Dont Reblog Me

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a “cult of perfection”, deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. By one government tally, about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn (£119bn), is wasted by retailers and consumers every year - one third of all foodstuffs. 

But that is just a “downstream” measure. In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs “upstream”: scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labour involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality. 

When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say.

Retail giants argue that they are operating in consumers’ best interests, according to food experts. “A lot of the waste is happening further up the food chain and often on behalf of consumers, based on the perception of what those consumers want,” said Roni Neff, the director of the food system environmental sustainability and public health programme at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore.

“Fruit and vegetables are often culled out because they think nobody would buy them,” she said.

But Roger Gordon, who founded the Food Cowboy startup to rescue and re-route rejected produce, believes that the waste is built into the economics of food production. Fresh produce accounts for 15% of supermarket profits, he argued.

“If you and I reduced fresh produce waste by 50% like [the US agriculture secretary] Vilsack wants us to do, then supermarkets would go from [a] 1.5% profit margin to 0.7%,” he said. “And if we were to lose 50% of consumer waste, then we would lose about $250bn in economic activity that would go away.”

The farmers and truckers interviewed said they had seen their produce rejected on flimsy grounds, but decided against challenging the ruling with the US department of agriculture’s dispute mechanism for fear of being boycotted by powerful supermarket giants. They also asked that their names not be used.

“I can tell you for a fact that I have delivered products to supermarkets that was [sic] absolutely gorgeous and because their sales were slow, the last two days they didn’t take my product and they sent it back to me,” said the owner of a mid-size east coast trucking company.

“They will dig through 50 cases to find one bad head of lettuce and say: ‘I am not taking your lettuce when that lettuce would pass a USDA inspection.’ But as the farmer told you, there is nothing you can do, because if you use the Paca [Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930] on them, they are never going to buy from you again. “Are you going to jeopardise $5m in sales over an $8,000 load?”

the process by which we simplify our Selves and what guides the social conventions at whose whims we reduce our Selves are of course matters of power. If your dad demands you behave such and such way to be acknowledged as his son, if your boss demands you behave such and such way to remain employed, if a medical form requires you “be” such and such way to get the treatment you need -  all these Selves you present will be different from a lover who expects other behaviors from you, a waitress whose expected to behave differently before you. in short, he gave greater dimension to when nietzsche identified the Western subject as a sad splintered one bereft of meaning and looking for its reflection everywhere.

y’all know how we tag everything as “me” or “same” or joke that “i’m [random object]”?

So the buzzfeed founder wrote his senior thesis on Deleuze and Baudrillard, in which he outlines these ideas, and which he used to found buzzfeed. Deleuze (and Guattari, i should emphasize) expounded the late capitalist subject and how its desire is channeled to produce the worker-consumer. everything you consume that you think you enjoy is really just labor: every quiz you take, every article you read, every thing you “Like” isn’t you “enjoying” and consuming, it’s you performing labor for Buzzfeed etc. Jonah Peretti wrote through Deleuze that because of MTV and 24 hour channels (which were new in the early 90s when he wrote) were sharpening the patterns that Deleuze and Nietzsche wrote on, a pattern Peretti turned up to 11 with Buzzfeed. Peretti noted how the late capitalist subject is bombarded with images we can be trained to consume and identify with.

now deleuze has also been used in other unsavory ways, like the IDF’s use of deleuze in urban guerilla tactics against palestinians. but i think that’s a symptom of the academy rewarding the ambitious and power hungry, since deleuze’s chapter on Faciality is probably my favorite since it gives the best exposition of every power relation in all their dynamism such he sees past each specific formulation of  say white supremacy as it has been expressed throughout the eras and collapses them all into its most simple logic:

The face is not a universal.  It is not even that of the white man; it is White Man himself, with his broad white cheeks and the black hole of his eyes.  The face is Christ.  The face is the typical European [.  …]

Racism operates by the determination of degrees of deviance in relation to the White-Man face, which endeavours to integrate increasingly nonconforming traits into increasingly eccentric and backward waves[. …]  From the viewpoint of racism, there is no exterior, there are no people on the outside.  There are only people who should be like us and whose crime it is not to be.  The dividing line is not between inside and outside but rather is internal to simultaneous signifying chains and successive subjective choices.  Racism never detects the particles of the other; it propagates waves of sameness until those who resist identification have been wiped out (or those who only allow themselves at a given degree of divergence).  Its cruelty is equalled only by its incompetence and naïveté.

this applies to any ism and slots any and all reactions to these isms, both by the powerful and the oppressed.

think how some PoC will choose to respond to racism by saying stuff like, “oh i don’t see race” or “my race doesn’t define me” or when women say stuff like, “i’m not one of the girls, all the guys like me” or basically anyone who tokenizes themselves for a White Dude audience and read, “ The dividing line is not between inside and outside but rather is internal to simultaneous signifying chains and successive subjective choices.  Racism never detects the particles of the other; it propagates waves of sameness until those who resist identification have been wiped out (or those who only allow themselves at a given degree of divergence)”

or consider how white people for instance just cannot conceive that PoC can think for themselves, like how libs keep trying to portray communism as a white people thing, that either we don’t exist or if we do, we’re being tricked. We’re expected to make the “right choices” so as to become the tractable minority token, and if we don’t, there are PoC or women minions to threaten us to vote for clinton or we deserve trump, and failing them, well trump is here to obliterate the uppity for daring to resist conformity.

excerpt:

It makes me feel special and cherished when someone makes an effort to win my heart, surprising me with flowers or jewelry or picking up the bill on a date — not because I can’t afford to pay for myself, but because he enjoys treating me.

I realized early on that this is how I wanted to date. I wanted to be courted. I wanted someone who would make an effort. I wanted a man who was willing to commit and offer me a ring — without taking years to decide if I was the one for him.

So that’s what I set out to get when I first met my husband, Chris.

After eight weeks of dating, Chris wanted me to be his girlfriend. It was very clear that we liked each other, that there was attraction and compatibility, and for him, exclusivity was the natural next step. But I thought his offer was weak.

With me as his girlfriend, he would get full access to me. He would sleep in my bed, lean on me for emotional support, show me off to his friends and enjoy my company at family gatherings. That would all be very nice, but it wouldn’t give me any assurance about the future, which was what I needed to feel safe. The offer I wanted included a proposal and being told I would forever be his one and only.

In his defense, you might ask, ‘How could he know so soon? He needs time to get to know you.’ That’s exactly my point. Why should I shut down all my options while someone “tests drives” me? I know many women don’t mind that risk — and often want the trial period with a potential partner themselves — I hold no judgment against them. But that path wasn’t for me. My past experience had taught me that once in the girlfriend zone, I started to hope the relationship would lead to marriage. And every time it didn’t, I got my heart broken.