Grapes in the Winter? What a thought!!! (Portfolio)

Lately, because I have been learning a bit about the global food system, I have been checking my food (the fruit and veggies at least) to see where they originated. The month being March, and us coming off a little bit colder/longer winter, the fruit at my local supermarket seems to (with the exception of apples) need a passport. My bananas came from Ecuador, the grapes from Chile, and my mushrooms came from Canada (though I don't know from which part...). My wife and oldest daughter (with particular regard to the grapes) think this is just great. Why, practically every day of the year we can go to the Safeway down the road and pick up some grapes, they being my Daughter's favorite food (Hot Dogs come in a distant second). I'm not going to lie, having my favorite food at my finger tips whenever I feel like having it is a wonderful feeling, but what is the cost?

Raj Patel, in his debut novel 'Stuffed and Starved', speaks about one particular global exporter of fruit, the United Fruit Company, and what they have done to preserve profit and trade. In a nutshell, to protect profit the UFC pulled out all the stops. They called the then current president of Guatemala a communist because he wanted to buy the unused UFC land and then give it to landless peasants at the ridiculously low prices that the UFC declared the land to be valued on their tax returns.

Then, in 1954 the US President declared a CIA backed invasion of Guatemala (on the anti-Communist ticket) to oust the president. The result was a 40 year struggle and the loss of 200,000 lives--the president of Guatemala was then investigated at the end of the struggle, 150,000 pages of document were scoured, and absolutely no evidence was found to support the accusation...oops (Patel, pgs 100-101). Where is the UFC now you might ask? Go to your local grocery store and you will probably find them, right next to the Del Monte Bananas, under a different name of course: Chiquita Bananas. According to Patel the UFC was able to do this because they conglomeratized: in other words the UFC controlled the means of production, from growing to distribution (and everything in between). Looking at the big picture you can see that all multi-national corporations have this kind of power at their fingertips. This power struggle in Guatemala was just another product of big food companies.

So, before you go and stop buying the bananas, or at least abstaining for a month or so, remember that its not just Chiquita that owns the entire production chain for their product. So do most of the other products you buy in the supermarket. Therefore, simply not buying the Chiquita brand will not do anything for the big picture, if you want to change things. You need a more balanced look: a look from the top down.

The solution could lie in only buying locally, or in other words, supporting regional foods. However, if everyone were to do this, and (hypothetically) these conglomerates were to break up, what would happen next? The laws of supply and demand would change the course of the prices wherever there is food being sold. Prices would go up because these big companies got rid of both their economies of scope and scale. This would most likely produce a spike in prices, and the consumers would have to bear it.

Now I ask you, knowing that you could make prices higher, by making things fairer for people all over the world and standing up for social justice, it buying local foods in their season worth it to you?