STUFFED AND STARVED
Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System
By Raj Patel 2007
Black Inc. Melbourne
438 pages (including extensive notes, index and bibilography.)
Reviewed by Ken Setter

Every once in a while, rarely, one comes across a sentence, a phrase or a title that strikes such a cord within us, it somehow encapsulates a host of meaning; it becomes a door to understanding.

Stuffed and Starved in one such phrase.

The opening paragraph of Stuffed And Starved states ‘today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight’.

A gloomy beginning, well yes, but this book is not all gloom and doom, it ends with hope that things can change, it speaks of struggles and victories from India to America, from north and south where people are working to free themselves from the exploitative corporations of agribusiness.The book offers encouragement to all. Bringing about meaningful change is a Sisyphean task yet within reach Raj Patel examines the world food system and sign posts the ways to a better future.

We are given a fascinating insight to that citadel of modern culture, the supermarket. He shows us how they have evolved over time with all the attention to detail of an intensive care unit. Itemizing costly studies into the manipulation of temperature and air freshener, the music both type and volume, size width and height of the rows, and shopping trolleys, the loyalty cards are used as records of purchase, (the US Government now uses the data to keep check on would be terrorists) as well as inventory control, the colour that best stimulates purchases are all a part of those ‘atmospherics’ designed to get us to part with our cash. By the way have you noticed how the basics of bread and milk are placed at the back of the store, no accident that, nothing has been left to chance, and don’t think you have the misfortune of picking a shopping trolley with behavioral problems, they are designed to divert your journey from the straight and narrow.

Welcome to the front door of capitalism, where convenience anaesthetizes consumers. Enjoy the soft, comfortable and inviting shelves overflowing with attractively packaged sugar coated delights. View dozens of different breakfast foods all displaying healthy fruits and grains on the packets while the addictive ingredient sugar as hidden, as its long history of slavery. We weave our way through rows of overloaded shelves where new and special goods appear. Clearly an innovative form of alchemy is afoot. Enjoy its benefits, absorb its attraction you have nothing to lose but your health, leave your brain at the door. All is well with the world just don’t ask questions, never ask were this or that product comes from or how it was produced, never ever ask if the workers were paid a living wage or have health care. What goes on behind the scenes is another story, that is the back yard of capitalism, another world, we are not supposed to see the starved, not hear the cries of children in the night, or witness the burning villages the rapes and slaughter of innocents, if we know we are responsible in whole or in part. Raj Patel shows us the inside of the world food system, he goes behind the shiny shop fronts, and it stinks.

On the corporate farm pigs, cows, and sheep have their names changed to pork, beef and hogget. Chickens are caged, force-fed and fattened. The family farm no longer a viable economic reality has morphed into agribusiness. Indian farmers are committing suicide due to overburdening debt and the destruction of the culture. Their traditional way of life destroyed, transformed by incessant pressure from giant chemical and drug corporations who control seeds, fertilizer, marketing and finance, whilst appropriating the accumulated knowledge of past generations of informal seed exchanges markets by the women a system that has worked perfectly well for centuries has been rendered illegal by western corporations and through intellectual property rights forced on poor and rich countries alike by trade agreements and food aid were the supplies of developed countries are subsidized by governments hands outs to giant corporations. Agribusiness has uses and is used by governments as a weapon of foreign policy to protect the financial and strategic interests of the most powerful bully of all, The United States of America.

The humble soy bean and its many uses including the $40,000 suit Henry Ford had made and his notions of growing motorcars, to the way soy bean production is changing land tenure, clearing of native forests. Of Brazil’s landless families, 5 million in 2002 and counting, 150,000 camp by the roadside, one can take heart that the progressive wing of the Catholic Church, trade unions and the vestiges of the progressive movements are still working to improve the lives of the poor. While rich countries promise food aid for the good and deserving. Green revolutions, a promise of a paradise, a land of plenty, there would be food aplenty rice, fruit and vegetables, would grow in abundance. Behind the promise were scientists in white coats devising quicker, cheaper and more efficient ways of killing insects and moles, moulds, rusts and blights, who experimented in vivisection laboratories, chemical plants and universities. And behind them men with guns should the locals get ideas beyond the corporate plan.

Agribusiness has brought us the factory farm and it produces more waste matter than they can safely dispose. Algae blooms poison the streams and rivers as millions of tons of pesticides saturate the environment killing wild birds and fish. Topsoil is being lost at a rate far greater than it can be replaced, the increasing demand water has placed pressure on aquifers that were created over millions of years are being drained so fast experts estimate that they will be exhausted within 30 to 40 years, animal waste is polluting rivers and contaminated ground waste. Factory farms generate more than 130 times the amount of waste than people.

America has through a system of trade deals managed to change cultures, when people say we are all globalized now, they mean we are all Americanized now. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTS), just one of many treaties, has produced a Mexican spike in levels of obesity, not that they are consuming more food, yet the food they are eating is different. One in ten Mexicans now has diabetes. The chances are that they last drunk a cup containing caffeine and sweetener perhaps high-fructose corn syrup, perhaps aspartame, perhaps even sugar.

While the consumer must carry some responsibility for what they eat, the options for a safe and healthy diet are severely constrained by the economic interests of the food industry. What is surprising is that there are not more incidences of food poisoning. No long-term studies are required just take a walk through the aisles of your local supermarket whole sections devoted the soft drinks and candy to say nothing of the extra sugar and sweeteners in a myriad of products.

Reading Stuffed and Starved we come to recognize that the enemy is the sleek and corpulent capitalist, the guilty scientist and yes the lunatic politician. That is where we should direct our anger, reorganize our efforts and spread the words of wisdom. Pointers to a solution are presented from transforming our tastes, eating locally and seasonally, being mindful of our responsibilities to the environment. By supporting local business there workers achieve a measure of dignity not possible under agribusiness; this along would bring about comprehensive change to rural areas through the provision of a living wage and sustainable food production leading to a more humane system.

The hard question raised by Stuffed and Starved requires urgent attention. Raj Patel shines a light on some of the path ahead. It is a difficult and rocky journey and capitalism is a contagious and cruel system, powerful and dangerous. Its many weaknesses often are exploited by organizations, yet the slogan the people united will never be defeated, and it carries a powerful truth as a way of fulfilment.

If I have fault with this book it is that vegetarianism seldom gets a mention, let alone veganism. Our refusal to eat animals would drastically reduce pollution, cut the rate of global warming, drastically reduce the suffering for both humans and animals, halt the wholesale poisoning of creeks and waterways, end threats to the health and welfare of future generations of overweight children whose eating habits and thought processes have been contaminated by a rapacious advertising industry.

Stuffed and Starved is a well-researched and informative book worthy of any book shelf, but of course it should not be left there.

The website for the book is www.stuffedandstarved.org it has suggestions of hundreds of organizations doing great work. There’s no easy answer, but its one of thousands of places to start.