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1 . An Almond Affair by Mallory Ferland^

Almond. Amande. Almendra. Or perhaps just amore? Chocolate is everyone’s favorite sweet treat, the lifeblood of indulgence tinged with sexuality. But there is another confectionery mirth out there –– marzipan. There is something dangerous in the slightly bitter taste of marzipan, a tingling feeling of doing something one ought not to do. Yet the urge to curl into a mischievous smile is unabashedly compulsory. I am not suggesting that Eve’s fruit was secretly sculpted out of brightly painted Niederegger like so many are, but merely that there are other, dare I say “dangerous” delicacies aside from the wearied cocoa bean.

The amoretto for amaretto. The Italian amare fittingly means “bitter,” for raw almonds and drupe seeds are exceedingly bland. While today amaretto liqueurs are assumed to be predominantly made directly from almonds, traditional amaretto is derived from a variety of drupes –– the hard pits of such fruits as peaches, dates, apricots and any other fruit or nut in which there is an outer hard husk, or inner stone surrounded by flesh.¹ Charming. Drupes exude an “almondy” flavor which causes the sharpest among us to assume amaretto is almond. This is an honest mistake. Amaretto is as diverse a substance as wine. Where the quality and region of grape and barrel wood used dictates the flavor of the wine, so too do the variations of drupe stones and sweeteners act in creating distinct liqueurs. Disaronno, the choice amaretto for many world wide, originated in Saranno, Italy, where legend has it the liqueur as well as the biscotti, amaretti, originated: di (of) Saronno. The Disaronno Originale brand liqueur claims the original title of first amaretto, a fusion mainly of apricot drupe and almond flesh; however, the claim is challenged by rival liqueur brand Lazzaro Amaretto di Saronno, whose recipe differs by an actual infusion of amaretti with the liqueur.² Lazzaro Amaretto di Saronno also manufactures a brand of macaroons, just to keep pace with the almond theme. Amaretto, bitter or not, provides a flavor unmatched; whether one would go as far as the awkwardly embarrassing television advertisements of Disaronno’s “warm and sensual flavor” I leave purely to personal discretion. Amaretto is in essence the liquid form of marzipan, though alcoholic.

Traditional marzipan is flavored by rosewater. However, many variations in sweetening and flavors have augmented marzipan around the world with such ingredients as honey and other nuts. Like amaretto, marzipan can be created with various drupe stones such as those from apricots and peaches, creating distinct fruity-yet-almondy variations known as Persipan. Pure marzipan of unrivaled quality is undoubtedly that produced in Finland and Sweden, where law requires at least a 50% almond ratio. The best, however, comes from the European marzipan capital of Lübeck, Germany, where Niederegger is produced with a promising “2/3 almond ratio by weight.”³ The quality variation is similar to that of milk versus dark chocolate. Which would you choose? That’s what I thought. Marzipan, a word derived from the original English, marchpane (march bread) originated, like so many others, in Asia, making its way to Europe, particularly the Baltic states, as a privileged snack for royalty.³ Now you see the attraction.

 Bitterness is the signature: bitter and sweet, the classic “little bitter love.”² Disaronno’s eye rolling dare to “pass the pleasure around” suddenly makes sense eh? The linguistic similarity between the Italian words for bitterness and love may or may not be responsible for the association in bittersweet. In my opinion there is no need for a linguistic explanation –– almond amaretto in paste or liquid form exudes the taste of longing all by itself. Next time choose the marzipan and leave the chocolate. Arrivederci.

End Notes
1 http­­nique.org
2 http://www.disaronno.com
3 http://www.niederegger.com

2 . Beans on Toast by Emma Mincks^

It is 8:50 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I wake up in the same small purple room, surrounded by 100-year-old furniture and dimly lit flecks of dust floating in the muted sunlight. Should I get up? There are many reasons why I should, and I run them through my head as I lay here. This is the list:

1. Saturday means no school, which means fun.

2. I’m in London, which also means fun.

3. Being in London also means that no time should be wasted in bed.

4. The last glaring reason to wake up, the one that finally motivates movement: HUNGER.

I rise from my comfortable nest to pull back the lime-green curtains and stare out the window. Reluctantly repeating my list, I dress as slowly and quietly as possible, waiting for something to happen that will stop me. The most dreadful fate is awaiting me downstairs.

English Breakfast. Boiled tomatoes, runny eggs, “bacon” (or some form of greasy floppy pig byproduct), and beans on toast. Baked beans on toast. The same baked beans that your Aunt Jean brought to the Fourth of July picnic. On toast. For breakfast.

Eventually I will have to face my fears. I know this. Probably in about two minutes according to my stomach. But for now the thought of baked beans for breakfast is just too much to bear, so in my purple room I stay.

3 . Comfort Food in Zambia by Michaela Graham^

There are those who say that money makes the world go ‘round, but I beg to differ. In my experience, it is food. As a student in Zambia this summer, I lived in a town where the most common occupation was subsistence farming. Food was the thing that made Zambezi, Zambia go, and food was the thing that opened my eyes to the disparity between the wealth of the United States and the poverty of this remote Southern African town.

While our group had relatively unlimited funds to spend in Zambezi, we found that even money could not provide us with the kind of diet we felt we “needed,” and we eventually found ourselves on the verge of a kind of starvation. I am not saying that we didn’t eat, and I don’t mean to make light of the experiences of people who go without food on a regular basis — but I would argue that there are different kinds of starvation. Let us take a step back and see some psychological background on starvation:

During WWII, a group of conscientious objectors were systematically starved to see how they would behave under different levels of food deprivation. The finding was that subjects began to act towards food in much the way a teenager might behave towards an object of sexual desire. They began hanging pictures of food on the walls and obsessing about food in general.  

In Zambia this summer thirteen Gonzaga students arrived in a remote village whose diet consisted of the staples of white bread (more of a delicacy for the locals), white rice and nshima. I will take a moment to describe nshima, for it is a food unlike anything I’ve tried in the United States, and I am still amazed that anyone can eat a full helping. It is made from ground maize and could be described as a dense goo. It reminded me of disgustingly dry oatmeal, only finer, and if you didn’t eat it in the first ten minutes, it would become rock-hard.

It was this nshima that gave me my first jolt of awareness of the difference between American and Zambian life. While we could barely finish half a serving of nshima, the locals would eat three servings at their one daily meal. On top of this difference in the amount of food eaten, we learned from the local equivalent of a social worker that there stood a tremendous difference between the quality of the food we ate and that of the food eaten by most locals. She spoke of caring for HIV/AIDS patients in the local area and told us that the biggest challenge facing those infected with the virus was proper nutrition. She said it was a struggle for those infected to afford food that would provide more nutrition than just nshima. Among the foods she suggested they could splurge on was a vegetable called rape. By the second day we had dismissed this higher-end vegetable as not very good and essentially stopped eating it, despite its presence at nearly every meal. The most dramatic difference of all between our diets was that a majority of the locals would only eat meat once or twice a year, but during our three weeks in this region we had eaten four chicken meals and many more beef dishes.

As our time in Zambezi grew short, we became more dissatisfied with the diet. It was not a matter of not having enough food but almost a matter of having too much. Looking back, I think it was that we had almost unlimited amounts of food but not much variety in the food available.

It became apparent that we had really only experienced three or four flavors during the entire stay. Granted, there were some other flavors, but those are ones we would probably choose not to recall. Nearly every evening, at some point, there would be a group of us in the living room discussing what our first meal would be when we returned home. We had originally placed a moratorium on any discussion of food, but it was not generally heeded. Once the moratorium was officially lifted on the week of our return home, we passed around the cooking magazines that we had brought with us from the States. These two publications became prized possessions. We took turns copying down recipes, and even though I can’t cook, I felt my ability increasing with each recipe I copied.

What I missed most from home was dairy products and just the processed nature of American cheese. I emailed home as soon as I could to ask my father to bring me a Tupperware full of Velveeta Shells and Cheese (the best amalgamation of dairy and processed food) to the airport. On my first night back at home, after a month in the heart of Africa, on the other side of the world, despite my malaria-like symptoms, I spent the last waking hours of the evening reading recipes to my father over a steaming bowl of shells and cheese.

And yet, every bite of my delicious return meal was tainted with the stark contrast between what we had been eating mere days before. What I consider to be the basic staples of my American diet (apples, milk, goldfish crackers and chocolate) were delicacies that the average person in Zambezi would consider it lucky to obtain. The gracious and optimistic spirit of the people in Zambia would lead you to believe that they are financially thriving and suffering no particularly great need. But it was our failed attempt at eating like the locals that truly opened my eyes to the contrast that exists between the life of a Zambian and an American. After all, what do all people need? Everyone needs air, water and food.

End Notes
1 Kalm, Leah M., and Richard D. Semba. “They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment.” The Journal of Nutrition (2005). 3 Sept. 2007 <http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/135/6/1347>.

4 . McGlobalization by Chris Heinrich^

Culture is a tricky thing to define. Like art, it is something that we participate in daily without thought, but if pushed to explain exactly what it is, we will more than likely find ourselves reduced to the level of Euthyphro, miserably failing to describe it because we do not wholly understand it ourselves.

Yet we still know that it exists and that different groups of people express it differently. For many of us, this difference is enticing. Perhaps we have grown bored with what has surrounded us since childhood and want to experience something new. Maybe we find this otherness intimidating and want to make it a little more comprehensible. It is even possible that we are trying to open new markets for our company and need to know what makes these alien people tick. Through explorations of and into religion, language, arts and etiquette, we better understand foreign cultures and the people themselves.

In the United States especially this understanding comes through the sharing of food. America’s history of immigration has created a landscape in which ethnic restaurants are not merely prevalent in their native neighborhoods but also popular among the general population. Taco Bell and Sbarro, with their loose associations with foreign nations, are national chains. Even my hometown of 1,400 is able to support a Chinese buffet despite probably having fewer than 50 citizens who can claim an ancestry that is not purely Western European.

But here we find a problem. For those of us who frequent ethnic restaurants for the culture, not merely a good meal, there still seems to be an uneasiness. Despite the authenticity we may find in our local ethnic restaurant, a suspicion that our dishes have been altered in some way, made more palatable to the American tongue, remains. Maybe a particularly exotic spice was replaced by one more familiar, or we were offered forks and spoons though few from the originating country use them. Should this be the case, no complete discovery of foreign culture can occur.

If it is our good fortune to have the means and resources to travel abroad, we find ourselves desiring the “real” stuff, what the locals enjoy in their own restaurants and kitchens, to rectify this situation. No more Chop Suey or hard-shell tacos for us. We want real spring rolls packed with ingredients grown only in China. Real tacos with strips of flank steak and peppers and cilantro. We want to know what these people really eat and understand them all the better when we partake of the same.

This is a misguided direction on the path of cultural discovery. The cultures that gave birth to these national dishes have moved on. Heavy manual labor formerly was the rule, and a certain type of diet was required to sustain it. That is hardly the case any longer, and improving international transportation networks have made accessible almost every imaginable ingredient, no longer limiting cooks to those products they could find in the area. Accordingly, “traditional” diets have changed.

Perhaps we must now look to McDonald’s as the modern source of culinary cultural identity and not just in the United States, its birth nation.

More than anything else today, the propelling force behind the phenomenon of changing cultures is globalization. As lines of communication open up between the people of different continents and nations and transportation becomes ever more convenient, new ideas and syntheses are constantly pushing old thought to the fringe. Not only can you no longer look back centuries to understand a modern culture, but also you can hardly expect the present culture to be the same as that of 10 years ago. Neither is McDonald’s stagnant. Constantly McDonald’s struggles to stay at the forefront of changing culture, modifying its menu options to match changing tastes and diet trends.

More importantly for students of culture though, McDonald’s offerings also reveal what is central and integral to a cultural identity, not merely what might be a passing fad. Globalization is hardly a movement with the whole-hearted support of every citizen, and many criticisms can be applied to McDonald’s as well. Cultural homogeneity stands high among them. As McDonald’s further establishes its place in the world and pushes local restaurants out, it makes the foreign a little less so. No matter if one hails from the American heartland and becomes dazed and confused in the streets of Singapore, McDonald’s will still be a familiar place. One can still get a cheeseburger and fries in a minimal amount of time.

But this myth of complete standardization is not wholly true. Despite its size and clout, McDonald’s does play ball with its customers. It does not simply drop a restaurant in Greece and imagine that the appeal of Americana will cause people to fight for their low-quality-but-quickly-served food. Menus cater to local taste and those traditions which will not break. If a particular item is of such popularity to the locals and potential customers, McDonald’s will offer it, unwilling to miss out on the market share. In Germany, one can order a beer alongside their Big Mac. Shrimp burgers and nuggets are available in Japan. To conform with the codes of major national religions, Israeli McDonald’s restaurants offer kosher items and McDonald’s in countries with a Muslim majority prepare their meat in accordance with halal. Even in the United States, in the very Pacific Northwest where we now study, we can see this at work when posters advertising the presence of Seattle’s Best Coffee are seen in the windows of nearby McDonald’s. I certainly do not remember any of that in Minnesota.

I do not mean to dismiss the importance of those foods that deserve the name of national dishes. Bread was deemed to be of such importance to French national identity that the government restricted the use of the name of boulangerie only to those businesses which fulfill specific conditions. Much can still be discovered through forays into these culinary delights, but the value of McDonald’s to cultural identity is not to be dismissed so quickly either.

Globalization has and continues to change the world, and food is part of the swell. Still, the fears of mass standardization and conformity to some single ideal have not been wholly realized, even within a leader in globalization. And that is where we find both the modern and classic cultural identities, where the international business must stoop to meet those local concerns so strongly held that they cannot be ignored.

5 . The Big McYak Attack by K@ Brauer^

The bus was hot, humid, smelly and cramped. For fifteen hours, over bumpy roads and terrifying turns, three of my friends and I struggled to rest in a shock-less vehicle. For sustenance we had a variety of sticky sweets, some potato chips (which tasted like teriyaki sauce) and water. In the first nine hours the driver stopped once for food and twice for bathroom breaks. By a large margin it was the most exhausting and disgusting trip I took during my entire time in China.

So it was with anticipation that we saw the tiny village of Langmusi appear on the horizon. After hours of uncomfortable waiting, we had arrived in a town that housed two of the largest Tibetan monasteries outside of Tibet. However, our cramped and angry bodies, usually so interested in cultural affairs, language and the sounds of Tibetan sutras, cared for only one thing: food.

We’d been looking forward to the village’s famed backpacker fare ever since we got on the bus in Xi’an. Langmusi is a backpacker’s town with one meat staple: Yak. The yak is a fuzzy cow, a cuter kind of cow, an equally dumb cow; the source of yak butter (used in almost all meals and as candles in monasteries), yak milk and yak meat. I’d never eaten yak before, though I had attempted to consume its dairy products with no success. So, despite the incredibly pissed-off rumblings in my stomach, I exited the bus with slight trepidation.

We quickly found this culinary Mecca: the Big McYak Attack. Two pounds of sautéed yak and one pound of various vegetables, all smashed between two huge “buns” larger than a person’s face. We ordered the feast without a moment’s hesitation plus a healthy amount of beer with which to wash it down. When the meal arrived it was glorious. The meat, similar to beef but with a different twang, was tangy, spicy, moist and filling. The vegetables, zucchini, carrots and mysterious Chinese onions were still slightly crunchy yet moist with the aroma of yak. The bread was heavy and salty, and the beer was cheap and plentiful. For less than three dollars, we gorged ourselves on this delicious meal until our stomachs were fit to burst and few remains littered our plates.

It was only afterwards, as our stomachs and bowels protested the huge meal (likely cooked in unsanitary conditions), that we realized the irony of the situation. We’d journeyed off the beaten track to a veritable paradise of culture only to follow our noses to the largest plate of meat we could find. A meal that would more adequately be named the Gigantic-If-You-Finish-It-You-Might-Die McYak Attack. The name, equally ridiculous, showed the impact the trickle of backpackers had already had on the town. Western food was more plentiful than Eastern in this village, though more expensive, and the most famous food of all was a spin-off of McDonald’s. It spoke to the universal impact, both good and bad, of McWorld globalization. The money we spent would be reused to improve the people’s quality of life, sanitation systems and education. But we also spent it in a way that would slowly ruin the unique and haunting society of Tibet. As China seeks to sinicize Tibet proper, it is slightly disturbing to realize that a simple quest for a good meal after a long ride might help accelerate that process. While it may be delicious to begin with, the consequences often outweigh the benefits.

6 . Slaves to Chocolate by Rebecca Schwartz^

Thoreau said, “I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women and children like cattle.”¹ This view is a cornerstone of the Western world. Slavery is considered one of the deepest violations to human liberty. Every recognized country in the world has laws against slavery. Today, the very idea of buying and selling the life of a human is repugnant to people in the United States. To the average person in the United States, slavery, in common practice in modern times, is something only found in story books. Yet people of this country both support and profit from this loathsome act everyday. Most of the world’s chocolate supply comes from an area in Africa that uses slave labor to harvest and make the cocoa, the raw material that goes into chocolate.²

The average American eats five kilos of chocolate a year. Chocolate is an everyday substance to us. In preparation for this paper, I went to my local supermarket and counted the number of places that one could get a regular Hershey’s chocolate bar. There were a total 47 places in one average size supermarket that a person could pick up and buy (three for $1) chocolate bars –– that is how common they are in our society. People eat chocolate without ever knowing the suffering that goes into making even a single bar. Because chocolate is so common, people do not consider where it comes from; it has just always been there. This paper will explore the real ethical implications of a Hershey’s bar. First, I will explain where chocolate really comes from and how it is made. Then the paper will examine the common practice of slavery among farmers. Next, this paper will focus on the actual business practices of the Hershey Company and see what ethical choice people silently condone in their support of the company when they purchase Hershey products. Finally, it will delve into what traditional ethical theories would say about such practices. My theory is that, given the clearly unethical aspects of chocolate production at Hershey, everyone who purchases a Hershey’s bar participates in an unethical act.

Slavery

Carol Off, the award winning author of Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet, points out that three times in recent history there have been products closely associated with slavery: cotton, sugar and chocolate.³ The life of a slave begins the same as anyone’s, in that they are born. However, that is where the similarities end. The slavery problem has grown to such proportions in the chocolate industry that in 2001 a British news groups reported that 90 percent of cocoa coming out of the Ivory Coast was produced with slave labor.⁴ Many children there experience some of the worst things humanity can imagine and are then sold into slavery. For example, many of these slaves are from the southernmost region of Mali, called Sikasso. While this region has a relatively strong economy and very good agricultural work, it also has a huge populace of refugees, fleeing from the violence of other neighboring countries. Often, traffickers come into Mali to kidnap or lure young boys away to be sold into slavery. The same can be said for children from Togo, Cameroon and Benin.⁵

 However, not all the children are stolen from their home countries. Most go willingly at first. Once they are of age, they leave home looking for work to help support their families, never knowing they will end up as slave labor or sold into prostitution. One boy told how he was promised $150 and a bike once they reached the farm, only to be left there to work for nothing or be killed by the farm owner. On average, the boys are usually between the ages of 12 and 16, but it is not uncommon to see children as young as nine being sold, with the price of a slave ranging from $30-$50. Americans on average spend more money on chocolate a month than what these boys’ lives are worth as slaves.⁶

The treatment of these slaves is almost inconceivable to those in the West. Just their working conditions are frightening; they “use machetes to cut the cacao pods from high branches, and applying pesticides without protective equipment.”² The animals kept on the farms are usually treated better than the slaves. A group of 20 boys might sleep in a hut that is only ten by ten feet. The children are given barely enough food and water to live. Beatings are an everyday occurrence. In 2001, BBC produced a report called “Mali’s Children in Chocolate Slavery,” in which several young boys recounted their experiences as slaves in the cocoa fields. They would be loaded down like pack mules, carrying immense loads of cocoa. If they fell, no one else was allowed to help them, and they were beaten until they got back up. They were beaten every day and had terrible scars covering their backs as proof. Different sources listed many different reasons for beatings, from asking for food, to trying to contact their families, to trying to escape. Children often die not only from the beatings, but from exposure and starvation. It is also sad to realize that most of these children have never eaten the product that they bleed and die for. In a subsequent interview, a reporter asked a group of children if they realized that most people did not know the lengths they suffered. The children were surprised. One child was quoted as saying, “If I had to say something to them it would not be nice words. They buy something that I suffer to make. Let them know they are eating my flesh.”⁴ These children work 80-100 hours a week, and it takes them two to three days to harvest enough cocoa for a single bar of chocolate.⁷

In 2002, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture estimated that there were approximately 286,000 children being used for forced labor in western Africa. In different reports from 2001 and 2006, the number of estimated slave labor children in the cocoa industry of the Ivory Coast went from 12,000 to 20,000. These numbers do not reflect the mass quantities of children who simply disappear from the surrounding areas every year. These children are most likely sold into other forms of slavery, such as prostitution. However, the 20,000 in the cocoa industry is simply an estimate. It is a number that is impossible to accurately predict, and with the high mortality rates of the slaves and the higher demand for the product, it increases every year.⁸

The Hershey Company

When I first decided to research the problem of slavery in connection with the Hershey company, I wrote to them, simply explaining that I was a university student, I was writing a paper on chocolate, and could they please tell me about the growing of cocoa beans and the making of chocolate. I received a very polite response within just a few days, thanking me for my interest, and that all the pertinent information I could want was easily found on the Hershey company website. After thoroughly reading the website, I still had questions so I wrote again, this time with more specific questions about Hershey’s business practices in Africa. I was rather disappointed to receive the exact same message from Hershey yet again, telling me to read the website. It became clear that I would have to rely on the website for a large amount of information about Hershey. Sadly, Hershey might have been better off to speak with me, because I do not think their website portrays them in a very good light, given what this paper has already elucidated about slavery and the chocolate industry.⁹

In the main navigation table at the top of Hershey’s home page is a section called “Making a Difference.” The purpose of this section, I assume, is to highlight all the good work the company does for both the community and for the world. In this section Hershey highlights its involvement in children’s fitness, donations to local community projects and its work for diversity. It is also where they have an entire section called “Cocoa Farming” that flaunts all the great things the Hershey Company has done to improve the life of the everyday cocoa farmer and how they try to do their best to stop “forced work” in cocoa farms and encourage farmers to protect the environment.¹⁰

The first section under “Cocoa Farming” is “Improving Farmer’s Incomes.” Now, given that the company is the one that is ultimately paying for the farmers’ product, it seems obvious that they had some major control over the income of said farmer. However, they had a whole slew of other ways they were helping farmers make more money. Hershey claimed that up to 30 percent of the cocoa crop was lost each year due to a combination of “outdated farming practices and a lack of adequate rural support services.” The company’s solution to this was a “schools without walls” program. Paid for in part by the United States Agency for International Development (a government organization) and Hershey, this program teaches farmers more effective practices for both the growing of produce and the running of their farms.¹¹

On the surface, this might sound promising: Hershey donating money to help educate poor people in Africa so they can earn a better living. In actuality, because of the Hershey Company, the United States government spent huge amounts of money on a program to put impoverished people into an educational setting, and rather than teach them English or math, they teach them better farming techniques. This is a way for the Hershey company to put one of the basic laws of economics at their disposal ­­— the law of diminishing returns. It is a well known fact in economics that demand, supply and price are all related to one and other, and when one changes, the others do as well. Should a farmer supply more cocoa, the overall price will go down. However, given the overall inflation rates of prices of retail food products, like a chocolate bar, the price of the limited resource of cocoa should go up overtime as well. By teaching farmers how to produce more, Hershey may continue to buy cocoa at the same price, while their profits go up. Overall, the “schools without walls” venture allows Hershey a tax break for any donations to the program, government monies spent to teach farmers to better fill Hershey’s needs and higher profits for the Hershey Company.¹²

Yet it was the section, called “Responsible Labor Practices” that most closely related to the information I was seeking. Just over four hundred words long, this section dealt with what Hershey seemed to view as the biggest problem facing the small African family farm –– children working the farm rather than going to school. The short article begins with facts and figures about the importance of the cocoa industry to small family farms in Africa and the number of people whose “livelihood” depends upon the crop. According to Hershey, the “majority” of farmers grow and harvest cocoa “responsibly.” However, responsibility seems to entail allowing children to work in an unsafe environment. On cocoa farms, the article explained that many families have their own children working on the farm, which is a common practice in all “rural areas around the world.” It later explains that one of the goals is to teach farmers what work is “appropriate for children.” The article stresses that since 2001, “When the issue of child labor in cocoa growing first arose,” the company has worked to better educate the farmers. The issue of “child trafficking” was mentioned only once and “forced labor” and “slavery” were not discussed.¹³

Finally, there are two issues that confounded me about the Hershey Company more than any others, and they both relate to their buying practices. About 90 percent of the chocolate that comes out of the Ivory Coast is produced at least in part by slaves. One hundred percent of the chocolate that goes into a regular Hershey’s bar comes from the Ivory Coast, so it seems amazing that they can claim that “trafficking” of children is such a rare occurrence. The answer to this is rather ingenious. As Hershey says right on their website, there are over 600,000 small family farms in the Ivory Coast. However, Hershey does not buy cocoa from any of them; they buy it from a distributor. The distributor buys cocoa from the 10 percent of farms that do not use slave labor, as well as the 90 percent who do. This way, Hershey has plausible deniability, and can safely say “we buy from farms with ‘responsible labor practices,’” without also having to say that they additionally buy from farms that beat, starve and kill the child slave laborer.¹³

The other issue that surprised me stemmed from my own ignorance and assumptions about slavery. Growing up in the United States, I pictured the slavery problem in Africa looking similar to that of the old South, with plantation owners working their slaves. This assumption bares no resemblance to reality. Slaves are not kept as a cultural norm; they are kept out of necessity. The families that keep slaves are starving themselves, and it is only because they keep slaves that they are able to feed their families and meet even the most basic of needs. The “Big Chocolate” conglomerate (which is made up of The Hershey Company, Nestle, Cadbury Schweppes, and Mars Incorporated) has the power to control the economies. They keep the price of cocoa artificially low, to the point that growers can just get by, in order to optimize their profits. They make it a practice to pay unfair wages to the farmers. Because of the practices of companies like Hershey, the slave trade is becoming even more common.⁷

In addition, it is clear that Hershey knows that their practices are unethical, because they know how to improve the situation. In 2001 Hershey bought the company Dagoba, which makes organically grown, fair trade chocolate in a variety of flavors. The Dagoba website, which cannot be reached through Hershey’s website, explains the lengths the company goes through to make sure the cocoa used in their chocolate bars was grown in a sustainable manner. They pride themselves on “Working directly with producers…that receive equitable prices and maintain organic methods in harmony with the rainforest.” Obviously a very different story than the more hands-off practices of the regular Hershey chocolate company. It should be mentioned that with a small exception of cocoa coming from Madagascar, all the chocolate used in these bars comes from South America. None of it comes from Ivory Coast, or anywhere else in North Africa.¹⁴

Ethics and Chocolate

When I first decided to write this paper, I thought this section would be the easiest part of the paper. Applying an ethical theory to a hot button ethical problem such as slavery seemed simple until I tried to put it into practice. As a graduate student in philosophy, I have studied feminist or care ethics before. Taking into account this previous knowledge, as well as my bias against slavery, all I could think of to write was “care ethics does not support slavery.” The idea that any ethical theory would support slavery seemed unlikely. I almost decided to write this paper from a Utilitarian perspective just so I could try and make arguments for and against slavery. Ultimately, I thought it best to show why two common theories are totally against slavery, rather than show one that could be ambivalent about it. This section will cover how the ethical theories of Kantian ethics and Social Contract theory support the claim that slavery is an unethical choice, and should not be condoned.

The encyclopedia defines social contract theory as, “[b]elief that political structures and the legitimacy of the state derive from an (explicit or implicit) agreement by individual human beings to surrender (some or all of) their private rights in order to secure the protection and stability of an effective social organization or government.”¹⁵  Basically, this means the simple act of being a part of a culture or society means that you agree in some way to the rules and laws of that society. This affects this paper in two ways. The first is the influence this theory has on the issue of slavery. Second, and perhaps more alarmingly, is the influence the theory has on the issue of consumerism. According to the theory, by participating in an act we give some kind of consent to that act. Therefore, as a consumer who not only eats, but also buys slave produced chocolate, a level of agreement is reached between the supplier and the consumer so that, even though slave labor is used in the making of this product, our consumption of it indicates acceptance of that act. An argument could be made that the acceptance is only viable if the consumer knows that the product is made with slave labor. However, I would argue that simply being a part of a society that would allow for the exploitation of third world children is enough of an agreement to indicate the acceptance of the fact.

In regards to the slaves themselves, the theory must by its definition stand against slavery, for where slavery exists, there can be no contract. The theory hinges on the idea of agreement. Wherether explicit or implicit, there must be some sort of a meeting of the minds for an agreement to be reached. In a slave/master relationship such as this, there can be no agreement. The simple fact that the slaves try to escape indicates that they do not agree to the contract. Thus, given that no actual contract can be reached in this situation, social contract theory dictates that it is not an ethical situation.¹⁵

In spite of how clearly social contract theory disallows slavery, I think that the best ethical theory to denounce slavery would be Kantian ethics. Kant’s basic claim is found in the Categorical Imperative, which basically says, act only in such a way so that every maxim could be applied universally. Kant then took this basic rule and gave three versions to be better understood. The easiest explanation of his whole theory is the first version, which simply says, act only in a way that you would want to see universally acted. For example, if the decision is whether to steal a loaf of bread, contemplate the reasons for the theft, and if you think everyone with those reasons should steal the bread, then you also should steal it. We can see that this applies well to slavery, simply because it would be impossible for slavery to be universally applied. Slavery depends on a master/slave relationship, but if everyone was either a master, or everyone was a slave, then the disparity of the relationship would not exist. Thus universal application is impossible, and thus should not be used. More appropriately though, an individual should consider if it would be fair for them to be a slave, before using or having slaves themselves.¹⁶

It is the second version of the Categorical Imperative that best fits the question of slavery. This version states that one should always treat humanity as an end and never as a means. This is the very opposite regard for humanity than the practice of slavery endorses. Slaves, as described above, are used by their owners only as a means and never as an end. Their humanity is forgotten, and the very possibility that they could be an end is pushed aside. The practice of slavery flies in the face of exactly what Kantian ethics stand for: universal treatment of humanity. As such, it is clear that this ethical theory does not condone slavery –– it explicitly denounces it.¹⁶

 End Notes

1 Thoreau, Henry David. J. Lyndon Shanley, editor. Walden: Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 2004 p.201. First viewed on http://www.chocolatework.com/chocolate-slavery.htm.
2 Shabani, Nooshin. The Worldly: World Cultural Web Magazine. “Child Slavery on African Cocoa Farms.” May 2006. First viewed on July 22, 2007. Last viewed on August 9, 2007. http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2006/May06Articles/CocoaFarmSlevery.html.
3 Carol Off, Radio Interview. “Carol Off-Bitter Chocolate-bookbits.ca interview.” Uploaded to YouTube.com on January 7, 2007. First viewed on May 30, 2007.  Last viewed on August 7, 2007. http://youtube.com/watch?v=FfiriTS0tIA.
4 Slavery: A Global Investigation. Kate Blewett, Brian Woods. 2001.
5 “Chocolate and Slavery.” http://www.chocolatework.com/chocolate-slavery.htm. First viewed on July 24, 2007. Last viewed on August 6, 2007.
6 Chanthavong, Samlanchith. “Chocolate and Slavery: Child Labor in Cote d’Ivoire.” http://       www.american.edu/TED/chocolate-slave.htm. First viewed on July 22, 2007. Last viewed August 7, 2007.
7 Robbins, John. “Is There Slavery in Your Chocolate?” Earth Save: Healthy People, Healthy Planet. http://earthsave.org/newsletters/chocolate.htm.
8 “Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa.” August 2002. http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/IITACocoaResearch.pdf.
9 http://www.thehersheycompany.com/
10 http://www.thehersheycompany.com/making/
11 “Cocoa Farming: Improving Farmer’s Incomes.” http://www.thehersheycompany.com/making/cocoa-incomes.asp. First viewed on July 18, 2007. Last viewed on August 7, 2007.
12 Ibid.
13 “Ensuring Responsible Labor Practices.” http://www.thehersheycompany.com/making/cocoa-labor.asp. First viewed on July 18, 2007.  Last viewed on August 7, 2007.
14 “Sourcing Practices.” http://www.dagobachocolate.com/origins.html. First viewed on August 1, 2007. Last viewed on August 7, 2007.
15 “Social Contract Theory.” Philosophy Pages: Britannica http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/s7.htm. First viewed on August 5, 2007. Last viewed on August 8, 2007.
16 “Kant: The Moral Order.” Philosophy Pages: Britannica http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm#cimp.

7 . A Fair Trade by Dan Hess^

You walk into your local Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon. Although you are immediately hit with the wonderful aroma only coffee shops seem to have, your mind is on that pound of coffee you need to get through the coming week. Upon arriving at the counter, you see the Breakfast Blend and House Blend for $9.95, the French Roast for $10.95 and the Fair Trade Blend for $13.45, among others. Since you’re a college student, you really don’t feel you have many options in this situation (because not having coffee is really not an option). You buy the cheapest one, for it’ll do the job, right? You walk out, coffee in hand, self-assured and ready to face any challenges the next week will bring.

That same Sunday morning, thousands of miles away on a small family farm in Guatemala, a young coffee farmer is meeting with a middleman to sell his coffee crop. His farm is too small to attract the attention of the larger buyers, so he is hoping this man can help. He is offered $0.50 per pound, and having no real choice, he accepts. The total will be less than it cost him to produce the crop, but at the very least his family will have enough money for food for the next few months. It certainly won’t be enough money to last until the next crop is harvested, though. But that is a dilemma to be figured out at a later time. Today was a good day; he sold his coffee.

While the first story is tangible and is something to which we can all relate, the second story is every bit as real. In many ways, it’s more real than any of us can imagine. All across the world, coffee farmers are being pushed out of business because they simply cannot afford to compete in modern international markets. Is this a response to the growing number of coffee plantations? Perhaps. Is this the result of the free market system? Maybe. Is this the inevitable result of our capitalistic society? Possibly. Is this fair? Absolutely not.

To give some background, coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world behind oil. In 2005, the United States alone imported over three billion pounds of coffee.  In September 2001, the average price of a pound of coffee was $0.41 per pound on the New York “C” market (the global standard), and as recently as September 2005, it was only $0.79 per pound. The most recent price, from this past September, was $1.13 per pound.  When considering the amount of coffee being imported, and the prices at which it is bought, it is easy to see why many small farms resort to selling to whomever is willing to buy.

One of the reasons prices are so low can be traced back to large-scale coffee plantations, but at the same time these plantations can produce enormous amounts of coffee, they have many large drawbacks as well. There are little to no regulations on labor standards and pay. When you walk out of a coffee shop and take a sip of the drink you just bought, do you know the circumstances under which the beans were grown and sold? What if you could know? And know for certain? What if there was a way to ensure the coffee you are enjoying was bought and sold on fair terms? A guarantee that that coffee had been grown with fair labor practices? Would it make a difference in the kind of coffee you buy?

The Fair Trade movement itself began in the late 1940s, but the idea of Fair Trade Certification was not proposed until 1988 in the Netherlands. Even then, it wasn’t until 1998 that a Fair Trade certification organization began in the United States, TransFair USA. TransFair USA is just one part of the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO), which is an international Non-Governmental Organization, headquartered in Germany and made up of Fair Trade groups from Japan, Canada, the United States and 17 European countries.

Fair Trade Certification means not just a fair price but much, much more. Fair Trade Certification not only includes a guaranteed minimum floor price for products (as well as an additional premium for certified organic crops), but it also guarantees that fair labor conditions were used in the production of the goods. In addition, Fair Trade Certification guarantees the crops were purchased as directly as possible, eliminating middlemen. Fair Trade products are also grown through environmentally sustainable ways, as harmful chemicals are prohibited, protecting the farmers’ health and ensuring the land is productive for many years to come.

As of the writing of this paper, the total price for Fair Trade coffee is $1.31 per pound. This includes an additional social premium of $0.10 per pound (Certified Organic Coffee, including the premium, is sold for $1.51 per pound).  That is $0.18 per pound more than the New York “C” market, guaranteed, and the price does not fluctuate. The social premium mentioned is unique to the Fair Trade system. The farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to invest it in their community, with projects ranging from infrastructure improvements to health initiatives and scholarships.  In just seven years, from 1999 to 2006, TransFair USA alone generated $75 million of additional income for farmers, with over $6.5 million in social premiums as well.  Fair Trade makes real differences in real lives.

The next time you walk into a coffee shop, as you decide which coffee blend to buy, think about the choice you’re making. Worldwide, consumers spent a record $2.21 billion on Fair Trade Certified products in 2006 (a 41 percent increase from 2005), directly affecting more than 1.4 million producers and workers globally.  Imagine the difference you can make in someone’s life just by spending a couple extra dollars. Companies will switch to Fair Trade standards only if the demand is there. Those who choose to buy Fair Trade Certified products are making real differences in real people’s lives.

Will you be one of them?

8 . Tricks are for Kids by Ann Foreyt^

It is no radical claim to say that America has become a society in which consumerism is key: we define ourselves, or allow ourselves to be defined, at least in part by the products that we buy, the stores we frequent, and the brands to which we show our monetary allegiance. It is one thing for adults, who are legally considered to possess the psychological maturity necessary to engage in the world in an actively critical manner, to be bombarded with advertisements that attempt to influence them. At the same time that adults are swept up in the enthusiasm generated by advertisements, there is also the recognition that if one stops and thinks about it, no matter how much X product seems like the answer to some existential problem, it probably is not. Bob Garfield puts this quite succinctly (if flippantly), in a column in Brandweek: “sledding is fun. The Hokey-Pokey is arguably fun. Under the right conditions, Dilaudid is totally fun. Cola is a drink.”¹ We may occasionally feel a bit cheated by the false promises of ads, or be misled by some statement or implication within them, but given a bit of time to think about the messages being transmitted, most individuals with even a basic understanding of critical thinking would likely be able to figure out that there was something disingenuous about the corporate schill in question.

The issue becomes slightly more nebulous when children are the focus of an advertising campaign, or even when they get caught in the crossfire of a more adult-oriented one. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “research has shown that young children –– younger than 8 years –– are cognitively and psychologically defenseless against advertising. They do not understand the notion of intent to sell and frequently accept advertising claims at face value.”² Thus, the medical and sociological statistics point toward a Rubicon of rationality that becomes apparent somewhere around ages eight or nine. Before that, kids may be able to respond to ads, and they do, but the majority are unable to make the distinction between that which may be a ploy to get them to nag their parents to buy something and the legitimate programming that appears before and after it.

Is it necessary to be psychologically capable of turning a discerning eye upon advertisements? Is there an ethical problem in the scheme of “getting them while they’re young” rather than “when they’ve matured and built psychological barriers” against seductive marketing campaigns?³ From a Kantian perspective, the answer would have to be that this sort of advertising is indeed unethical. The second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative compels one to “treat humanity…never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”⁴ To view children as future consumers, being prepped today for economic returns tomorrow, seems like a blatant use of this demographic as means with no thought as to their status as ends. Focusing on children does much for the corporations who are reaping the benefits of spending “about $1 billion annually to pitch food and beverage products to children,”⁵ due to the resultant “$20 billion they [tweens – kids between the ages of 6-14] spend each year and the additional $200 billion in sales they influence.”⁶ However, such attention seems to do little, if anything, for the children themselves.

Children, who may not be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, commercials and educational programming, have no real recourse to fight back and regain their own status as ends, rather than present and future means. Corporations who use advertising techniques may, as it were, be taking candy from babies by convincing them that they need said bon-bons. While Kant’s imperative is, as its title informs, categorical in its denunciation of the use of other rational beings as means, one could argue that in the case of adults, there is a tacit agreement between advertiser and buyer that allows for the former’s attempted persuasion of the latter. I am confident that if I reflected briefly upon my motivations for, say, buying a particular brand of soda, I would probably find that I had been provoked to such a decision by influences external to taste, price or health benefits; if I chose, I could ignore those corporate messages and choose based on my own information or desires. Yet I can also purposefully delude myself into thinking that Coke will indeed allow me to have Dilaudid-esque fun, just like in the ads –– it is quite clearly my choice whether or not to support the companies filling my head with catchy jingles and flashy images. This may be a perversion of the logic, but it is a conceivable way in which a viewer could both keep his or her rational autonomy and engage in a modern world that is saturated with advertisements. With children, especially those young enough to be incapable of such higher-level thinking, there is no such loophole: kids are manipulated without recourse, to the point where John F. Kavanaugh writes that “it is appropriate that some marketers call this phenomenon ‘branding,’ for it permanently marks and possibly even scars the little consumers’ view of themselves and their world.”⁶

The disparity between the money that is made from children’s susceptibility to advertisementing and the costs that are incurred by the “soft-headed, non-discerning neophytes” themselves is nowhere more obvious than in the marketing of food, specifically that of junk food.⁷ According to Bakan, “there are no limits to what marketers will do to get children to crave junk food,” which results, either directly through the children buying the snacks themselves, or indirectly via the nag-factor (a kid asking their parent for some specific item), in higher revenues for the company promoting such behavior. Such a cycle has been blamed for “the soaring increase in obesity and type II diabetes among children” which has been “plausibly linked to the ‘toxic environment’ created in large part by the food industry.”⁸ While blaming everything that’s wrong with the health habits of today’s children on the marketing success of fast food and junk food may be overly simplistic, I think that a connection can still be clearly demonstrated. More importantly, it is a connection that can be hinged entirely upon the actions perpetrated by one faction: the marketers.

While parents do have some semblance of control over their children’s eating habits, given that they are the primary providers of the foodstuffs that their children have access to, researchers would like to demonstrate that an integral part of advertising to children is to subvert that primacy. It may be true that by and large most parents are able to lay out general rules for healthy food habits, but they are not infallible, especially when advertisers are actively working against them through their children. According to one such commentator,

marketers... work hard to design campaigns that encourage children to nag their parents to buy junk food and to take them to fast-food restaurants. It is more difficult for a parent to say ‘no’ to a child when the child had been urged by advertisers to question the parent’s authority over food and is persuaded that he or she needs the advertised product. Under these conditions, the result of saying ‘no’ is often petulance, sulking, acting out, and family conflict –– which is why so many parents are prone to just put the kids in the car and drive to McDonald’s.⁹

Even the best parents are bound to succumb to the nag-factor at some point and even though using junk food as a treat is not necessarily a bad thing, the impetus that creates the desire for it can be seen to be quite suspect. To be blunt about it, it could be construed that advertisers use children’s lack of rationality or ability to think critically about the media to which they are exposed against both them and their parents. Here, again, people are being used as means, not ends, and in an interestingly serial fashion at that. The children are being used for their malleability and for their emotional sway with their parents; meanwhile the parents are being used for their pocketbooks, due to their attachment to their (pre-rational) kids.

Corporations who advertise to children do so with manipulative intent. The manipulation can be quite clearly construed as the (ab)use of this demographic for their spending power alone, given that psychologically, they have no recourse to combat the messages being aimed at them. Thus, the advertising that is focused upon them is not directed at helping children or aiding them in becoming better human beings, but rather it is using them as a means to increase revenue. If apples and bananas and fiber were being advertised with theme-songs and “cool” cartoon characters, this would be a slightly different argument, but it has been proven time and time again that the largest portion of children’s advertising is for fast-food, highly processed foods and other products “in the fats, oils and sweets category of the United States Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid.”¹⁰ One study found that of the commercials run during Saturday morning cartoon programming, “among nearly 1400 food ads studied between 1972 and 1996, there were no commercials advertising fruits and vegetables with the exception of a few Public Service Announcements.”¹⁰ If food companies began to advertise patently healthy foods, Kantian ethics might have a little bit more of a problem discerning whether children were, in this hypothetical case, being used merely as means or also as ends. However, this is, as of the current time, not the case, and the focus upon “moving product” and economic gain, at the expense (both literal and figurative) of children is an affront to Kant’s Categorical Imperative that demands that every rational being be treated as an end in and of themselves.

Kids are being manipulated for the economic gain of big business. Given that most of the foods being advertised to children are unhealthy or unnecessary as integral parts of a nutritionally balanced diet, advertising techniques are recognizably harmful. Due to the fact that kids tend to grow up with the passing years and learn how to think more critically about the information to which they are being subject, this damage may not be permanent, but such transitoriness does not excuse the behavior of marketers, as there will always be another generation of “non-discerning neophytes” waiting to be wide-eyed consumers of every new, flashy, branded product they are told they need.

Let the nagging begin.

End Notes
1 Garfield, Bob. “Happiness: Coke Zero Keeps Grins to Minimum.” Advertising Age. Vol. 76 Issue 28. July 11, 2005. p. 37.
2 “Children, Adolescents, and Advertising.” American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement.  PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 6 December 2006, pp. 2563-256. http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;118/6/2563. Accessed August 3, 2007.
3 Grimm, Matthew. “Is Marketing to Kids Ethical?” Brandweek. Vol. 45, Issue 14. April 5, 2004. p. 47.
4 O’Neill, Onora. “Kantian Ethics.” The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online. http://www.rep.routledge.com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu:2048/article/L042SECT1. Accessed August 5, 2007.
4 Howard, Theresa. “Major Brands to Revamp Ads Aimed at Kids.” USA Today. July, 18, 2007.
5 Schor, Juliet B., Margaret Ford. “From Tastes Great to Cool: Children’s Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic.” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Vol. 35, Issue 1. Boston: Spring 2007.
6 Kavanaugh, John F. “Consuming Children.” America. Vol. 189, Issue 13. October 27, 2003. p. 6.
7 Grimm, Matthew. “Is Marketing to Kids Ethical?” Brandweek. Vol. 45, Issue 14. April 5, 2004. p. 44.
8 Bakan, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free Press, 2004. Quoting The Lancet. p. 124.
9 Bakan, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free Press, 2004. p. 125.
10 Schor, Juliet B., Margaret Ford. “From Tastes Great to Cool: Children’s Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic.” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Vol. 35, Issue 1. Boston: Spring 2007. p. 12.

9 . Vertical Farming by Aaron Brown^

One of the serious problems facing the modern world is how to feed the ever-growing global population, which, as of September 2007, was estimated at about 6.6 billion.¹  This is an especially interesting question given the fact that this global population is an increasingly urbanized one, with about 50 percent of the people in the world living in large urban centers.² This urbanization makes it increasingly difficult to get sufficient quantities of food to the populations that need it most. In addition, the extra resource cost in transporting the food from rural areas to urban centers puts a great deal of strain on infrastructure and the environment. This is especially problematic in areas of the non-industrialized and impoverished world, where transportation infrastructure is usually poor and transportation resources can be quite costly. The additional pollution caused by the extra manufacturing and transportation overhead required to get these food supplies to urban areas is also extremely detrimental to air and water quality and greatly contributes to global greenhouse effects.

The picture, then, for an urbanized world fed by a shrinking rural segment of the population looks fairly grim. To put it bluntly the food production model that has supported urban populations since the inception of modern urban life is not sustainable for the 21st century. This is especially evident in light of the fact that, for the first time since mankind became an agrarian species (a little over 10,000 years ago), the agricultural sector is no longer the largest area of human occupation, having been usurped sometime between 1996 and 2006 by the service sector.^{3 4}

Fortunately, there is a great deal of work being done trying to find new agricultural models that will allow for the feeding of an increasingly urbanized population. One of the most promising of these initiatives is the Vertical Farm Project. This model for addressing the problem of feeding an urbanized culture is based on a very simple premise: if ever-increasing numbers of people are living in cities, then society should find a way to grow large amounts of food in a metropolitan environment. In short, the Vertical Farm initiative is an attempt to use advanced hydroponic technologies to grow food inside urban structures.⁵

By urbanizing, at least in part, agricultural production, vertical farming could potentially provide a variety of benefits, including increased land-use efficiency, a year-round growing season, increased overall crop yield and decreased air and water pollution thanks to decreased transportation requirements and robust waste-water recycling.⁶ It also has the potential to drive the development of other technologies, especially alternative, non-fossil-fuel-based energy sources.

At the heart of the Vertical Farm Project is a set of proposed designs for sky-scraper-like (hence “Vertical” farming) structures that would provide contained, moderated climates. These massive urban-agrarian structures would house acre upon acre of stable, centralized farming. Various groups have proposed several promising designs, many of who are looking to vertical farming as a viable option for a sustainable urban ecology.⁷  And while none of the proposed designs have yet been implemented or even shown concretely to be feasible, the creation of one of the urban farming obelisks might not be too far in the future.

Vertical farming promises, among many other benefits, large amounts of cheap agricultural produce grown locally in the cities in which it is going to be consumed. This produce could be of any kind and could be grown at any time of the year, regardless of the climate of the city in which it is produced. It could be grown with a minimum of pesticides or additives and, with sufficiently advanced energy generating and wastewater recycling systems, more energy and resource efficient than traditional farming methods. Vertical farming also has the potential to be more land efficient than traditional farming methods. Also, it may offer a year-round growing season and therefore substantially larger yields. Additionally, since it offers safe, controlled growing climates, it could potentially mean that you could produce any food crop known to man on any plot of land on which you could build a building.⁵

If these benefits alone aren't enough, the Vertical Farm Project claims that secondary benefits would include suppression of diseases like malaria which thrive on agricultural lands, the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts currently being fought over agricultural land rights and the restoration of natural ecosystems which have been lost to (often extremely destructive) traditional agricultural practices.⁶

End Notes
1 “U.S and World Population Clock”: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
2 UNFPA, “State of the World Population Report,” 2007.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture#History.
4 International Labour Organization. “Key Indicators of the Labor Market, 5th Edition.” Chapter 4. 2007. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/kilm/download/kilm04.pdf (See, especially, figure 4b for a particularly clear demonstration of this point).
5 Despommier, Dickson. “The Vertical Farming Essay.” http://verticalfarm.com/essay.php. 2004.
6 Ibid.
7 The Vertical Farm Project – Designs. http://verticalfarm.com/designs.php.

10 . The Story of Jack and Jill: A Fable to Chew on by Adam Membrey^

Jack was a fairly generous man of generous size. He could barely squeeze through his bedroom door each day and it was embarrassing to eat in front of all his coworkers. He knew what they were thinking. But Jack’s outward problems came from an inward manifestation: he had no respect for himself, and accordingly, had no respect for his diet. As a result, he welcomed every food he saw as good and consumed it without discrimination. He not only gained weight with ferocious momentum but found himself moving through a series of unfulfilling relationships.

Jill was a small woman with an abundance of patience. But her expectations were unrealistic. She chose only to feast on vegetables and fruits, the kinds of things she would swear were good for her. The problem is that she never bothered to eat anything else. She was far too picky in her choices, and as a result, suffered from starvation day in and day out. It was not until a rainy October Saturday that she realized that maybe it wasn’t the food; maybe it wasn’t the guys she passed over –– maybe it was her.

The clash of extremes came that October Saturday night when Jack and Jill found themselves languishing on the back porch, both looking for something more interesting than the party that went on behind them. They exchanged words; they laughed, they cried, they opened themselves up like never before. It was almost as if Fate had personally made the match with her loving hand.

But it wasn’t meant to be. It did not matter that they worked together to get their health back in check. Too many years of extremes had taken their toll.  They both passed away, nearly a year apart from each other, each from health complications resulting from their unhealthy diets.

So it is with the tragedy of Jack and Jill that I ask you, college students, to consider your diets. Are you not respecting who you are enough, or are you being too picky and unfair? If you can find a balance, you may find happiness. And who knows? You may find the meal that satisfies you for more than one evening.

Eat wisely, and eat well!