Produce or perish
“2 Flaschen Ol pro haushalt!” (2 bottles of oil per household) reads the German sign in my local supermarket. The ramifications of the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war are starting to bite and while I rarely buy more than one bottle of oil, unless I am hosting a dinner or lunch with friends and family, these limitations have been put into place to ensure panic buying doesn’t ensue as shipments and the production of sunflower oil (Ukraine is the largest producer of sunflower oil) have slowed down considerably as geo-political tensions continue to heighten.
‘Produce or perish’, the famous phrase popularly used by former president Forbes Burnham to encourage Guyanese to produce and eat what they grow, was what first came to my mind when I saw the sign. How lucky and smart are those who get to reap the benefits of their selfsufficiency, while the world buckles.
My second thought was how easy it was to be sucked into groupthink by our incredibly pressuring political landscape, despite a great deal reasoning behind one’s argument. I grew up in a culture where to speak of Burnham was to speak of the ‘Big Bad Boogie Man’. To speak of any of his contributions to Guyana or his fierceness to stand up to mediocre white men in suits, somehow meant an endorsement of his electoral fraud and rigging, despite it being a known reality by both political parties on varying levels.*
But I am forced to think of him a lot these days, especially when I walk the BIO aisles of Rewe or visit the Food Hall at KaDeWe (Germany’s equivalent to Harrods) and see rice flour staring right back at me. Even more so when my Luciana, who is studying to be a nutritionist, laments why I should opt for cassava flour and how nice it must be to be from the tropics and to have access to the most nutritious foods (these products carry exorbitant prices here). I am forced to not only think how his policies were good for a country trying to break free from economic colonisation even though error in its application was evident, but to also reflect on how in the long haul it could have ensured and sustained even better health.
What is an often less played up in the food security campaigning is the amount of toxic chemicals laced within our many food imports. Corn Syrup, Sodium Benzoate, Soybean Oil, Dextrose, Artificial Colours, Xanthan Gum, Carrageenan to name a few, each linking to different health conditions and disease, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. While we continue to feel the squeeze of high food prices and even scarcity and our attention focuses on food security, perhaps we may also reflect on what our reliance does to both our pockets and health. (To be continued)