On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins, October 21, 1954
[Image description: A tumblr text-post, edited whiteout-poetry style to read, "Of course dysphoria is terrible! And I totally agree—teens need to be allowed to live and present and be called what they want. And shown the respect every human being deserves. And since gender is a construct, The feelings of a person determine gender."]
The focus on staple crops since the colonial period has also eroded traditional diets and left countries heavily reliant on imports for what are now their staple foods. In many countries, cash crops have taken the place of more diverse food cropping and nutritionally important foodstuffs. For example, tobacco farming is considered to have displaced vegetables and pulses in Bangladesh, as well as cassava, millet, and sweet potatoes in a number of African countries. The development of high-yielding wheat varieties during the ‘Green Revolution’ has also accelerated production and dietary shifts, leading for example to the replacement of rice-pulse intercropping with wheat monocultures in India. Public distribution systems, notably in South Asia, have tended to focus on wheat and polished rice, further changing dietary preferences over time.
IPES-Food, Another Perfect Storm? (via probablyasocialecologist)