An urban planner would see golden rice as a food source that does not provide enough energy for the space, time and labor it takes away. However, having food produced in and near cities would be an ideal alternative that connects citizens of India back to their food. Locally producing food creates a city that has a diverse assortment of foods grown from many different people and it takes away the effects of mass producing one cash crop that is cheap and bountiful, but may have problems like vitamin A deficiencies or lack of other nutrients. Having a city that produces food locally puts people into a food process where they are actively engaged with what they eat. It can create more jobs for people while reducing costs of shipping food, using high amounts of technology, and waste management of chemicals and fertilizers.
So why does an urban studies seeing device relate to the problem of curing India's blindness? Because overall, India is a developing country that continually becomes more industrialized, and along with industrialization, mass production of goods and services is continually relevant. The population is increasing drastically and people are rapidly move to cities and large urban areas to find jobs, go to school, and to be close to resources. The golden rice engineered by Ingo Potrykus has been made with the best intentions to mitigate hunger in this large country with many mouths to feed, but an urban planner would see this as a narrow technological fix that doesn't address a multifarious problem. Bringing food back to the people is a preferable alternative that would take more specific political action and well as a paradigm shift away from big industry and westernized development, and by no means is it a quick, straightforward answer.
I definitely understand that the golden rice was engineered to help fight hunger in this larger country. But there is a very different way to think about this. I definitely think that millions and millions of dollars were invested into doing the research and production of golden rice. I believe that they could have invested that millions of dollars into programs that would encourage Indian farmers to grow food locally and also help mobilize them in the country. I think they had other motives when producing Golden Rice with making large profits being high up on my list. To me, Feeding starving children in India was not there main concern. They saw India is a huge market to make money just as an any other big cooporation that has invested so much money to a program would do.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you give this different perspective. In many ways I do agree with you. I think that the creation of Golden Rice definitely had economical and business motivations behind it, and through an urban studies perspective, this is a huge problem that faces cities. When corporations and businesses seek private prosperity and fortune without facing consequences for potentially harmful discourse. It is hard to be a hopeful urban planner and see businesses or a few people create such complex, overwhelming problems when they only seek profits or other economical gains.
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of approaching this question through the "seeing device" of an Urban Studies perspective on the world. Like the differences between the biologists and pedologists' ideas in Latour's "circulating reference," an Urban Studies education filters the world for those who use it, making some objects, situations, relationships, and processes seem more important and/or obvious while erasing others from the picture. An urban planner would approach this question very differently than a plant biologist, nutritionist, doctor, public health advocate, policy maker, corporate lawyer, or anthropology grad student.
ReplyDelete