4/29

 The Local Trap was about the systems of local food, and how people generally assume local food is the best option. They explain how just because something is local doesn't mean it's more fair or sustainable than other sources. It points out how local systems can still promote inequality and problems depending on who is in control of it. This made me think that it's not really about where something is coming from but more how the systems are in the place it's produced. The goal of local food is to promote fairness, sustainability, and contributing to a local economy, but when things like scaling or focusing too much on local production become more important than these qualities it takes away all of what it's supposed to be. 

The reading on Food Miles and Local Eating talks about how the transportation of food actually works. You always hear that food travels from all over the world to get to your plate. This article does a good job at explaining that these statistics are not entirely true, and have been overused from a small amount of studies. Food miles aren't a good measure for things like environmental impact for example because of the difference in emissions during transportation and production, with production being way more harmful than the transportation process. Focusing solely on distance ignores things like how the food is grown or processed also which is important considering you would be eating it! I think that the CSA interviews were an interesting add on for this article. It did a good job at showing the importance of a connected community and that people will value that just as much as efficiency. This article shows that food systems are more than just food miles and that focusing only on distance food travels oversimplifies and ignores a lot of other issues. 

The Piracy reading was interesting, and focused on neem trees and the impact globalization can have on resources. Neem oil has been used in India for a large amount of medicinal products, and in farming. After the discovery of the significance larger companies came in and began to patent products produced from it. This article talks about the use of it in pesticides and how it was patented even though there was already knowledge of it for that use. Things like GATT made this easier for companies to claim ownership on the uses of these kinds of resources. The Indian farmers protested these changes, as they had to pay premiums to use products that have been in their culture for years. I think this is an example of how greed can totally take over global systems. The sharing of ideas in this case was extremely harmful once it got into the hands of greedy corporations looking for a profit.