The Coca Cola System

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9PcuZSUxnk


Coke is one of the most recognized brands in the entire world. The number of people that purchase coke products reaches into the billions every year. The idea that a single product can cross borders and cultures is truly globalization in todays terms.
Coke produces a product and wishes to spread is farther and faster, reaching nearly all corners of the globe. It has become more rare to not have a coke product on a beverage menu in any restaurant than to have it available. And the coca cola system works hard to make sure that the image and brand are advertised to consumers at an early age. Advertising becomes a huge player in how products become part of one's life. and the coca cola company comes up with many innovative ways to advertise drawing upon many different emotions that people experience.
And well as many companies begin to pair up, for instance all Mcdonald's carry coke products as well as Walmart's. The merging of two large companies benefits both in terms of profits and exposure. And the more exposure the more profits.
Coke also does a good job in disguising their products from consumers that many be anti-coke. Many juice products as well as bottles waters are also manufactured by the coca cola company. However, unless the consumer picks up the bottle and reads the small print on the back of the label. They miss entirely the font stating manufactured by the coca cola company. Which in no wonder that most consumers don't realize that the beverage industry is monopolized by very few companies, mostly Pepsi and Coke. Nearly all beverages consumed around the world, particularly the United States have been made by only a few companies.
-Siera

Globalization, Urbanization, and Full Metal Jacket

Globalization: “it’s a big bullshit sandwich and we all have to take a bite!” – Full Metal Jacket 

I figured I would open with a very intellectual quote from a classic movie. Globalization isn’t quite the topic of this blog but it is very much related. Urbanization is essentially an extension of globalization and is one of the primary ways we are able to directly “view” globalization and the changes it brings upon our world. That statement might produce some degree of contention, but most anyone reading this blog (in all likelihood) can certainly agree that it is one of, if not the, most primary way(s) we interact with globalization-related issues on a daily basis.

Urbanization brings higher population density, and – hopefully, but not necessarily always, in the case of some of the world’s big slums – better/improved infrastructure. It also brings larger markets for many products, most of them consumer-related.

Urbanization essentially, if indirectly, breeds greater consumerist habits:

• Greater population density leads to decreased practicality of agricultural practices (assuming that the predecessor of urbanization is a more rural setting)
• Lessened agro-ecological self-sustainability leads to the export and rise of a agricultural practice as its own enterprise
• As infrastructure and development increases, the general complexity of life does as well. There grows increased (or a perceived increase, at least) in need for products typically considered to be consumer goods. In our society (in America), two examples of this include computers (for/in response to the increased prominence of communication) and cars (for dealing with commuting most effectively in a commute-heavy environment typical of urbanized locales).

--Nate

More on Corn

I’d like to continue the conversation on corn subsidies began last week by Michael. As Michael mentioned in his post, subsidies on corn, soy, and other commodity crops have created serious issues for not only farmers and citizens of our own country, but those in the rest of the world as well. One way that subsidies can hurt both farmers and eaters stems from the fact that subsidies promote overproduction. If farmers get paid more for producing more, they inevitably will, which floods the market with an excess of these crops, lowering their prices. This results in two things- One, farmers make less money than they would had the subsidies never existed due to the huge reductions in prices they receive for their crops. Two, we now have a whole bunch of cheap corn and soy and nothing (conventional anyway) to do with it. So some very smart people figured out that we can put it into processed foods and feed it to our livestock, making the production of both of these much cheaper. Great! Except now our government is basically footing part of the bill every time we buy fast or processed food, and we need to feed our livestock a bunch of antibiotics to keep their new grain-based diet from killing them (most livestock cannot properly digest grain, and without antibiotics it can kill them in as little as 6 months). So now we have the problem that a third of our country will soon likely have diabetes from the unhealthy diet our government is helping to pay for, and many new strains of antibiotic resistant viruses that have been created from the huge amount of antibiotics used on livestock (I think about 50% of all the antibiotics in the US are used on livestock).

The corn subsidies hurt farmers in other countries because in most cases their government is not subsidizing them, so the prices their crops fetch on the global market often do not even cover the cost of production, let alone allow the farmers to make a decent livelihood. Another consequence on farmers and people in other countries results from the export of the ideology of commodity-crop subsidies and the industrial agricultural model in general. When we export our agricultural model, we also export the problems that result from it, like diabetes, obesity, and increased antibiotic resistance. And as other countries begin to subsidize their crops, the problem becomes one that cannot even be fixed by eliminating our own subsidies, as crop prices would stay low and our farmers would not be able to compete in global markets.

Obviously subsidies are not a good idea, but now we’re kind of stuck with them, as without them it seems that a very large portion of our country’s farmers would go bankrupt. Global food prices would probably increase, seriously effecting food security in poorer nations and probably within the US as well. The only possible semi-solution I can think of would be to very slowly decrease subsidies on commodity crops, and begin to subsidize other crops and more sustainable methods of agriculture. But there would inevitably be problems with this solution, and I kind of doubt that it would be politically feasible in the near future. I wonder if anyone else has any ideas on how we could effectively eliminate commodity crop subsidies, or would like to weigh in the issue in general.

Posted by Mollie Tarte