Where Am I Eating?

An Adventure Through the Global Food Economy with Discussion Questions and a Guide to Going "Glocal"

Kelsey Timmerman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118966549
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A deeply human-centered perspective on the origins of America's food

Where Am I Eating? bridges the gap between global food producers and the American consumer, providing an insightful look at how our eating habits affect farmers and fishermen around the world. Follow the author on his global quest to meet the workers that nurture, harvest, and hunt our food, as he works alongside them—loading lobster diving boats in Nicaragua, harvesting bananas in Costa Rica, lugging cocoa beans in Ivory Coast with a modern-day slave, picking coffee beans in Colombia and hauling tomatoes in Indiana. This new edition includes a study guide, a deeper explanation of the "glocal" concept, and advice for students looking to become engaged as both local and global citizens. Arguing neither for nor against globalization, this book simply explores the lives of those who feed us.

Imports account for eighty-six percent of America's seafood, fifty percent of its fresh fruit, and eighteen percent of its fresh vegetables. Where Am I Eating? examines the effects of this reliance on those who supply the global food economy.

• Learn more about the global producers that feed our nation, and learn from their worldviews intensely connected to people and planet
• Discover how food preferences and trends affect the lives of farmers and fishermen
• Catch a boots-on-the-ground glimpse of the daily lives of food producers on four continents
• Meet a modern-day slave and explore the blurred line between exploitation and opportunity
• Observe how the poorest producers fare in the global food economy

This book takes a human-centered approach to food, investigating the lives of the people at the other end of the global food economy, observing the hope and opportunity—or lack thereof—that results from our reliance on imports. Where Am I Eating? is a touching, insightful, informative look at the origins of our food.

Part I

Coffee: Product of Colombia

Chapter 1
The Starbucks Experience

On most mornings, I drink Starbucks Colombian roast. I grind the beans and brew them in the French press my wife Annie bought me for Christmas.

I'm easily distracted and dangerously curious. One minute I was working, sipping on a fresh cup of coffee, and the next I was trying to figure out where exactly in Colombia my coffee came from. I found my way over to the Starbucks website looking for answers. Here's how Starbucks markets its Colombian roast.

How far do we go for a better cup of Colombian coffee?

Six thousand feet—straight up. Sounds extreme, we know. But high atop the majestic Andes, in a rugged landscape of simmering volcanoes, is where the finest coffee beans in Colombia like to grow. And just as there are no shortcuts through the dirt paths that crisscross the sheer slopes, we take none when it comes to nurturing these treasured cherries to gourmet perfection.

This Colombian marvel erupts on the palate with a juicy feel and robust flavors, a testament to the hearty riches of volcanic soils. Its remarkable finish, dry with hints of walnut, lifts this superior coffee into a class of its own. One sip and you'll agree it's worth every step of the climb.

How could I not feel all worldly, hardy, and refined after drinking such a sophisticated cup of coffee provided to me by such a dedicated company?

Not only did I want to drink this coffee after reading that narrative, I wanted to visit this magnificent land of sheer slopes and treasured cherries myself. I wanted to meet the people who grow my coffee. So I called Starbucks' press contacts and customer service to see if they could point me in the right direction. I left multiple voice mails. I e-mailed them repeatedly. Finally a customer service agent e-mailed me a response:

Hello Kelsey,

Thank you for contacting Starbucks.

We appreciate your interest in Starbucks.

Unfortunately, the information you are requesting is proprietary information, which we are unable to divulge. We're unable [to] provide information about the company beyond what we make publicly available.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks again for writing us. If you ever have any questions or concerns in the future, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Sincerely,

[A customer service agent who will remain unnamed.]

Proprietary information? Huh, that's funny. I thought farmers were people.

My Grandpa Timmerman farmed until he was 82. When he was a kid, my dad rose before the sun, milked cows, tended the gang of free-range turkeys, and then went off to school. Grandpa and Dad delivered, weaned, fed, and killed hogs, chickens, and cows. They grew corn and beans. They worked the land. Their lives revolved around food.

The author's grandfather, Lee Timmerman, on the farm.

Merely one generation later, there's me—a grown man who can't make Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I can never get it straight; do you add the noodles before or after the water boils? And when does the packet of whatever that stuff pretending to be cheese come into play?

When I attempt to make mac and cheese, my three-year-old daughter, Harper, stares as I fumble at the stove, squinting at the tiny directions on the side of the box. I can almost read her mind: “We are totally screwed if something happens to Mom.”

Food is so inconvenient. You look in the fridge and in the pantry to see what you need, you go to the store, you put the food in the cart, you get the food out of the cart to be scanned, you put the food back in the cart, then it's in the trunk, out of the trunk, in the house, in the pantry or fridge, back out of the pantry or fridge, time to cook (or, in my case, microwave), eat, wash dishes, rinse, and repeat. The eating part is okay, especially if someone else is doing the cooking, but other than that, what's fun about food?

If there were a pill to take instead of eating, I would wash it down with a chocolate milkshake.

Lately, however, I've become obsessed with food. Not so much with eating it, but with the labels that appear on it. I've always had a thing with labels, I guess. In 2007, I followed the labels of my favorite items of clothing to their country of origin and hung out with the workers who made them in Honduras, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China. I wrote about the experience in my book, Where Am I Wearing? At about the same time that this book hit the shelves, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) law came out.

From the USDA's COOL site:

Country of Origin Labeling is a labeling law that requires food retailers to notify their customers with information regarding the source of certain foods.¹

Suddenly, the apple juice that I gave my daughter wasn't just apple juice; it was Product of China apple juice as were the canned mushrooms I added to my frozen pizza (my idea of gourmet cooking). The bananas were Costa Rican. The blueberries were Chilean. Our freezer had fish from Vietnam and shrimp from Thailand. Our fridge was a United Nations of calories and becoming every bit as global as our wardrobes.

I wrongly assumed that this big ol' country of mine—thanks to the tropical waters of Florida and Hawaii, glaciers in Alaska, and everything else in the middle—allowed us citizens to feed ourselves. I supposed that salt-of-the-earth guys like my grandpa and my dad worked the land, and bawdy sailors like the ones on the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch trolled our coastal waters for seafood. I naively assumed apple juice was from Washington state, and shrimp came from the shrimp boats that I saw in Key West, where I had worked as a dive instructor years before.

I was wrong.

The amount of food we import to the United States has doubled in the past 10 years.² Eighty-six percent of seafood,³ 50 percent of fresh fruit, and 20 percent of the vegetables we Americans eat come from another country.⁴ In total, we import 319 different types of fruit products from 121 different countries.⁵

Authors like Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Bill McKibben (Deep Economy), and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) have educated us about how industrial our nationwide food chain has become. Thanks to their research, we know that the average food item travels 1,300 miles from the field to our plate. Works like these and films like Food, Inc., Supersize Me, and King Corn have launched the grass-fed, local, and organic movements.

“While total U.S. food sales grew by less than 1 percent in 2010, the organic food industry grew by 7.7 percent,” bragged Christine Bushway, CEO and executive director of the Organic Trade Association, in an April 21, 2011, press release. “Consumers continue to vote with their dollars in favor of the organic choice. These results illustrate the positive contribution organic agriculture and trade make to our economy, and particularly to rural livelihoods.”⁶

But there's one trend growing faster than the organic food movement: the global food movement.

During the same period cited earlier, U.S. agriculture imports grew 8 percent to $79 billion.⁷ Even organic agriculture isn't just about our economy as many may assume; 40 percent of growers and handlers that have earned the USDA certified organic standards are located outside of the United States.

The Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan traveled the country trying to answer one simple question: What should we have for dinner?

I'm traveling the world asking a different question: Where am I eating?

* * *

“Mas grande?” I ask.

“No.” The barista behind the counter shakes her head, which is topped with a maroon hat that matches her maroon apron. She is holding the biggest cup of coffee they serve at the Juan Valdez Café in Bogota, Colombia—a cup that looks like it would barely hold a double shot of espresso. It's not even close to the size of a short coffee at Starbucks, which only holds eight ounces. And who drinks only eight ounces of coffee these days?

The Juan Valdez Café, Bogota, Colombia.

It begins to sink in that the largest cup of coffee I could get here is smaller than the smallest cup at my local Starbucks in Muncie, Indiana. In order to meet my typical morning intake of coffee, I would have to order an entire tray.

What a cliché: An American wants a food item to be bigger. The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction: Our Global Connection
• Part I: Coffee: Product of Colombia
• Part II: Chocolate: Product of West Africa
• Part III: Banana: Product of Costa Rica
• Part IV: Lobster: Product of Nicaragua
• Part V: Apple Juice: Product of China
• Part VI: My Life: Product of USA
• Appendix A: A Guide to Ethical Labels
• Appendix B: The Journey Continues
• Appendix C: A Guide to Going Glocal
• Chapter Discussion Questions
• Acknowledgments
• End User License Agreement