week three Tuesday, Apr 17 2012

An outsider looking in would view bread as just part of the four food groups and nothing more. But if one were to take a closer look at this delicacy that we so often take for granted, the onlooker may discover that there are more sides to a single loaf of bread than anyone would have thought of originally.  For centuries, bread has been the main source of sustenance in human society. It is filling, healthy, and affordable. Though bread has been all these obvious things, it symbolizes many other things from social to economic viewpoints. Socially, bread has been the backbone in charity for the poor. Bakeries donate their stale breads to the poor, offering them a sense of hope. So, in society, bread is more than just food. It is an object that offers a sense of security and hope in a dangerous hopeless environment. Bread is a major symbol when it comes to religion as well. In every religion that bread is served to the congregation, it is used to represent the body of Christ. This is because the Bible describes Jesus breaking bread at the Last Supper and explaining that it was part of him. So in religion, bread is also more than just food. It is a symbol of change and renewal. Economically, bread is an affordable way to provide sustenance to the body. But it is more than that. Bakeries provide jobs to members of society, making the world a more economically friendly. So here we have it; bread provides more than just nutrition. It is also seen as a symbol of safety, hope, spiritual comfort, and a source of income. It is easy to take such a simple thing for granted. But now that we know bread can be connected to so many other different things, we should take into account all the other things that we could be taking for granted.

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Social, Religious, and Economic connection to bread Sunday, Mar 4 2012

I have to be honest the article on french bread and all its glory was boring. So maybe I would not say that is was boring it was just a lot to read about bread. However I can say that it was more interesting to learn about when the speaker came in and talked about it. Anyway from what I did read back in the day a bakery used to make “poor boy” sandwiches. They called them poor boy because they would actually feed poor people. It was simple and easy to make. Socially it brought people together because while they would eat the sandwiches they would talk with other people. This habit was made regularly so you could say that the food brought everyone together. Religiously bread would have a significant importance. The bread is used in a part of the altar for St. Joseph’s Feast Day. There is another feast day,Día de Muertos, which is Day of the Dead. It is a Spanish holiday and also religious for them and bread is also part of the alters they make for their feast day. Also bread is used all in the Bible by jesus when they break bread and do Communion in church. Bread is really all up and down the Bible. I used to wonder as a kid if that was all people in Jesus time ate was bread and fish. Honestly the thought used to fascinate me. Its Economic connection, if I am reading the article right, at first bread was expensive because the flour to make it was expensive. Then over time bread became less expensive so it was good for everyone because bread could go with anything. Also over time it became easy to make the bread and people bought more bread because of the new bigger size. So eventually bread became a primary staple again in New Orleans.

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Blog 3: What are the social, religious, and/or economic connections to bread? Sunday, Mar 4 2012

The Article French Bread, introduced the reader to the history of the poor boy bread, also called a po-boy. The author discussed the social economic and religious relations between bread and the city of New Orleans.

The social ties to the French Bread is mostly in the title, “Poor Boy”. The sandwich was used to feed the poor and less fortunate. This was an easy and cheap meal. Also the bread was a part of the strike that was going on in New Orleans at the time. Owners of popular bakeries agreed to provide bread or po-boys.

French bread is religious because it is included in the St. Joseph’s. They are included in special rituals and praises to ensure good fortune for the year. Also, further back, bread has always been religious. Bread is used in communion and throughout the bible as a blessed food.

Economically, bread is tied to New Orleans because over the years the price lowered. When the bakeries were able to get in new machines for making bread, they were able to make (more) longer bread and for a cheaper price. This drew in more sales and allowed for french bread to expand.

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What are the social, religious, and/or economic connections to bread? Saturday, Mar 3 2012

“Bread symbolizes maintenance of life as well as deprivation, as in a bread-and-water diet.”  Bread and poverty associated closely with one another well before the term poor boy was applied to loaves.  Bakers donate state loaves to charitable institutions and some produced bread under government contract for Charity Hospital.  Bakeries made involuntary contributions of bread to the poor if government officials caught them shorting their loaves.  Labor problems forced the artisan employers to confront workplace issues together despite their tradition of baking secrecy and independence.  The much longer loaf of French Bread that the brothers suggested accompanied the nations rapid urbanization and the evolution of baking from family shop to industrial manufacturing. Gendusa produced the key feature of what later came to be known as the poor boy loaf, but the sandwich name developed   through its association with the street railway workers.

 

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What are the social, religious, and/or economic connections to bread? Saturday, Feb 4 2012

In Michael Mizell-Nelson’s article entitled “French Bread”, he writes about how French bread came about and describes the connection between the bread and the city of New Orleans. This culinary creation has an important social connection that can be traced back to its origin. In the 17^th century, loaves of bread had a significant tie to impoverished citizens. On numerous occasions, bakers donated their stale loaves of bread to those who needed it the most, like institutions (such as Charity Hospital) who assisted the poor. Another instance of giving was when the government found out that bakers were making their loaves shorter. Margaret Gaffney Haughery was an influential person who donated large sums of money and numerous loaves of bread to the poor within her community. After her husband and her infant died during the yellow fever and cholera outbreak, she wanted to give back to those who faced the same struggles she did. She began to work in hotels and Laundromats, saving the money she earned to fund institutions who served the poor. She had the opportunity to expand her services when she bought a bakery from a baker who could not afford to repay his debts to her. When she took over the bakery, she was able to produce more bread quicker and distributed them to the military and other armed forces. Her supply and production of bread became extremely known during the time of the Civil War. When bread shortages became more prominent after the Civil War, Margaret began to distribute flour and bread to many people. She was given the name “Breadwoman of New Orleans” for her contributions for helping to feed those who were less fortunate. Her selfless acts had a huge impact on the community.

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Week Three Sunday, Dec 11 2011

before to the year 1965,  McDonald’s received  its  potatoes from about almost 200 different local suppliers. Crew members spent a lot of time peeling and slicing potatoes. French fries in McDonald’s were popular and the demand for them were high every body wanted them.  Before fast food industries knew anything about frozen french fries,they were making fresh fries  themselves. The amount of time and labor this took called for money. In 1965 however, Ray Kroc met with J.R. Simplot to change the french fry game forever. J.R Simplot had come up with a new idea of selling  frozen french fries to Mcdonalds and , later on, other fast food industries. He even made a factory just  dedicated to the making  of McDonalds fries. The production of frozen fries has since become a competitive business. Frozen french fries have become a bulk commodity, manufactured in high volumes at a low profit margin. The eminently profits being made from the sale of french fries have barely trickled down to farmers. The market is one in which a small number of buys exert power over a larger number of sellers.Out of every  $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at a fast food restaurant, perhaps two cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes.”According to Schloesser, the latest potato harvesting equipment can set a farmer back hundreds and thousands of dollars.  In Bingham County, it costs about 1,500 an acre to grow potatoes and the average farmer there plants about four hundred acres. The giant processing companies do whatever they so that they will drive down the prices offered to potato farmers. “The increased productivity of of Idaho farmers has lowered prices even further, shifting more of the profits to the processors and the fast food chains.

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What factors have hurt family farmers and benefited giant corporate farms? Tuesday, Oct 18 2011

Unfortunately the work of family farms is starting to go unnoticed. Family farming used to be a way to make a good living. There was a high demand for the crops they farmed. So for generations family farms would be around for younger people because they knew that there was somewhere to go with it. However that is not so much the case anymore. With giant farm corporations taking over the land prices for the land that is still available have gone up. Family farmers cannot afford to by more land because all the money is going to the big farm corporations. Some farmers argue that a few large corporations have gained stranglehold on the market, using unfair tactics to drive down the price of their stuff. With family farming people knew where their products were coming from. It would be almost guaranteed to be a hundred percent fresh. But there is a limit to what family farmers can do. With big corporation farming they can manufacture all of the crops at a faster rate. Seeing as though it is faster more companies would want to by from them instead of the family farmers. Big corporations have more technology involved with what they do. They can freeze products to make them last longer. Or they could inject them to make them taste better. Family farming is being knocked out of the competition because it isn’t so much about quality anymore, it is about quantity. When you think about it you can see why family farming is starting to go down. More and more people need the numbers more than anything else. It doesn’t help that some of the giant corporations are taking advantage of family farmers like blackmailing them into selling their land to them. Or even sabotaging the family farmers business. I think there will eventually be no family farms in the future though but I think that is further away than we think. Hopefully.

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What factors have hurt small family farmers and benefited giant corporate farms? Sunday, Oct 16 2011

Potato companies compete for fast food restaurant contracts and as a result prices of potatoes go down. This is awesome for the fast food companies. They get the same products their customers know and love for a lower price, but what about the poor potato farmers who actually have to draw an income from the amount of potatoes they sell? This greatly hurts them and their families because the potato farmers end up with less income. How could the fast food corporations be so insensitive? Easy, they are making money so they do not care about who gets hurt in the process.

When fast food restaurants go in search of suppliers for their fast food they look for the companies that can give them uniformity at the lowest prices. This is one of the reasons J.R. Simplot was so successful. He sold McDonald’s fries that were uniform at low prices and also versatile. The fries were available in a big variety and could be shipped easily to different restaurants and stored because they were frozen. Not only this, but when they were unfrozen and cooked they still had that good “McDonald’s” taste that many of us have come to love, instead of the freeze-dried taste. He revolutionized the way french fries were prepared. But was this necessarily a good thing?

Because of his hard work and ingenuity, Simplot’s fries are sold all over the world in different McDonald’s food chains, steadily helping the obesity rate in America to rise to monstrous levels. But at last, no one cares what happens to the health of America’s children as long as everyone gets their money and the happy meals continue to be sold. What kind of world do we live in where the livelihood of our children takes a backseat to money and personal gain and interest? This should never be the case but sadly it is. Isn’t the fast food industry great?

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What factors have hurt small family farmers and benefitted giant corporate farms? Wednesday, Oct 5 2011

Over the years, giant corporate farmers have become more of a threat to small family farmers. Family farms are, as the name suggests, usually run by a family that choose to grow their own crops from start to finish. Giant corporate farms are controlled by corporations that regulate their crops from seed to crop to factory and distribution on a very large scale. Corporate farming is also known as agribusiness and is seen as the destroyer of the family farm. There are many advantages to family farms, such as being able to know exactly who is growing your food and having the crops being more closely tended to, but large fast food chains and restaurants usually prefer to get their food from giant corporate farms that are able to more easily mass produce crops. This mass production is advantageous for giant corporate farmers because if they can produce more, they can sell more and get more money. Small family farms can’t compete with the amount of crops and have to rely on selling to smaller, local businesses. Another factor that makes giant corporate farms more successful is that because they make more money, they can afford to get better equipment that would aid in farming, whereas small farmers can’t afford large machines because they don’t a profit big enough to pay it off. With bigger machines and more money, corporate farms can afford more land to continuously expand. Small family farms don’t make as much money so they are more reluctant to expand. Expanding wouldn’t do small family farms any good because they still wouldn’t have the buyers for the crops. Even now, small family farms struggle to sell their food. Before long, they are out of time before the crops rot or spoil. This is all a dangerous cycle that will only lead to the extermination of small family farms.

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Week 3 Sunday, Oct 2 2011

Small family farms have contributed greatly to giant corporate farms from a large amount of years. They have built a not so good relationship over the years as well. Small families grow crops and sell them to giant corporate farms to help them produce. Giant corporate farm have not been paying small family farmers adequately for their services. Larger corporate farms have been cheating family farms out of money. When small farms are producing these crops that big corporate companies and farms like to use, they are producing from home. Many small farmers live on the same farms that they produce crops from. When large companies cheat these farmers out of money they are taking away from their family. Without a consistent, steady and appropriate income most small farmers eventually go bankrupt. When these farmers go bankrupt they can not afford materials that are necessary to produce crops for corporate farms. They also won’t have enough money to maintain the maintenance on their farm land. In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser makes a comment about who and how the companies were run by. He says that corporate farms are not ran by real farmers. That corporate farms were ran by people with degree’s from the most prestigious universities. Scholosser says that these graduates don’t know where the crops are grown and can’t make distinctions. These men and women who control the corporate companies are only concerned about money. They want money by all means so they are not worried about the measures it takes to get money. They are willing to cut short the dollars they give to small farms in order to retain a large amount of money.

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