Grocery Store

This week I read Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins in Latin America, an engaging and eye-opening explanation of how the continent's natural wealth has ironically led to its present day poverty and "underdevelopment." I use quotes around that word because Galeano believes "underdevelopment is a not a stage of development, but it's a consequence." Throughout the book, Galeano cites examples of how Europe and the United States have grown wealthy at the expense of, or disproportionately to, indigenous and black Latin Americans.

Many of these examples are historical, but Galeano also shows that a new version of imperialism still exists today. I was thinking about that when I went to the grocery store this week. The influence of Open Veins has changed how I think about buying bananas, mangos, sugar, coffee, and other products that are potentially produced by people who are not earning fair wages or enjoying basic comforts of life.

I'd like to figure out where and how the sugar and coffee at the local Kirksville Hy-Vee are produced, but it looks like that information is going to be harder to find than I expected. I looked on the sugar packages in the store--manufactured by C&H and Hy-Vee--to find out what country they came from, but it only said the name of the distributer in the United States. The C&H website invites visitors to "share our strength" by joining the "Great American Bakeoff," but no where on the site does it say what county is producing all that sugar for the Bakeoff.

It looks like C&H is a subsidiary of Domino Foods Inc., and on that website I found an email contact for the media relations person in the company. I'm going to email her and ask what countries produce the sugar the company buys and distributes. Hopefully she'll get back to me by my next blog post.