4/29 e-reserves

The Piracy by Patent article discusses how Western corporations steal indigenous techniques from around the world and reinvent them as their own products to be patented and sold. The given situation here is with the neem tree in India, which had been used over thousands of years for medicine, agriculture, etc. Western companies like W.R. Grace moderized the methods by which the neem was harvested and the essential substances extracted, then had those processes patented. I think this situation is on a fine line and there is no clear right or wrong side to it. I do think it is harmful to those populations that have been using neem for thousands of years to have to see it commercialized by foreign companies. However, the article made the point of saying that there is no synthesized Azadirachtin, meaning that the actual chemical product itself is naturally occurring and therefore available for anyone to use.

Avoiding the Local Trap discusses how labeling a food system as "local" does not make it synonymous with fairness and overall "good". The part that stood out the most to me was when it went over buy-local campaigns and the issues that come with them. The article states that these campaigns tend to combine the label of "local" with organic products and healthier products. I for one am someone who hasn't thought twice about just buying into the idea that local food is healthier and grown better. I think a lot of this sentiment is shared among a lot of people because a big part of supporting local food is also synonymous with "helping the little guy". We assume that local foods are grown on smaller family-owned farms and that the food costs more because those people can't afford to charge less; they have to make their living. In reality none of that is guaranteed by the "local" label, and goes to show how we need to be more careful with what we buy into.

The food miles article discusses how what makes food "local" is the sense of place rather than the measurable distance to where it was produced. Using 1,500 and 1,300 as estimates for how much food travels is generalizing a completely arbitrary statistic. Dr. Schnell goes on to examine how a lot of the critiques of food miles oversimplify the issues, which creates straw man fallacies. He interviewed members of CSAs to gauge their definitions and beliefs about the localization of food. Local is not about how far away something was grown, but rather about the connectivity that went into producing it. Local means knowing about where the product came from and what went into producing it. Critics of local food tends to put the blame on issues of space, while supporters are focused on place. The distinct difference between space and place is what I believe causes the disjunction between the people on either side of the issue.