The Commodity Chain Analysis On The Red Gold Spice

To conclude, our current way of agricultural life is not sustainable. The article “What’s for supper” has made me realize that if I hope for a better future for generations to come I should support a locally sourced lifestyle. This article is an eye opener to me and proved to me the importance of supporting locally grown produce. Locally grown produce supports the environment as well as jobs for people in the community. The current system takes a toll on every species on the planet. Humans are overproducing on a massive scale and are wasting close to half of our supplies and

The records of the last census taken todays population is approximately 7 billion. To put it into perspective of the amount of work farmers take into hand the average farmer feeds 155 people one their own. (“Comparing Agriculture of the Past to Today”) . Notice that a census is only taken on the people of the world, but farmers and their operations are not separately accounted for. “It is impossible to calculate the exact number of farms and farmers in the United States.” (Conkin 147). Of course farmers do not use the simplistic technology of the past to achieve these high expectations. Farms implement the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to improve crop production. The GPS is a system that uses satellite signals to find the location of a radio receiver. (“The Science and Technology of Agriculture”) Using biotechnology has also became an interesting subject of big time farmers. This is the changing of genetic material if living things to improve the production of the product. An example of a GMO would be crops that have been modified to be resistant to disease. Disease resistant crops are one of the most widely used in the field of GMO’s. (“The Science and Technology of Agriculture”).

From pulling the ploughs with cows in the 18th century to monitoring the entire farm with mobile apps today, technology has changed farming and food production greatly for the people. However, technology in food production has long been the center of heated conversations and endless debates. How has such technology influence the lives of people today, as well as the environment they live in? Michael Specter in his article “Roundup and Risk Assessment” argues that technology in farming, such as herbicides, are beneficial to the general population, while Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Côte d’Ivoire’s mass production practices lead to the cocoa trade becoming a highly influential economic factor (Losch, 2002, p. 210). Because of this, paired with governmental involvement in the sector, dreams of dominating the cocoa market and influencing prices naturally followed (Losch, 2002, p. 210). Unfortunately, market power is more complicated than supplying the majority of product. However, attempts to control the price of cocoa by pulling out of the market temporarily proved disastrous, ultimately aiding the other producers by reducing the competition (Losch, 2002, p. 212). Côte d’Ivoire also quickly realized that it was too dependent on the cocoa trade both economically and politically to employ this tactic for long

Modern agricultural technologies goals is to obtain the highest yields and get the highest economic profit as possible

nodes of the commodity chain. This part of the literature views producer and retail prices as

Morillo argued in chapter 15 that “commodities always travel the network with ideas attached to them”. Commodities were traded globally between the years of 1500 and 1800. The text “Frameworks of World History” discusses in details the ideas in cultural practices that were associated with each of them. Out of all of the commodities that were traded during this time period, I would say that silver, timber and slaves had the greatest ideological and cultural impacts. A commodity is just not material; it carries far more than just material. As Morillo said, commodities come with ideas and cultural practices with them; therefore goods are received into cultural environments that change their meaning.

Local farmers tend to be more expensive than big corporation produce due to lack of economies of scale and due to the traditional ways of farming which is less efficient thus cornering some farmers to give up in the face of bigger competition. These few corporations that now control the market have benefitted from economies of scale and made it much harder for new entrants to compete since they use technological advances to stay efficient and mass produce so they can sell at cheaper price. All this said, shows that the agribusiness is evolving and making great use of technology whether it’s to increase yield or make perfect produce. But have we stopped and thought about our

In Doc. number 5, in the image “Cast of Frieze from Temple of Nihursag, Tell Ubaid” there is evidence of new technologies. I know this because pictured in the image were many new gadgets such as a butter churner, a milk strainer and a shed for the cows. If not for agriculture, people wouldn’t have the opportunity to create the contraptions the did. For instance, the butter churner.

Humans have been altering the genetic makeup of plants for millennia, keeping seeds from the best crops and planting them in following years, breeding and crossbreeding varieties to make them taste sweeter, grow bigger, last longer. In this way we've transformed the wild tomato, Lycopersicon, from a fruit the size of a marble to today's giant, juicy beefsteaks. From a weedy plant called teosinte with an "ear" barely an inch long has come our foot-long (0.3-meter-long) ears of sweet white and yellow corn. In just the past few decades plant breeders have used traditional techniques to produce varieties of wheat and rice plants with higher grain yields. They have also created hundreds of new crop variants using irradiation and mutagenic

The documentary Black Gold, is about the world coffee market and an Ethiopian fair trade cooperative. Ethiopia being the birthplace of coffee is the largest producer of coffee in the world, producing some of the highest quality of coffee beans in the world, like Harar, Yuban and Sidamo types of coffee. The significant problems pointed out in this documentary show what is wrong in the global trading system. Mainly, while most of us continue have our lattes and specialty coffees, the amount paid to the Ethiopian coffee farmers is so low that a lot of them have been forced to chop down some of their coffee fields and rely on other crops to help them survive. The Ethiopian people are malnourished; they have no clean water, no healthcare, and no schools for their families. As quoted in the film, “They are living hand to mouth”.

Temple Grandin was an autistic person who became one of the leading agriculture enthusiast. She is now a professor at Colorado state university where she teaches animal science. She has influenced many people but she has personally influenced me by showing me more about the importance of agriculture. She has also influenced the agriculture industry by improving slaughter houses, teaching us more about animal behavior, and more efficient handling of livestock.

Welcome to the age of an agricultural revolution as everyday biotechnology continues to bring innovation to human’s most basic needs – food. Food is essential to any living organism, providing energy for our production and nutrients for our protection. Without this fundamental element, life cannot exist. Our lack to produce our own energy, like plants, causes us to become dependent on others for survival. Humans existence is attributed only to the million years of evolution our food source underwent to sustain our survival. Changing the primary nature of our food source, whether it is plant or animal, directs mankind in a dangerous future if our food dependency is permanently hampered. Welcome to the age of an agricultural devolution

In fact, it is also necessary for governmental bodies to become involved in promoting localized food such as policies and labelling laws that encourage healthier eating and food re-localization. In addition, regulations to foster sustainable food production are essential. Moreover, in the movie Cuban, the Accidental Revolution, David Suzuki, introduces how the government’s vision becomes one with the farmers, that there is a possibility for the industrial food system to work together. For example, Cuban agronomists describe the benefits of crop rotation for soil health, while Cuban farmers express pleasure with the relative productivity and profitability of their ecological and somehow newly industrialized farming systems. By inventing a new way to create food and working with nature, profit is gained and diversity is generated leading the country to possess the largest national program in sustainable agriculture. With the government’s assistance, farmers learn to do more with less and growing food as a community becomes more a passion that profits. In his article, Wes Jackson also supports the idea of finding a new way to create food without technology and science. Instead of focusing mainly on the local food systems, he emphasizes that by using all the knowledge acquired from the pioneers and their cleverness, we can build domestic prairies that have high-yielding fields that are planted only once every twenty years. It is not the entire answer to the total agriculture problems, but breeding new crops from native plants selected from nature’s abundance and simulating the resettlement botanical complexity of a region should make it easier to solve many agricultural problems (40). The share to work side by side with nature may be one of the solution to establish a new sea of perennial prairie

Modern technology is already being used in agriculture. The best example is the use of gene technology or what’s popularly known as agricultural biotechnology in developing drought and herbicide resistant crops. Through genetic engineering, scientists have been able to introduce traits into existing genes to make crops resistant to drought and herbicides. One good example is the use of Bacillus Thuringiensis, commonly known as Bt. Bacillus Thuringiensis, is a bacterium that dwells in soil. It acts as a reservoir “of cry toxins and cry genes for production of biological insecticides and insect-resistant genetically modified crops.”