When I was young I had a book by Steven Kroll called, That Makes Me Mad! about a young girl, Nina, enraged with the world around her. You follow Nina through her pains: when she’s told “something delicious” is for dinner and it turns out to be her least favorite dish, it makes her mad. When her newborn brother gets more attention, it makes her mad. When adults ignore her wonderful attempts at attention, it makes her mad.
Basically, none of us want to be lied to or ignored. It’s something I think many of us have forgotten today.
I remember this book was one of my favorites and I distinctly remember toting it around in the car on trips. To this day when things make me mad I think of little angry Nina. I have mentioned the book to others, but no one else seems to have read it. Sometimes I think I should make the grown up version of this book, but maybe that would be too depressing.
If I did write it, a few pages of my adult That Makes Me Mad! would cover rising food prices, global warming/ the environmental crisis, and other current chatter– That Makes Me Mad!
D forwarded me this article from CounterPunch about rice shortages in Haiti and how the country could once feed itself– before the U.S. stepped in to “help.” It’s happened in other countries and well, That Makes Me Mad! The scenario often goes something like this:
Open trade borders
Artificially low-priced U.S. crops filter into country
Local farmers are driven out of business and move to cities
City populations grow
Joblessness and poverty increases and quality of life is reduced
Corporations move in to “make use” of once used farmland; Build polluting industry; Pollute the land and hire unskilled workers on the cheap (ie ex-farmers– who more often than not are not allowed to unionize)
Countries become “civilized” through industrialization
Land is destroyed and made toxic and we once again distance our understanding of sustainable land use
When is the U.S. going to stop subsidizing mono-cultures, ultimately artificially lowering prices on single commodities, like sugar, rice and corn, and put their money where it actually helps?! Subsidize items like corn and you create a huge surplus. (Because hey, if I’m a struggling farmer trying to make it, I’m going to grow whatever the government is paying big bucks for.) What to do with a huge corn surplus? Export it at prices other countries cannot compete with, turn it into high fructose corn syrup, figure out how to feed it to livestock, put more oil into it than it actually produces to make ethanol, and in general filter it into just about every processed food made, creating obesity throughout the land and making the health care industry (with funding from big Ag) a happy camper.
All of this make me very, very mad!
How about sustainable agriculture methods? Make organic fruits and vegetables more affordable for people– not corn syrup! But as so many people say, I guess the poor broccoli has no multi-million dollar spending lobbyist in Washington fighting for it, huh? I created this one, above right, for the purpose.
So it all seems really big and unbearable, right? Rather than change a light bulb, why not support a local sustainable farmer? Join a Community Supported Agriculture program (their prices are often less than non-organic prices at conventional supermarkets). Or here is another option: Don’t support Big Ag (not because you don’t want to support farmers, but you want to change where subsidies go!)! Read labels on products you buy, stay away from high fructose corn syrup, and in general, ingredients you can’t pronounce or don’t know how they are grown or produced– soy lecithin, not a soybean.