Recently watched Our Daily Bread, a German documentary on modern food production from a couple years ago, and had mixed thoughts — which is really my preferred reaction to most issues and life in general. I found it to be both revolting, ugly and beautiful — poetic - the juxtaposition of repetitive and rhythmic work required to feed us, the shiny metal machines slicing through countless pig and cow carcasses, workers, human machines on their own, ripping out the guts out of animals continuously for hours in repetitive motions, the skinning of the carcasses by machines, constantly rotating…thousands and thousands of animals passing through slicers and cogs and rolling carpets, workers injecting semen into pigs by hand, and than the very same workers on their breaks eating their lunch (what looks like a ham sandwich in one case), on a smoke break, or workers riding a bus to get to work was a nice parallel.
I felt my body ache watching people do the back breaking repetitive labour required…watching workers crouched in lettuce fields, picking, bagging and placing packaged lettuce ready for the supermarket in crates in front of them monotonously, that slid into a moving truck car, with a plastic covering over the labourers with lights above so they could work throughout the night.
And this brings me to prison farms — CBC featured this story. Canada has 6 prison farms in the country but they are being shut down next year by mandate of the Conservative government. Which is a shame.
Proponents, like Margaret Atwood, advocate that prisons farms are great for inmates, allowing them to be productive, grow food for themselves, learn skills, earn a bit of money, and give them an opportunity to give back to the community via donations of the food they donate to food banks. A damn shame. This demonstrates a move away from focussing on rehabilitation and a move towards prison complexes à la United States. Having once volunteered with former prisoners in a small greenhouse, packaging sprouts for a food organization has shown me how effective and positive these type of programs are. I remember the camaraderie and pride shared by the men in being able to collectively grow sunflower and pea sprouts for consumption and how these skills would make them more employable in the future. It’s a tough sell though, many people do not feel any particular compassion for people who commit crimes, regardless of the circumstances or nature of the crime, preferring to see the world as white or black, good or bad. Which boggles my mind. CityFarmer lists the various reasons why we should save our prisons farms a lot more eloquently than I.
On that note, this reminds me of another story about Riverdale Farm. According to Sunday, Riverdale Farm ( read Lauren Archer’s post about the history - so fascinating!) and the land that stretches out all the way to the former Don Valley Jail used to be a prison farm back at the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, mostly inhabited by Scottish and Irish debtors aka poor people. This is apparent by the style of some of the resident houses at Riverdale Farm(particularly the former morgue– which is now the Resident House), some of the buildings’ scaffolding having brick designs layered in a particular style that is reminiscent of Scottish architecture. The prisoners were worked to death then though…
I suppose I am bias. I think we should have gardens everywhere, schools, community centres, malls, apartments, houses, parks, hospitals and various public and communal spaces — but I see the social benefits every day at work — especially as I have gotten to know many of the children in the past couple of years.
