All tagged Food

Bananas For Socialism: The Horizons Beyond Food Production Under Capitalism / Arun Gupta

In this expansive discussion, investigative journalist and food columnist Arun Gupta tackles the extremely online drama between "progrowth" and "degrowth" leftists about one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the supermarket: the banana. Will we have bananas under socialism? 

Capitalism and its global distribution networks do more than just transport criminally cheap goods from the so-called “Banana Republics” of South and Central America to Global North markets, it works to disperse the responsibility for such a ruthless system: no consumer is completely to blame, nor completely blameless, either. Some are more than others, sure—like the corporations and their government partners—but we’re all implicated, just by the mere fact we need to eat. 

We can make better choices when we consume. Instead of plastic, I can use a paper or metal straw to drink an iced coffee. I can go vegan. I can source all my food—meats and produce—from local farms and growers. These choices matter, but frankly, most of the choices most human beings can ethically make are terribly limited under capitalist hegemony. These are lifestyle choices, and are not liberatory in the truest sense.

None of this was inevitable. Other horizons exist. So, when the “banana discourse” erupted on one of the hellsites many of us frequent, the question became: will there be bananas under socialism? And Arun Gupta, who thinks and writes a great deal about food, in more or less words, answers: well, yes, of course we’ll have bananas. But frankly, this not really the right question, or even the right framing. 

Spillover: Bird Flu & The Emergent Pandemicine / Boyce Upholt

Award-winning journalist Boyce Upholt joins me to discuss his article Will the Next Pandemic Start With Chickens?, published at The New Republic. 

Boyce begins his report, as well as this interview, by describing the troubling conditions in chicken facilities in Butler Country, Nebraska, and, by extension, across the industrialized world. This past spring, a highly deadly and contagious strain of avian influenza swept through bird and other animal populations. Considering the conditions described in his piece, there is a very real possibility of a spillover event occurring in the near future, leading to an influenza pandemic in the human population. Broadly, this discussion, while examining the real threat highly consolidated industrialized food production is having on human and more-than-human beings, explores the so-called First World's relationship with food, food production, and the ecologies we are inextricably tied to.