Far-reaching Tentacles of to Food Deserts

The world has been consistently connected by trade since the Europeans chanced upon the Americas around 1500. The consequences of this interconnectedness have had transformative effects upon what we eat, what we build, what we believe, and whom we count as fellow citizens on a global scale. After World War II, this pattern of change has accelerated. Three books which document aspects of this acceleration also present an alarming portrait of unwanted consequences.

John Perkins decries the destructive effects of multinational companies' development projects often funded by the World Bank. He bases this viewpoint upon his firsthand experience in the business, which he recounts in New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler, 2016). In EatingtoExtinction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), Dan Saladino describes the farreaching tentacles of agribusiness on almost every continent upon local food cultures and traditional farming. Many place-specific subspecies of plants and animals have been almost wiped out, which may endanger the global food supply.

Country Day alumnus and Furman Sociology Professor Kenneth Kolb

writing in his new book Retail Inequality (University of California Press, 1922) adds to the level of concern. Using an impressive assembly of his personal interviews with residents of Southernside and West Greenville, Kolb describes the effects of migration to suburbs and urban renewal in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. He proposes that the "food desert" concept is part of a much larger story about how "good retail" options have left these neighborhoods during the past half century. This has been an unwanted consequence of the explosion of big-box stores in the suburbs that has driven smaller locally-owned enterprises out of business.

What is most interesting is that all three authors do not sound a note of despair despite the disconcerting evidence compiled in their work. Each has a positive focus on how solutions can and are being attempted by people around the world today. A common aspect of these solutions is the role played by individuals who have decided to preserve traditional and often more sustainable economies in their unique localities.

As an economist for a multinational corporation that built power grids for developing nations, it was John Perkins's job to create projections for a nation's economic potential that qualified it for generous loans from the World Bank and other international lending institutions. These loans usually caused long-term indebtedness in those nations and dependence on further development of natural resources and the supporting infrastructure. Benefits went mostly to the corporations building the facilities and extracting the resources rather than the overall populations in the nations involved. Perkins's work took him to a number of these nations where he took an interest in the local customs and culture as well as performed his job as an economist. His interactions with local people gave him unusual firsthand insight into the resentment which people in these nations harbored toward the United States.

One of his earliest experiences was in Indonesia during the Vietnam War years. He was invited to attend a dalang, or traditional puppet show, where the United States was portrayed by a Nixon puppet. This puppet grabbed fruit off trees bearing the names of Vietnam and a number of nations in the Middle East. After taking a bite, the Nixon puppet would toss the fruit away with distaste. When the Nixon puppet grabbed a fruit bearing the name of Indonesia, an Indonesian puppet protested and was promptly run through by the Nixon puppet's henchman with the pole of an American flag. The henchman was dressed in a business suit and carried a bucket with a dollar sign on it as well as the American flag. Perkins was horrified and asked, "What can we do to change this?" The response from one of his Indonesian companions was:

Stop being so greedy, and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are dying, and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion magazines for the latest styles....

Perkins was invited to speak in person with Panamanian President Omar Torrijos in 1972. Torrijos was interested in Perkins's company building facilities in Panama, but he wished the benefits of the development to go to his people. He indicated he was well aware how companies like United Fruit had exploited Latin American nations in the past, and he knew that most of the "corporatocracy" would be opposed to his new approach. He also understood that opposing these powerful forces could put him in personal danger. Nevertheless, Torrijos boldly proposed, "Give me what's best for my people, and I'll give you all the work that you want." Later, Torrijos also successfully negotiated the Panama Canal Zone Treaty with the Carter administration. He died mysteriously in 1981 when a small plane crashed while taking him to a house he owned in the mountains of Panama.

Once again, in 1977, Perkins was invited to a private interview, this time with Iranian dissidents who were bitterly opposed to the Shah and his promotion of development by Western companies in Iran. When they warned him that a large number of Iranians opposed the Shah, whose days in power were numbered, Perkins asked why they were warning him about this. He received this reply, "We'd be happy to see your company go bankrupt. However, we'd rather see you leave Iran. Just one company like yours, walking away, could start a trend. That's what we're hoping…." The Shah was overthrown and had fled to Egypt by January of 1979.

The vignettes in Dan Saladino's book about recent trends in food production are not so grim as John Perkins's accounts of his experiences as an "economic hitman." Even though they point out the potential catastrophes which may result from growing dependence on single genetic varieties of plants and animals, they also tell of many individuals around the world who are preserving plants, animals, and foods that are unique to their particular locale.

Maize or corn production has become increasingly streamlined so that most farmers grow hybrid varieties of "dent" corn, which is very productive with regard to yields but not as nutritious. Uniformity even cost Midwestern farmers $6 billion during the early 1970s when a rapidly spreading fungus destroyed 100 billion bushels of their crop. However, many in Mexico have been fighting to preserve their traditional maize crops which are less likely to cause the obesity that has been on the rise with the recent introduction of processed corn from the United States. One chef in Mexico City pays a premium to farmers who grow ancient indigenous varieties. He likens maize to wine where the grapes grown in particular regions of the world produce wines with unique desirable qualities. As for Midwestern dent corn, he says, "That's maize we don't cook with. It belongs in a bag of corn chips."

Saladino also describes how chickens have become similarly homogenized through genetic engineering, so much so that 70% of chickens slaughtered today are genetically related to the winners of a mid-twentieth century breeding competition to create the "Chicken of Tomorrow." In the same chapter, he interweaves the story of a South

Korean farmer whose family has preserved the Black Ogye chicken for generations: "This chicken has lived with our ancestors on this land for at least 700 years. If Yeonsan Ogye were to disappear, we would lose a piece of our souls."

A final story of preserving a traditional variety of plant comes from Venezuela. A chef in Caracas initiated a movement to produce high-quality chocolate bars from Venezuelan Criollo cacao. Before the oil boom, this sought after cacao had been Venezuela's main export, but production has declined since the oil boom and the hardships of the

Maduro regime. Historically, the cacao was exported to Europe to be made into fine chocolate. Chef Di Giacobbe has not only succeeded in making and marketing her own fine chocolate bars from Criollo cacao, but she has also recruited 8,000 other chocolate makers throughout Venezuela. She received the Basque Culinary Prize in 2017 for the social impact of her work as a chef. Her work has given hope to those struggling in the Venezuelan economy and may revive the production of Venezuela's treasured Criollo cacao.

Although Kenneth Kolb's work does not share the international scope of Perkins's and Saladino's books, his RetailInequality does reveal the effects of the same global trends toward "economic efficiency" on his community in Greenville, South Carolina. His interviews caused him to reevaluate the "food desert" concept and perceive it as part of a larger socio-economic dilemma.

The Kash and Karry store, which served residents of West Greenville and Southernside from the 1950s through the 1970s, was one casualty of migration to the suburbs and the development of big-box stores. Kash and Karry was a very large supermarket that old-time residents remembered fondly as a place to get everything one needed right there in the neighborhood. It had 25 checkout stations and employed 225 people. Men in the neighborhood knew they could get work there. People could also pay their bills there. As textile mills closed and people who could afford it moved to the suburbs, the Kash and Karry went out of business because the population that remained could not support it.

Kolb points out how well-meaning reformers, and he includes himself in that number, have missed the point with their efforts to address the "food desert" problem. This is evident in his description of farm-totable efforts to bring healthier food options closer to residents of poor neighborhoods. Kolb volunteered to work for a month at the local Greenbrier Farms, which operated a popular stall at the city market. What he discovered was that they needed to focus on the quality of their steaks and tomatoes in order to compete with supermarket chains. This put their notably healthy products out of the price range for residents in West Greenville and Southernside. Going so far as to make and can his own tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, Kolb discovered that his product was still three times more expensive than the cheapest generic brand in supermarkets. He also discovered that eating healthier food was not necessarily what residents of these neighborhoods wanted most. At the beginning of my research, I presumed to know what they wanted---grocery stores---and why---to change their diets. But that wasn't it. They wanted a grocery store, to be sure. But a new store wouldn't change the way they ate, it would just make it easier, quicker and cheaper to buy things they always buy.

Residents of West Greenville and Southernside experience many limitations, which are common side effects of the mass movement of people to the suburbs and the growth of national big-box store chains along with agribusiness. But Professor Kolb discovered, during his interviews with eighty-five residents, that they are creative and resourceful when devising solutions to overcome these limitations. This involves what Kolb describes as "social capital," making use of personal relationships and helping each other to get things done. A specific example is ride sharing. Kolb describes an elaborate system where residents who don’t have cars arrange with those who do for rides to the grocery store. In return, they may pay them or return a different sort of favor. At the end of his book, Kolb proposes that the most effective way of helping residents in "food deserts" would be to subsidize these informal ride sharing networks. He suggests that it would be less expensive than building infrastructure, paying taxi drivers, or establishing new economically viable brick and mortar retail establishments in these neighborhoods.

All three authors describe alarming effects of the type of economic growth that has taken place the past 70 years. Both Kolb and Saladino identify a further challenge: the adaptation of human palates to prefer the new more processed and less nutritious foods. Perkins goes so far as to describe the current global economy as a “death economy." Remarkably, all three authors conclude that there are many signs that solutions to these dire conditions are already being practiced by individuals around the world. Perkins proposes replacing the death economy with a life economy and devotes the last chapters in his book to suggestions about how individuals of all ages can make contributions right where they are. Saladino’s book is a collection of stories about individuals around the world who have devoted their lives to preserving local and sustainable varieties of crops and domesticated animals, which are indispensable ingredients of their traditional food cultures. Kolb is inspired by the resiliency of the people he interviewed and their capacity to rely upon each other to survive their circumstances.

One of the most hopeful stories was Saladino's description of the creation of a seed bank on the arctic Svalbard islands. It is an ideal location for preserving the genetic diversity of the world's crops, and due to the efforts of American botanist Cary Fowler, a facility has been established there during the past 40 years. Not everyone is going to achieve something as dramatic as the Svalbard seed bank, but human agency and the ability of the individual to have a positive impact upon the direction of the world's economy is alive and well. This will usually happen with small acts like giving someone in the neighborhood a ride to the grocery store or getting involved in a community garden project. It will often happen when individuals in their own communities around the world get involved, preserving the sustainable economic traditions of their own cultures. It could be the result of inviting an outsider to a local cultural event as when the dalang performance made an indelible impression on John Perkins. The persistence of place is an important counterweight to what may seem the irresistible tidal wave of recent global economic trends.