QUESTIONS TO THINK ON FOR HARPER AND LE BEAU and MINTZ

with words to add to your class glossary

HARPER AND LE BEAU

Words to know:

Vertical integration

Horizontal integration

CAFO

Oligopoly

globalization

food system

Green Revolution

monocropping

1) How did changes in farming technology, food distribution technology, and food preparation techniques change the U.S. food system between WWII and the present? What role did transportation play? How did all of these changes alter the ways, places, and foods that Americans ate?

2)The Green Revolution introduced high-yield plant varieties both to the US and to the developing world. What else, other than seeds, did the Green Revolution require Third World farmers to start using? What were the effects of this socio-technical package?

3) Is hunger in the US the result of insufficient food production? Or does the problem stem from other factors?

4) Do you agree with the idea that poor people should only choose foods on the basis of the most nutrition for the least money? Why or why not? What do Harper and LeBeau say?

5)What are the arguments in favor of GMO foods? What are the arguments against? Are you in favor of consuming GMOs, and do you consume them already?

6)What changes in the American lifestyle have promoted the rise of fast food and highly processed foods? What are the effects of these lifestyle and culinary changes?

7)Is farming today a high-margin or a low margin business? Why?

8)What effect does consolidation in agricultural processing (not farming, but the subsequent processing of foods) have on prices for agricultural commodities (like wheat, vegetables, and meat)?

9) What do you think the positive and negative effects of vertical integration are?

10) What effect do you think globalization has on farmers in the Third World?

QUESTIONS FOR MINTZ:

1)  What is an inside meaning of food? What is an outside meaning?>

2)  What was the outside meaning that led to the adoption of sugar and tea by the English working class? What was the inside meaning that made sugared tea so essential to English identity?

3)  How did WWII make changes in outside, structural factors that promoted the widespread adoption of the habit of drinking Coca-Cola? How did inside factors change in a way that made Coke so popular? Why and how did Coke become a symbol of American identity?

4)  Which kind of power, inside or outside, is more powerful? Why?

QUESTION TO WRITE ON:

1)Explain what Mintz means by inside and outside meanings of food, and tell us whether Harper and LeBeau are analyzing the inside or outside meanings of food. Then, find and discuss at least three inside meanings for specific foods, and at least three outside meanings of specific foods. Which kind of power is more powerful in each of these foods? Brownie points will be awarded for every time you can come up with both an inside and an outside meaning for the same food, and explain how those two meanings differ.

2) Based on our lecture (not the readings), describe three major differences between the contemporary food regime (1972-present) and the one that preceded it (1947-1972). What difficulties has the transformation of the global food regime since 1972 posed for Third World agriculturalists? (This question is very difficult, and I will grade it with an easier hand. There is a strong possibility it will be on the exam, though, so you may choose to answer this question and get feedback on your answer before you have to respond to it on the midterm)

3) Keep a food diary for at least five days. Write down what you eat, who the manufacturer or grower is, and where you bought it. Then, analyze what you eat and write an essay that explains how what you eat is shaped by the “outside power’ of the global food regime. What macroeconomic and macrosocial forces help determine how you nourish yourself? How would what you eat have been different in, say, 1930?