Food and Water

FOOD AND WATER

—Food and industrially-driven consumerism. Many focus points, including advertising, now so extreme on TV, same products marketed globally.

–Food adverts on TV.  Have students collect and analyze, in particular the use of imagery. Much of their message is pure suggestion, or identification with a life style, or in the case of ‘Boss’ ice cream, something sexual (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH3mrbYKalw ).

—Food waste is nearly everywhere  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaAXhzehZyE  http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/sustainability/  here a good video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx65S56GBgU   something about “dumpster diving”

—Food,  commercialization & large food corporations (TNCs) that market overpriced products stuffed with preservatives (whatever is on the label). Are there small grocery shops where you live and teach, or have they been driven out of business by the big supermarket chains (in Eastern Europe, often foreign-owned)? Do you have some kind of farmers’ market where local producers sell directly from their land to people in town?  This is quite common where some of us live.

—Food as a direct political weapon, here one stark example (North Korea): http://goo.gl/03N4t    Another was the blockade against Iraq and the withholding of food for kids: http://goo.gl/Xdloy

—Food and poverty. One aspect very concrete and open to simple research by students is: how much does a family spend on food of their monthly income? In Europe’s poorest country (Bulgaria), for many non-privileged families it now approaches 50%, some pensioners digging in the garbage dumpsters to come up ‘lucky’

—Obesity, junk food and poverty http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=149117

Food fights pitted against austerity

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/05/10/food-fights-against-austerity/

—Food, transport, packaging and supermarkets: why many foods are so expensive because we do not rely on local production and agriculture, or very simple packaging (as in all former socialist countries in Eastern Europe).

Students can imagine what it would be like if there was no gasoline-powered transport: what would they be eating if local supermarkets could no longer be supplied with distant products?

—Food in a post-carbon world of the future: Transition Towns addresses the issue of local food sustainability and many relevant related issues  http://www.transitionnetwork.org/   This is highly relevant to  ‘sustainable agriculture.’

The Italo-American activist Silvia Federici writes on colonialism, women and food politics, here an interview:  goo.gl/2Xsjz).

–The world water crisis   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRGZOCaD9sQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlWVDcdRVUA

Here many videos on water scarcity:  http://goo.gl/pGsC3

–Water  in many places contaminated even by arsenic: Is Enough Being Done to Make Drinking Water Safe? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130531105331.htm   Can you drink the tap water where you live?