|
for the folk who imagine it is beneficience alone that motivates american food export policies, you really should make an effort to connect it to the effects of imf structural adjustment policies for example:
american exports of food too often undercut the ability of poorer countries to develop anything like a self-sustaining agricultural infrastructure.
the main reason for this is that american agricultural subsidies amount to dumping.
when you combine this with neoliberal "free trade" ideology enforced by the imf as conditions for loans prevents these countries from using tarrifs as ways to protect local agriculture from their markets being flooded with cheaper, often much less beneficial, american products.
and much of what the americans export is shitty quality. in the example of jamaica, american powdered milk imports have nearly crushed the jamaican dairy industry. and it is not at all obvious that powdered milk offers any nutritional advantage, is it?
the policy of exporting food, then IS NOT simply a nice act by nice people.
you cannot view food exports in isolation.
if people particularly from poorer countries veiw american food policies as a weapon in a kind of economic warfare, it would follow that displays on the order of the huge burrito could be taken as an affront.
on its own, the huge burrito is not scandalous, not interesting: it is just fucking stupid.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|