By: Juan C
Source: Reasoned Citizen
Capitalism, Food Insecurity, and Fast Food
Nearly 24 million Americans live through food apartheid, surrounded by fast food chains and local convenience stores. These are communities that lack access to wholesome and nutritious foods necessary to lead healthy lives, and it all comes down to who has the money. Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, investigates the effects of stress and social networks on physical and mental health. He conducted research that displayed results demonstrating a connection between socioeconomic status and susceptibility to diseases. In his findings, he found that people with higher income could not only afford the healthy foods, but they were also more educated on the nutrition and health benefits of foods. The bottomline is clear- food insecurity exists mostly in poor households and communities where supermarkets and grocery stores don’t enter. Capitalism’s motive is profit. Fortune 500 companies are not willing to invest time and money in communities that will not contribute to their profits. The companies that tend to move into these communities are the fast food chains, where they promote their dollar menu meals to exploited and impoverished working families. These meals are very high in sodium, sugars, trans and saturated fats, and so many other damaging components. In these neglected communities, people have some of the highest obesity rates and health complications in the country. For instance, men in rural communities have twice as much severe obesity than males in urban areas, almost 10 percent. These companies benefit off of the malnourishment of these exploited communities; they relish in their wealth while these families either starve or die.
Health, Rebellion, and Gardening
There must be organic and democratic solutions to this problem. One is guerrilla gardening, which is the act of gardening on land that is not legal property of the gardener or where one does not have rights to cultivate on. Guerrilla gardening distinguishes itself from other forms of gardening, as a guerrilla gardener operates at day and night in mostly secluded and abandoned lots. This is due to the fact that they must conceal themselves from authorities and other police forces. These gardeners also operate with the purpose of increasing the likeliness of a neglected piece of land and cultivating for food production in mostly urban spaces. Although this is considered an illegal activity, the act of gardening in these spaces is very positive for the neighboring environment. Plants are highly effective air cleaners (needed in urban spaces) and the addition of mulch helps in avoiding erosion in the soil. Also, planting rain gardens can be beneficial in stopping rain water runoff from reaching local streams and lakes.
Source: Guerrilla Gardening Org
Gardening is a healthy practice both physically and mentally. Gardening has been linked with a reduction in stress and decrease in depression, gardening makes us feel useful and integrated within our communities. Ultimately, poor communities desperately need healthier foods, and guerrilla gardening allows people to produce their own food. Rogelio Cendejas is a laborer from the city of Waukegan and says that he has been gardening since he was a young boy. He learned from his father who is a campesino in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. ¨I like gardening because I know where my food is coming from, I do not buy from companies that exploit other workers for the food. I’m proud to grow my own food, especially knowing it helps me connect more with the Earth.” In his garden, Cendejas plants different flower species, cucumbers, chiles, herbs, and other common vegetables that his family uses for their meals.
Source: Matt Vande Butte
Combating Climate Change and Capitalism
Guerrilla gardening is a method of political action, as it creates a sense of autonomy in forgotten and impoverished communities. This rebellious attitude is necessary to combat both social and political forces that oppress these communities. When governments and corporations fail to take action on issues like food insecurity and environmentally racist policies in impoverished cities, the people of these free and sovereign communities should do whatever is necessary to mitigate negative consequences of issues facing their community, even if it is arbitrarily deemed illegal by local authorities. This is the revolutionary stance taken by guerrilla gardeners. In a world where we are told by world leaders to wait until 2050 for substantive climate policy change and where giant corporations see our Earth as a dumping ground and us, solely as consumers, we must act. Gardening may seem like a symbolic call to action, but it is a serious form of revolt and source of education. Tilling and cultivating the Earth in any way connects us to the land and teaches us to live among nature and not as proprietors of the land. If we want to change the course of the current climate crisis, we will need to act collectively as communities against private interests, against the destruction of our planet.
Discussion Questions:
Should communities be reliant on governments and corporations to take action on these issues? Are governments an obstacle or a tool to the future of our planet?
How can gardening create a sense of identity for communities and can it create self-sufficiency?
Works Cited:
“Cohen, Sheldon.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Feb. 2021,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cohen.
“GuerrillaGardening.org.” The Guerrilla Gardening Homepage, www.guerrillagardening.org/.
“Obesity Plagues Rural America.” Piedmont HealthCare, 19 June 2018, piedmonthealthcare.com/obesity-plagues-rural-america/.
Solman, Paul. “A Supermarket Owner's Secret to Success in the Food Desert.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 7 Aug. 2015, www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/supermarket-owners-secret-success-food-desert#:~:text=Nearly%2024%20million%20Americans%20live%20in%20food%20deserts%2C,generation%20grocer%20Jeff%20Brown%20wants%20to%20change%20that.