Part V Apple Juice:Product of Michigan China

Inspection on the food is something huge the United States of America should really be concerned about. "Each year 5,000 Americans are killed and 325,000 hospitalized by contaminated food" (Timmerman 200). I do not understand this at all. I live in the United States of America, and I do not want to be killed from contaminated food. The United States imports more than half of the nation’s food sources. There should be a law put into place taking care of the inspection on the imported foods. The countries that we import from could easily put some type of pesticide in the food to start an epidemic in the population of the United States. Is that really what we want to happen? There is already enough people getting killed or hospitalized now. We need to decrease the numbers and put a law in place to enforce the inspection of imported foods. 

Part IV Lobster: Product of Nicaragua

Life is tough and very hard, for my wife, children and I. I’m gone for ten to twelve days at a time, my children are growing up too much while I’m gone. Both my wife and I feel very lonely while I am away. The only positive thing about this job as a lobster diver is that I get to support my family. The two worst things about this job is that I can’t be with my family a lot and the training of the job is very poor, also the technology or equipment is very poor. The training is very brief and not very safe. The companies that give us this jobs do not care about our health or families all they care about is their money. The most dangerous thing about being a lobster diver is that it is very common for us to get injuries that could kill us or even paralyze us. This is a very dangerous job! I do not like it, and I will never like it but sometimes you have go on and do what you have to do to support your family. The companies do not understand that I am the supporter in my family I have children to support and also a wife. If I get hurt and she leaves me I will not be okay. This is a job that I have to have and I have to earn money to support my family.

Part III Banana: Product of Costa Rica

Sustainable farming is an idea that farmers use to protect the environment, and also keeping the ground they are farming healthy. Should the world go to sustainable farming or should the world just try to grow the product as much as possible and not care about the environment, animal welfare, the human communities, or public health? The world should start caring about the environment they live in. If not the posterity of the world will not be living in a healthy world.  

In “Where Am I Eating” written by Kelsey Timmerman on page 149 he states “Luis showed me short and tall plants, big and small, and bland and sweet bananas. We walked around and under 80 different varieties of bananas on EARTH’s organic banana farm. The farm is a living, growing bank of biodiversity. It’s something the scientists like Luis believe we need more of – and need to fiercely protect.” He states that Luis believes we need more biodiversity farms. Which is correct, they organically grow there different bananas. With them growing more than one type they more than likely don’t grow them in the same exact spot every single season. Which is better for the land and the human communities around the farm. If you grow the same food object in the same spot every season eventually the soil in that area will not grow the food anymore because it will not have the right minerals to do so.

“By planting highly valued tropical plants, Cid and Paoloa showed farmers that they could earn as much from 1,000 square meters of land as they could from 100,000 square meters” (Timmerman 146). Cid and Paoloa could very well be correct this is something you have to be very educated about to learn how to make the same amount of money off of 1,000 square meters of land than 100,000 square meters of land. That is 10 times as less land than 100,000 square meters. If the whole world could do this we could keep the demand and produce at the same amount. Also, the world wouldn’t have to farm as much land as they are now. That would mean we would have more land to urbanize and then less rural areas in the world.

The world is something different today as it was 10 years ago, and it will be different in 10 years from now. New technology will be invented, and old farming practices will be eliminated. Although one thing will never change and that is farming will always have some part in the life of the world. Sustainable Farming is the way to go though, because urbanization is become more and more popular. Which means that if the urban population takes over the rural areas to make them into popular cities, we will have less land to farm. This is where sustainable farming will come into a huge role. Farming in less land but making the same amount of money off of it. Sustainable farming is going to become the best decision to very country.

Part II Chocolate: Product of West Africa

Tonight is filled with emotion, tonight is the night I will be leaving. I will be leaving everything I've owned and everything that I've grew up around. Tonight is the night I will be leaving my parents without them knowing. Tonight is the night I will be able to leave my village for more money. I will leaving Ghana which is where I've always leaved. I will be leaving my sister's and brother's behind, I will be going to a village close by. I'm leaving everything behind in order to find a better paying job. I am a very hard worker and I try to earn every cent I make.

The night began and I was very nervous about leaving without telling my parents. They are very important to me, but I have to find a better working condition. After everyone in the house had been asleep for an hour or two I wrote a note stating "I love you all very much, I hope you will understand" and I left, without saying goodbye to my family. The following morning I finally arrived at the village I went to the farmer's home that promised me I could have a job making "$300 for a year’s worth of work" (Timmerman 64). So everything went well and I finally got to start. It was a very tough job, but I made myself do it just thinking about what I’ll get out of doing all this.

Four months has pasted, there was this middle aged young male that came to visit our farm, he was very interested in how we grew the cocoa beans. He asked for me to speak with him and of course I did. I told him all about how I moved here for the better working conditions and the better pay. They he started to ask me why I moved from the first farm in my old village to here I replied back “I Left there because they didn’t have respect for workers. They didn’t give food. They forced us to work” (Timmerman 64). The male replied back “Do they hit you?” (Timmerman 64). I was very cautions with this man he seemed as if he really cared. I told him that they don’t beat they do worse. He took it as if the owners molest us, which is very untrue. I hated the way they treated us here also I just wanted to be back to see my family, is that so much to ask for? The days got longer with this male here I had to take him out on the farm and show him around and how we do things

One night he had asked me and my master if I could go meet a fella he had previously meet in a different village, to be his interrupter. My master had told him I was studying English before I had come to this village. So, I had went and I thought to myself this is the perfect time to leave and go back home I don’t really care about the money I just want to go home. I had went to this fella’s house that he had meet in a village before the one we are in now. I translated everything that he wanted me too and we had to go back to the farmer’s house that I worked for. We stopped at a little bar on the side of the road and I paid “60 cents for a double shot” and I had drank it in two big gulps (Timmerman 106). I told the man that I had to use the restroom and I said to myself “this is the time, the time to get out and go back to Ghana.” So, I just went out the back door instead of going to the restroom and took off I went home to my family, and at that moment I had made the best decision.

Part I Coffee: Product of Colombia

As Timmerman states his travels and the farmers and communities he met, it quickly becomes clear that the things we eat, enjoy and take for granted are actually grown and harvested by people who struggle to put food on their dinner tables. Families are heartbroken because they have to raise a family to work for a company that won’t even help them put dinner on the table. Timmerman explains that a farmer doesn't have to win a Cup of Excellence to have his life impacted by coffee. What can we do? Buying Fair Trade is all consumers, which is the drinkers of coffee, can do about this problem. Not buying or consuming in the product would conflict the workers/farmers lives worse than the way they are getting treated now. A pay cut for them is a huge problem that would mean they couldn’t support their families and put food on the table when needed. Timmerman states in the chapter two that the farmers only get 93 cents for a ten dollar bag of coffee. Which means a pay cut would just get them what they needed and not anything else, maybe not even what they needed. Where Am I Eating, investigates the delicious, taken for granted, food we eat every day. Unnecessary working conditions for the growers, minimum wages and enforcing many more rules like growing and picking more beans in a shorter amount of time. This is where Fair Trade can make a huge amount of difference. Fair Trade guarantees farmers fair wages, for dinner to be on the tables, good working conditions and development rules so they can empower themselves and their communities and see sustainable changes for future generations. Fair Trade is better for the farmers and companies to look on because there is an amount of rules that have to be followed. Fair Trade is something new for the countries like Columbia that grows or raises something they sell to another country. It enforces rules that are luxurious to these kinds of countries. They believe that this is a start for future generations to be respected and also for the future generations to be earning more and supporting more of the family’s needs, like education. Regular trade is something that everyone around the world does it has been in generations and generations of people. Unlike Fair Trade Regular Trade does not guarantee anyone beneficial wages or respectful working conditions. Therefore, some company’s do not honor the 3^rd world Countries, which will work for a dime a day with respectable working conditions, enough to take care and treat the workers with respect. All the companies are worried about, how much they will be making off of a single cup of coffee, and how much of that will be sent to the growers.  So the next time you reach for that seven - eight dollar cup of coffee, take a second to think about who grew and farmed the coffee beans that made that delicious taste in your mouth and ask yourself: Where am I eating?