New book by Raj Patel (author of “Stuffed and Starved”) highlights Campaign for Fair Food!
Message is food for thought for Publix…
The author of “Stuffed and Starved,” Raj Patel, has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks entitled “The Value of Nothing.” The phrase comes from a quotation by Oscar Wilde:
“Nowadays, people know the price of every thing and the value of nothing.”
In an excellent promotional video for the book (embedded below), Patel asks:
“It seems like every aspect of our lives is touched by this philosophy of prices and free markets, but isn’t there a better way to value our world?”
The book’s message is truly food for thought for our friends at Publix. The fundamental premise of “The Value of Nothing” is that the market tends to fail, often miserably, at assigning prices that reflect the true value of the goods we consume today. In particular, the market often overlooks the high social costs behind many of the products at the heart of our every day lives — obesity and diabetes behind cheap fast food, environmental degradation behind gas-guzzling SUV’s, slavery behind the tomatoes we eat.
Nowhere is that disconnect between price and social costs clearer than in the case of Publix and its Florida tomato suppliers. Most readers of this site will remember that, when asked why it continues to purchase tomatoes from farms where enslaved workers were discovered to be picking in the latest modern-day slavery prosecution, Publix spokesman Dwaine Stevens told the St. Augustine Record:
“… the chain does purchase tomatoes from the two farms but pays a fair market price.” (“Farmworkers protest supermarket tomatoes,” 11/24/09)
What, exactly, is the “fair market price” for slavery? How in the world does a modern corporate giant like Publix turn its back on the brutal exploitation of the workers in its suppliers’ operations — right in its own backyard — and get away with it?
Take a moment, if you can, to watch the video on “The Value of Nothing.” The book, which has received high praise from reviewers including Michael Pollan and Naomi Klein, deals in part with the Campaign for Fair Food, where “pickers in Florida have won the right to be treated as human beings and not slaves.” Unfortunately, that victory is clearly still incomplete, thanks to companies like Publix who, rather than supporting Florida’s more ethical tomato growers and the CIW in forging a more humane agricultural industry, stubbornly continue to prop up the brutal and dehumanizing status quo in Florida agriculture today.
“The Value of Nothing” will be in bookstores soon, and should be a great read.