Cash Crops as American food, clothing, & other items

Today my newspaper reported that one out of every three kids born in an urban/suburban area will be born in a slum this year.



*heart seizes*

I did this. Not as much as some people, I know, but then...what I didn't do...my people did.

We buy those damned cash crops. We buy them and buy them and buy them and just won't make ourselves stop.

...transnationals...business cartels...expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed the local populations.
-Michael Parenti, "Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty In The World," April 24, 2007.

"Expropriate the best land."
"Expropriate the best land."
"Expropriate the best land."

How can we handle buying anything made out of cash crops from other parts of the world?

*face in hands*

Why have my people insisted on eating things made out of coffee beans, cocoa beans, tea leaves, black pepper, coconut parts, lemon parts, and tropical plant oil for so many centuries? (We got widely literate off land-expropriatingly-grown coffee & tea in 17th/18th-century salons, but for God's sake, why won't we stop???)




I know it's not a complete answer, but I keep feeling like it would do a lot of good within 20 years--and on a longer term perhaps help problems, say, 50%--if we stopped buying things made from "cash crops" of other parts of the world and refused to start up again, no matter what messages marketers put out.