TY: Exploring Global Inequalities through Food

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“Food is a common ground, a universal experience” - James Beard, celebrated American chef

Food has indeed become a unifying experience not only because we all have to eat to survive but because food helps us realise how much of a small world we now live in and how interdependent we have become. Transition Year students in Castleisland had a great time in the last three weeks learning about our unequal world through the theme of food.

While the idea of inequality is as old as humanity itself, and its causes as complex as we choose to make them, linking it to food helped the group to realise that inequality and poverty are issues that affect people not only in the wider world, or so called developing countries, but right here, within our own communities as well.  Looking at inequality using food helped the group to reflect on a number of questions:

  • who decides and controls what we eat?
  • what is the role of multinational corporations in food production?
  • what about advertising and food labelling?
  • farm chemicals and the environment?
  • fair trade and carbon foot prints?
Finally, what role do we as consumers and citizens play in allowing the world to continue to be a place where very few have more than they need and too many go without? The class will soon be working on various action projects to illustrate that we can all do something about this problem.

This is all part of the KADE Transition Year Unit Making Local and Global Connections which introduces students to development issues through the UN Millennium Development Goals. To learn more about the unit visit the Transitions in Development page on this website or contact us on 066 718 1358.