Week Two Reading Blog

Upon reading the "The Hungry City" I immediately perceived from the author that food industry is a modern marvel that does require some applause. As society has come to utilize its resources better, such as grain and corn and technology to maintain them, as well as conglomerate together in cities for the purposes of health, safety, development, and wealth building, we have "inherited a lopsided view of the urban-rural relationship". Steel notes that even though man has slowly left the country side for cities and urban settings, we still function with basic animalistic needs to eat, and we still depend of agricultural practitioners as much as we ever have.

The thing is, our practices in food and agriculture have change so dramatically in such a small amount of time, and most people are unaware of how their food was made, how it was processed, who grew it, and how it was transported from the rural to the urban. What Steel calls the "economies of scale”. Personally, I see this phenomena every day, as I work as a crew trainer at McDonald's. I usually work in service, but then I will work in the grill preparing the food to be served. McDonald's objective is to serve fresh food, but sometimes I wonder what chemicals were possibly sprayed on the vegetables and fruit to be transported to our store without rotting, or how many different cows were used in each individual meat patty, or how McDonald's was able to procure foods that are always similar to each other. I mean all the fries, burger patties, pickles, and buns are exactly identical. And we serve thousands of each item a day, I know we do, because in an hour’s time I and my grill team have easily made over a hundred sandwiches that usually go with fries and drinks and other items on the menu. It makes me think of how influential McDonald’s must be in the food supply chain.

 Restaurants and grocery stores have become the middlemen in supplying food to the public in huge amounts. But these mechanisms are necessary in order to feed the large populations we foster in American cities. But it is upsetting to know that the way we produce our food is not a shared knowledge among people due to the fact that our agricultural practices are so removed from us and often kept a secret.