I know some five years back when I was more lib, there was talk and articles on how palm oil harvesting was using slave labor and people were killing orangutans and stuff. It's basically resulted in me avoiding stuff with palm oil, which tends to include some of the fancier snacks at times and convenience foods as well.
But it wasn't until recently I found myself wondering, is palm oil really on par with the shit that goes on with chocolate? Or is this on some level the usual anti-Asian sentiment I see in so much Western media, possibly taking some bad instances and extrapolating it to countries and peoples' as a whole?
P.S. sorry for the run-on sentences. I actually shaved it down a bit. Anyway, may disappear for a few hours, but this has been weighing on me a bit.
basically what the other guy said. I also did formal education in agriculture and sustainability, and palm oil was the modern go-to commodity to demonstrate the across-the-board modern agricultural production systems that undermine communities, exploit labor, steal from indigenous, and degrade environmental resources.
most globally traded agricultural commodities are like this due to the logic of capital embracing export monoculture systems, but palm oil is among the newest to be suddenly "in everything". in my head, I call everything of this type+kind "plantation agriculture", because the features are strikingly similar to the old rubber plantations and other heinous colonial systems, though many modern monocrop systems use automation/mechanization (where they can) to obscure the exploitation more than the older chattel/corvee systems if there isn't an existing pool of workers with murky legal status. or they just use forced prison labor.
there are very few items in any american's kitchen or worn on their person that weren't made via wanton environmental destruction and horrific exploitation, not to mention swelling the warchests of the most brutal capital formations on earth to expand their domination of indigenous and hinterland communities furthur.
to learn this fully is to see something dark and cruel in nearly every meal or article of clothing, things that should be nourishing to us and bring us comfort. even home cooked meals and homemade items from loved ones, made with care and affection.
and we all have different strategies for dealing and coping with the knowledge of what nature and humankind suffer to grow us the things we need.
Great writeup, thanks for that!
Indeed. For me, the way I found to cope is to try my best to buy food directly from farmers in my community or through local co-ops, but I know this is nigh impossible to most working class people living in urban areas, and it won't reduce the exploitation of people in the global South, or the environmental degradation it entails. That, and supporting people fighting to change the food system from their local reality in any way I can. That's why I made it my career.
When it comes to clothes, I thrift most of what I own, but then again, I'm lucky that thrifting hasn't become expensive where I live yet.