Read 'n' Seed 4: Third quarter of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Chapters and Pages Covered
This week I read pages 150-225, which covered the rest of chapter 10 through half of chapter 14.

Main topics
There were many topics discussed over these 75 pages. One big topic that was discussed was that people living in developing countries are losing much of the products they are producing. Most of these are being lost in the harvesting, transporting, and storing of their goods. Most people in developing countries cannot afford the technology that we have here in the US so they struggle to keep their products from rotting. The reason for this is the lack of money and lack of knowledge that these people in developing countries possess.  If we could offer them both of these things much of the world's waste could decrease immensly.

Another topic that was covered in these pages was the evolutionary background of waste. Waste is not something that has just recently come around, it has always been around. Many years ago, it was easier and more convienent for people to kill more animals or buy more food than preserving it. Without refridgerators and freezers this was a daunting task, so much food went to waste. This lead to mass extinction of animals all over the globe. The same happened for crops. Crops were over exploited to the environment and the land became barren.  Throughout the years, people then continued to grow and buy excess amounts of food in case of an economical or environmental disaster so that they knew they were safe. This has lead to many problems today including the obsesity epidemic that most Western cultures face.

Also, it was discussed in my book that too much food is being put into landfills and we must do something to change this. Classes are being offered to teach people how to reduce their waste (kind of like ours!). Another scenario would be for supermarkets to reduce their prices of items that are close to the end of their shelf life in order to sell these products instead of bring them to the garbage. Other ideas also included a landfill tax, supermarkets redistributing waste, and turning foods near the end of their shelf lives into other things to sell.

Significant Things Learned
There are many things I learned in this chapter. I did not know that we had always been so wasteful in the past, but learning about how we were wasteful in different ways and for different reseason sure started to make sense. I also like the idea that supermarkets should start turning items that are nearing the end of their shelf lives into other things like fruit into smoothies and sell them. This is a better idea than just throwing things away. I also learned how people in developing countries suffer from lack of funds and knowledge and if we just helped them out a little by teaching them and providing assistance it may help our environment greatly.

Terminology
Rapacity - given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed (taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/)
Megafauna - land animals of a given area that can be seen with the unaided eye. (taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/)Stupefied - to put into a state of little or no sensibility; benumb the faculties of; put into a stupor. (taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/)





Implications of Reading
These things that were discussed in my reading greatly affect this society because we will need to change the way we live and operate businesses in order to make a change to our environment. Also, we may need to help other countries out in ways we never have before in order to help them reduce their impact on the Earth. We should care about this because if we do not, we may never get out of this environmental crisis that we are in. If we think things are bad now, we should wait a few more years. Also, I think the government needs to take a bigger step into setting laws into place to make people practice these new ideas a little more.