Why Is This A Thing?

I really don't know what else to call this blog. Maybe people in general aren't aware of these facts...I am willing to give that benefit of the doubt. But if most people are aware of this, then I persist...why is this a thing? It makes no sense to me (in case you don't care to read the very short article from Mother Jones, the low down is that in California, agricultural workers who produce most of the food exports for our country cannot adequately feed themselves, in both the hunger and nutrition sense of the word).

I have had the fortune to be immersed in the worlds of food and agriculture as a result of my love and pursuit of all things environmental, ecological and outdoors. My winding, purposeful and not always directional road brought me to a year in Eugene, Oregon...before being a "foodie" was a concept and before most people had heard the acronym GMO (genetically modified organism). So before farmers markets and organic was hipster, I learned that as a person concerned with land and environment (i.e. ecology), I HAD to be concerned with food...agriculture is humans' largest use of the land. Hailing from Iowa, this was something that cut right to my heart...Iowa's landscape is the most altered landscape in the nation as a result of agriculture.

Anyway, I do not understand why in this country, the people who plant and tend and harvest the food that actually feeds this nation and other nations (and I'M DEFINITELY NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FIELDS OF IOWA CORN) cannot afford to adequately feed themselves. Boil this down only to the essence of what it is...the people that produce food cannot afford to eat it and do not have access to it. How is this even possible in this world where we can perform almost any function from our phone, aside from the physical acts we require bodies for (and I have no doubt there is someone, somewhere working to make these acts luddite)?

I am writing this blog because I would like someone to honestly answer me this question. And maybe I should rephrase it...I understand HOW it's possible...I understand business concepts and I understand income and costs and cost/benefit analysis and not giving a fuck about quality and actual people and reducing everything to a number. I understand how it can LOGISTICALLY occur. I'm wondering how this is acceptable in our nation-the one we laud as everything every other nation should strive for? Someone answer me that.

Oh, the workers are here illegally you say...so I guess that means they don't deserve to eat. I guess that means the corporations that hire them bear no social responsibility for taking care of their employees in only the sense of the LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR (paying a living wage...I'm assuming that living means adequate nutrition because I do believe that should be a human right. It was before we had corporations to rewrite society and history. It is when communities are responsible for decision making).

I guess that means the we blame the player and not the game. I can write a separate blog on US agriculture and trade policies that contribute to and promote "illegal" immigration...policies that our country needs to take responsibility for as inventors of the game...and then we get pissed at the people who have to play within the rules we wrote for them. I really don't care what your stance on immigration, legal or illegal, is. Someone explain to me how it is okay in our country, where there is abundant food, for people who legitimately work long hours for other people to eat, not to be able to afford to eat themselves. And I will not accept blaming the victim as an answer...I will not accept a slight of hand directing our attention to the shell in the shell game that contains "policy" or "immigration status". The questions here, the only ones I'm addressing, is why it is okay in our nation of wealth and surplus, our nation "we" so often uphold as the paragon every other country should strive for, why is it ok that people who work hard (harder than most of us) cannot adequately eat? And why do we accept and give silent approval to that every day? Someone please answer me that.