Stuffed and Starved

On the cover of this book by Raj Patel it says THE HIDDEN BATTLE for the WORLD FOOD SYSTEM, I totally believe that this is the main message of the book. Just within the first 100 pages of the book I really do believe that there is a hidden battle and we need to help it end. A majority of the worlds population is now starving, and there are still a majority of people who are considered obese. This is where I feel the title of the book originates. This is a huge problem in our world food system, but no one seems to have an answer.



Chapter 3 hit me the hardest, it was titled You have become Mexican. As an American we hear about Mexican farmers, and we basically blame Mexico for being poor. We blame it on the corruption in the government and the drug lords, but Raj Patel believes that it is America who should be blames for Mexico being poor. Patel thinks that the problem starts with NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association), when America, Canada and Mexico all entered they believed that this would increase each countries wealth. Unfortunately Mexico's market was much worse off, we put the emphasis on consumers rather than the producers. The book uses the corn market as an example. The American government is supporting its corn farmers so that they don't end up going out of business and the Mexican corn market cannot compete with this, thus causing them to go out of business. This gives the upper hand to the American Corn Farmers while the Mexican corn farmers are down and out! The book made it seem to me that America is a bully and is pushing Mexico around by using NAFTA. In other words NAFTA is encouraging the Mexican Farmers to migrate to the city and it is stated that farmers have found themselves pushed off of their own land. The hidden battle in chapter 3 is more of America beating down the people that they thought they were going to be able to lift up.


Another thing that hit me from the book was the notion of farmer suicides. I know plenty of farmers from my home town and I had never heard of this before now. This is an epidemic that faces much of the Indian farming industry. Patel's book states that in 1990 rural suicide rates in India were 3.9 per 100,000 for men and for women it was 0.6 per 100,000, by 2000 the rate was 6.1 per 100,000 for men and 1.2 per 100,000 for women. That was a 9 year difference, the number of men almost doubled and the number of women doubled, it is becoming much more of a problem. The book tells the story of a Korean farmer, Lee Kyung Hae, his story stuck out to me with how much he went through. He was a farmer and he climbed a fence to be by where the WTO (World Trade Organization) were having a meeting, Lee pulled out a pocket knife he shouted "The WTO kills farmers" and stabbed himself in the chest. Lee did not die because he wanted to draw attention to himself, he wanted to bring light to the problems the Korean farmers were facing, "the plight of Korean farmers". Before there were free markets in India the government used to assist by giving farmers minimum support prices for crops so farmers can know what they were going to get as returns. With free trade the government has turned their backs on the indian farmers and neglected them.

These are the few things that have stuck with me from the first 100 pages of Patel's book. It has addressed many issues that I had never heard of, even though I have previously learned about NATFA and the WTO. I feel that these issues aren't brought to light, at least in the case of NAFTA the issues might not be brought to light because America is being the bully. I know I will read more than the required pages of this book because it is so eye opening.