Tag: environmental justice

The Surprise Apocalypse

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Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

An apocalyptic landscape: Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

I’m not in the habit of writing apocalyptic poetry, but I wrote this a few months back as I reflected on what I’ve been learning about the industrial food system, the global economy, and climate change. We often use the word “apocalypse” to refer to the idea mass destruction or the end of the world, but in the original Greek it means “uncovering”: the lifting of a veil; a revelation.  For people who seek to be shaped by the Biblical narrative, its important to know who we are, and where we are, in the story. Imagining all kinds of evil outside of ourselves or our own community without recognizing our role in contributing to life or to destruction is worse than useless–it actually distracts us from using the power available to us to take meaningful action.

I grew up in churches where we talked about the end of the world fairly often, but it was all mystifyingly spiritual–beyond our control and even beyond our understanding. We rarely discussed any of the real-world destruction going on around us in the form of wars or other man-made disasters. We never imagined that we might be benefiting from, let alone contributing to, the very systems of power that were destroying God’s creation or the lives of our fellow human beings.

St. John wrote the book of Revelation to help his readers understand the times in which they lived and to help them respond faithfully to their situation. Here is what it might look like to interpret the book of Revelation in our twenty-first century context of climate refugees, mass extinction, and a worldwide economy that depends on ecological and human exploitation to sustain its perpetual growth:

 

Apocalypse

I nightmared of the rapture

From the age of ten

Looking out for all the signs

That would mark the end:

 

The blood-red moon,

The rebuilt temple,

Rumors of famine and war

It was simple

 

To keep watch and prepare

For the tribulation:

A mysterious age

When the world would be one nation

 

With power concentrated

In a single pair of hands:

The evil antichrist

Against whom we would stand

 

We brave, holy Christians

Ready to be martyred

If we hadn’t been raptured already

By the time the suffering started

 

Yes, this was the revelation

According to St. John

And Tim LaHaye

And on and on

 

They proclaimed with confidence

All those fiery preachers

They understood it all;

They were inspired, spiritual teachers

 

The evil they envisioned

Was otherworldly; other

It had nothing to do with us,

With how we lived with one another.

 

But what if apocalypse does not depend

On events beyond our knowing?

What if the world will meet its end

At the hands that should have been sowing

 

Gardens of perpetual abundance

Instead of economies of perpetual growth

Contentment instead of greed

So that life would not be choked?

 

“Rule over all the earth,and subdue it,”

Say our scriptures in the beginning.

“Tend this garden in my stead,”

But already our heads were spinning…

 

With ways to turn this mandate

For protecting the work of God’s hand

Into the right to rape and plunder

like warlords on stolen land.

 

God said that it was very good

But we couldn’t just take that at face value

There was still untapped potential

For air-conditioning and indoor bathrooms

 

And look, God approves–

With wealth He does bless!

Convenience, comfort,

More is always better than less

 

But somehow we missed the signs

Of the snowballing destruction

That we “the faithful” brought about

With our affluent consumption.

 

“Fallen! Fallen

Is Babylon the Great!”

Her sins are piled to heaven,

Judgment will no longer wait.

 

The saints and apostles

and prophets rejoice,

But we wealthy who made merry

Cannot find a joyful voice

 

“Come out of her,” the Lord had said

But we all felt just fine

It was difficult to leave—

We all had drunk her wine

 

Drunk with power, and distraction

It was difficult to see

all the blood there on our hands

as we lived our lives in ease.

 

For our finely-built houses

We turned forest land to sand

For our juicy beef burgers

We drove peasants from their land

 

But this all was done by proxy,

Please try to understand,

We would not have done this dirty work

Directly with our hands.

 

“Woe! Woe, O great city,

O Babylon, city of power!”

All your horses and chariots and tanks

Could not prolong your life by an hour.

 

For your growing empire was rotting

All along, from the inside out,

Destroying the very nourishment

That you could not live without.

 

You sought to trade

and buy and sell

Human bodies and souls

ecosystems as well

 

You poisoned your own rivers

And you counted it as profit

The important numbers grew,

But you never measured losses.

 

Why think about the future?

In the present, you could thrive.

No need to let inconvenient fact

Intrude on your way of life:

 

Freedom of choice

Freedom of trade

Slave labor hidden

In everything that’s made.

 

Poison air that burns the lungs

Of the workers making shoes

“Pleather weather” over factories

That produce for me and you

 

Ocean waves enclosing

An island homeland beneath the surf

That’s the end of someone’s world,

If not the entire earth.

 

Famines, droughts, deforestation,

And wars waged over water

This certainly will end the lives

Of certain sons and daughters

 

Genocides of birds and of fish

And bees and soil, too.

All creatures that eat food will die.

Eventually, humans do.

 

No showy Armageddon;

Just a slow fading out:

Like a self-inflicted wound

That finally brings death round.

 

Or like the drug addicted

Overdosing on the sidewalk

En masse, of course, but just as

accidental and suicidal.

 

This, the self-made apocalypse

Of prideful, self-made men

More predictable than what we sought

In our cryptic verses back then.

revelation apocalypse

Gambling Together

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This week’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) package was “slim pickings” as our neighbor/urban farmer told us when she dropped it off this evening. With so many days of unseasonable heat, she told us, lots of plants are going straight to seed instead of following their usual growth cycle and developing into the mature veggies we depend on for food.

This is our first summer in Canada, so Andy and I have been enjoying the warm weather and the sunny, blue skies, amused by our northern friends’ extremely low tolerance for heat (they get the last laugh when winter rolls around and we are comically unprepared). But locals tell us that while these summer days are great for the beach, what we should be experiencing right now is “June-uary,” a return of colder weather and–most importantly–rain. Since Vancouver is located in a temperate rain forest, rainfall is extremely important for the plants, the animals, and, ultimately, the people who live here.

Because we’ve already had cloudless skies for so long, forest fires which would usually be a possibility in August are happening right now, and trees with shallow roots that depend on a certain level of moisture in the ground to keep them structurally stable are likely to be uprooted and fall. A changing climate means that growing seasons change, and many plants that might have thrived in the past are no longer viable.

It’s unfortunate to receive fewer fruits and vegetables through our CSA membership than we had expected, but that scarcity in itself demonstrates why community shared agriculture is so important in the first place, especially in light of the unpredictable effects of climate change on local ecosystems. When they pay for seed, labor, irrigation, and other inputs ahead of time, farmers are financially investing in their crops before knowing what the yield will be. They may put in months of work and go into debt for a harvest that is either to small to be profitable, or too plentiful to earn fair prices at the market. Either way, the conventional system expects farmers to take this gamble alone, even though every one of us depends on their hard work and investment in order to survive.

In community supported agriculture, consumers share the risk of agriculture with the farmers who feed us by paying for a share of the harvest at the beginning of the growing season. However things turn out, we’re in it together, and no single person will be economically devastated no matter how weather, pests, or economic forces may influence the harvest.

Is Free Trade Fair?

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migrant workers in California

Migrant farm workers in California. (photo from Google images)

Last Friday, Andy and I attended a panel discussion about how to create a sustainable food system. We learned about the ways that farm workers here in Canada have been shipped in as cheap labor through temporary foreign worker programs, but are denied the basic protections that most people enjoy at their jobs—like paid vacation time, or overtime pay. “Piece rates,” rather than minimum wage, determine their income, and these rates are so low that half the workforce can’t pick produce fast enough to even make minimum wage! Workers are also at the mercy of unscrupulous contractors who function as the middlemen between farms and laborers, retaliating with job termination if workers complain about their housing, working conditions, or pay.

A priest running a migrant worker shelter two borders south, in Tijuana, Mexico, described the even larger problems facing agricultural workers in the United States. The U.S. economy depends on foreign labor, but unlike Canada, has no program for temporary workers at all. The result, he says, is an immigration system in chaos. 600,000 workers were deported from the U.S. last year. Many of them end up at the priest’s shelter, bewildered by their sudden twist of fate, separated from spouses and children, and—in many cases—finding themselves in Mexico for the first time in their lives. The priest told us about a surprising new industry popping up in Tijuana: call centers to employ the growing number of new deportees who speak better English than Spanish.

Mexican farmers

A small-scale farmer in Mexico (photo from Google images)

Ironically, it was an American-led free trade agreement which created the surge of illegal immigration from Mexico in the first place. When the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) went into effect back in 1994, farming markets were opened so that peasant farmers in Mexico were suddenly competing against large, government-subsidized corn growers in the American Midwest. These small farmers couldn’t compete with the cheap imports from large-scale commercial farms in the U.S., and many of them went bust. Failed farms forced people to migrate first to Mexico’s cities, and then north to the U.S. looking for work. In the last ten years, narcotics cartels have intensified the problem by pushing even more Mexican farmers off their land and causing even urban dwellers to flee the threat of violence.

peasant farmers

Corn had been the staple crop in Mexico for centuries. (photo from Google images)

Finally, the director of the Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA) in Seattle, Washington, discussed the connection between the plight of small farmers in the U.S. and migrant farm workers from Latin America. Both are losing out against large-scale agribusiness, she says, and their best hope protecting their livelihoods is to band together to defend their rights against corporate giants like Monsanto. The DFTA is hoping to create these kinds of mutually beneficial partnerships all along the supply chain, connecting workers, farmers, suppliers, retailers, and consumers to work for the common good rather than pursuing their own economic benefit at the expense of others.

I have long been aware of the importance of buying fair trade when it comes to products imported from the developing world, such as coffee or chocolate. But this panel discussion opened my eyes to the reality that the agricultural sector here at home is hardly different from the unethical systems that prevail in other parts of the world.

The U.S. and Canada are wealthy, developed nations, but we are still depending on an underpaid, overworked labor force for our cheap, abundant food. Our laws do little to protect farm workers from exposure to harmful chemicals, abuse at the hands of their employers, and nonpayment of wages, and our legal system similarly lags behind in protecting the rights of small farmers.

These are serious problems that should concern anyone who eats food. The United States has an aging farm population, and we have reached a point as a society where we have more people in prison than we do on farms (an absurdity on both counts). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the general population has a life expectancy of 73, but the average migrant farm worker can only expect to live to the age of 49. Furthermore, EPA safety standards for farm workers haven’t been updated in twenty years.

It’s obvious in our laws and in the way we have structured our economy that we don’t value the people who produce our food. We have come to see them as just another inanimate, economic input; something to be squeezed for as much productivity on as little pay as possible, to keep profit margins high and prices low for consumers like us.

There is currently no federal regulation for fair trade.

Think about that for a moment.

Farms—companies of all kinds—are under no obligation to prove that their products have been created without exploiting the people or the natural landscapes of the places where they were produced. There’s no way for us to know whether the food that we’re eating has poisoned a river, poisoned someone else’s body, or relied on slave labor to make it to our plate.

It’s high time fair trade came home to North America. We have a responsibility as North Americans and as Christians to care for the people who are sustaining our lives while barely being able to eek out a life of their own in the most prosperous nations on earth.

The video below features interviews from small farmers and migrant workers in the American South, and follows the story of a farm in Florida that is becoming part of the solution:

Faith in food

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Picture

A wolf in sheep’s clothing: Monsanto’s public relations campaign. In North America, farmers often find themselves bullied into buying Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds or else sued for growing copyrighted Monsanto crop varieties after accidental cross-pollination from neighboring GMO fields. In India, the cycles of debt created by reliance on the company’s GMO seeds have led to a dramatic spike in farmer suicides in recent years.

                   This week I had lunch with a human rights activist from Latin America who was forced to seek political asylum in Canada a few years ago because his work with peasant farmers in his home country had put his life in danger. Monsanto came up in our conversation, and although this activist’s work with land rights did not directly concern this corporate giant, he said that Monsanto was very active in his home country and he could see the negative effects of a single company taking control of the food supply. Once someone has power over food and water, he says, they are in complete control: you will either eat and drink what they give you or you will die. He hypothesizes that one day corporations will commodify respiration itself by forcing people to pay for the privilege of air that is clean enough to breathe.Such a situation is not so far-fetched. In polluted cities in Beijing and Shanghai, air quality is already so bad that people are already wearing face masks outside much of the time and clamoring to buy air filters for their homes and offices. And since wealthier communities have more social power to back up their demands of “not in my backyard,” heavy polluters like oil refineries and petro-chemical plants often end up in the backyards of people too poor or marginalized in society to resist. Canada’s “Chemical Valley,” where the population of an impoverished First Nations reservation is submerged in the poisonous haze of the highly concentrated oil refineries and petro-chemical plants which surround them, is a dramatic example. But nationwide across the United States, studies have shown that people in nonwhite, low-income areas are breathing in more hazardous particles than people in affluent, white ones–in other words, air pollution disproportionately affects the poor. So perhaps clean air has already become a privilege rather than the basic right or the common grace provided by God to everything that has breath.The corporations which have the greatest effects on our food, water, and air today are larger than the economies of many of the countries in which they operate. They are also more powerful than the governments of the nations where they do business, and since their bottom line is profit rather than the welfare of the places where they harvest, manufacture, or sell their products, their ability to operate above (or in some cases, dictate) the law is incredibly dangerous. As we speak, seventeen of the world’s top oncologists have just released a report warning that the main ingredient in most commonly used herbicide in the world, Monsanto’s RoundUp, probably causes cancer. Monsanto is fighting to have the report retracted–but this is not surprising, given that the company depends on this chemical for $6 billion in profits every year. One way of resisting Monsanto’s choke-hold on the international food system and their ability to operate at the expense of human health is to sign this petition calling for health authorities in the United States, Brazil, the European Union, and elsewhere to take the alarming findings of this new study into account and to ensure that that the public is not exposed to glyphosate until it can be proven safe.

The dangerous trend in our food system of power being concentrate in fewer and fewer [corporate] hands is something that cannot be adequately addressed by something as simple as signing a petition, though our signature may be a significant, small component of broad-based resistance. It is necessary to start somewhere. The current situation is one in which food travels vast distances along supply chains long enough to prevent us from ever knowing, most of the time, where exactly our food came from, how it was produced, what is in it, and what effect its production had on the people and the landscape of its place of origin. It is a destructive system in which short-term profit too often trumps the long-term well-being of land and people. It is an unjust arrangement in which, to quote author Mark Winne, “the poor get diabetes; the rich get local and organic.”

A few months back, Andy and I took a “faith in food” class at our church here in Vancouver. It was basically an in-depth look at the historical development of the industrial food system, the way it operates today, and its negative effects on people, animals, and ecosystems around the world. We also examined scripture in order to figure out our place as followers of Jesus in this global story that is unfolding. Given the mission of the church to participate in God’s restoration of the world, how are we to respond to the specific social, political, and economic circumstances that we find ourselves in right now? What does it look like to pursue justice and wholeness in the context of an economy in which many people cannot afford to buy healthy food; in which the way that we feed ourselves does not honor or protect our fellow creatures of the natural environment on which all of our lives ultimately depend? What does it mean to love our neighbors when some of them are losing their land or working under exploitative conditions to provide the food on our tables, and when others are literally being poisoned by the food that they eat?

In many ways, the time we spent praying, thinking, and talking about these issues raised more questions than answers and brought us to the realization that the simple act of eating has become fraught with complex ethical and practical problems. But we also reached clarity and consensus around the fact that seeking justice in the food system—which is hardly separable from environmental or economic justice overall—is among the most pressing moral concerns of our day. Responding to it is a task that we as Christians cannot afford to ignore.

Thus, you have this blog before you. A blog will not save the world, but perhaps it can be the start of an important conversation, one that will build community and build momentum around living more justly and compassionately in a world where it is very hard to live well. As Wendell Berry, that octogenarian farmer-poet from Kentucky, has said, “Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.” So in addition to writing, I hope to get my hands dirty growing some food over the next few months, and doing what I can to support local farmers instead of corporate supply chains. These are small acts that will be done imperfectly, but it is a start, and I will not be going about it alone.