chapotraphouse

I remember when a friend of mine came back from living in some agricultural communities in West Africa. he and his wife were there for ~2 years. he and I had done a lot of farm work together for a year, so when he got back we talked about how things worked there.

one thing I will never forget is that among the big exports was rice. everybody was involved in the production labor side.

he said the rice grown for export was completely different from the rice they grew for themselves. and that the rice they grew for themselves was absolutely incredible quality, beyond what he understood rice could be like in texture and taste. the export was like cheap junk and went to western nations (Europe mostly) with locals saying that it was fine because they didn't know any better and they seemed to like it because they kept buying it.

in the decade+ since, I have found this paradigm to be far more common than not across agricultural products and it is unsurprising to see it exist in other realms of decoupled production/consumption loops mediated by capitalism.