The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 2–8
One would have to be a rock, rather than simply living under one, to be living in America and unaware of the threat to food access that 41 million Americans faced last week. As one whose family was somewhat affected, famine has understandably and unfortunately been on my mind.
I have not studied famine in depth, but my lay opinion is that famine comes in a few different types. There are natural famines, caused by disasters like flooding, droughts, and pestilence. There are the famines of war, which occur directly as an attack on the enemy’s food supply or indirectly as there are fewer and fewer people left on the farm to grow the food needed. And finally, there are famines of political control, where food access is prevented by the ruling elite in order to control those they see as beneath them.
The famine that was threatened last week was one primarily of political control, of that I have no doubt. Another example of such a famine would have been the Great Hunger that struck Ireland in the mid 1800s. Most Americans know it as the “Irish Potato Famine,” a horrible misnomer that was designed to relieve the perpetrators of their rightly deserved blame.
You see, the Great Hunger was in part due to a potato blight, a natural famine if you will, but why does no one ask the most obvious questions — why didn’t they eat something else?
Jenny Wren 