by shopping at farmer’s markets and not wasting. BUT! this article made me realize, buying ‘organic’ at the shop is not the only thing that matters in terms of eating consciously. To fully engage in where your food comes from and to understand the political/economical relationship the producer has in society is clearly really important. And I fully admit, I am sometimes the person who looks at ingredients for their ‘cosmetic’ appearance and sometimes will pay more for the more appealing, non blemished bananas. Will definitely rethink that moving forward haha
Hi!
Great reflection! I knew where most of my food came from (country wise), but still the broccoli article was eye opening in a sense that it was about one specific vegetable. Of course I had no idea about behind the scenes of the story involving cultivation, exportation, and distribution. I completely agree about how much power we have as consumers on the market, but at the same time the trends are hard to change. I think that is a good and a bad thing. We can have access to consumer favourites at every corner we go, however sometimes we lack variety.
Hi I really enjoyed reading your reflection. I feel the exact same way about how we as consumers contradict ourselves regarding our beliefs when we go to super markets and buy products that we have no idea where they came from or what their story is. I wonder if in some ways these stories may be swept under the rug due to so much focus towards products and how environmentally friendly they are. Furthermore, its also troubling to think of because governments negotiate trade deals that help to benefit consumers, meaning us, however these deals may impact negatively farmers who are barely able to make ends meet in countries that many of us have never even heard of. However, we have to buy food in order to survive so what can we do?
Hi! Your reflection made me think about the relationship between stories and commodities. On the one hand, there is the hidden stories of exploitation behind vegetable growing, and on the other hand, we are seeing more and more commercialization of the narratives of “fair trade”, “organic certification”, “farm to table” etc. It is interesting to analyze the manipulation of stories behind food production to cater to different pathways of marketing and profit maximization.