Tonight I made a trip to the grocery store to pick up cat food, and made a loop through the produce section to pick up some fruit. I bought a variety of goodies and was looking forward to savoring them over the next few days.
On the way home, I was listening to NPR radio since I had taken my iPod into the house this last weekend. Typically whenever I start my car, my iPod serenades me with all my favorite music, but for the past few days it has been NPR.
About half way home, All Things Considered came on with a report by Julie McCarthy titled, River’s Bounty Bypasses Families, Feeds Businesses.
The report centers on an area in northeastern Brazil along the Sao Francisco River where produce is grown, not for the people in the area, but for consumers in the US and Europe. According to the report (my emphasis):
…the bounty of this great waterway passes by thousands of poor families. In the area around the city of Petrolina in the distressed state of Pernambuco, 90 percent of the water from the river goes to large-scale agriculture, according to officials from the federal agricultural research agency. And the agriculture is not for for local consumption but for export.
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