Song meaning

Graffin: "The title refers to the famous book by John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, and takes its theme from the famine problems in the third world, caused by farmers growing biodiesel fuel for cars in the Western world instead of food for their own people."^[1]

Graffin: "The song reference was to recognize that the way of life we, as a nation, are committed to (corporate profits at the expense of family welfare) can be traced back to the early 80s and late 70s, as exemplified by one sector of corporate greed. Certainly a lot of American farms were failing in the 1980s due to numerous factors. One of those factors was the increase in corporate farming fueled by federal policies that benefited large corporations but did nothing for family farms. Today we are a nation of corn eaters. Corn is used for most sweeteners (not sugar), shortenings (not butter), feed for livestock (not alfalfa), and is subsidized by the government to the extent that to grow another crop could mean zero profits for a small-scale producer. It never escapes my attention when I drive across this country and see mile after mile of monoculture fields without a single family residence in sight."^[2]

References

'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck is a novel published in 1939. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California's Central Valley along with thousands of other "Okies" in search of land, jobs and dignity.

The line "(...) from sea to shining sea" appears to be taken from a song called 'America the Beautiful', a patriotic song written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. She wrote other versions later, in 1904 and 1913.

    O beautiful for spacious skies,
    For amber waves of grain,
    For purple mountain majesties
    Above the fruited plain!
    America! America!
    God shed his grace on thee
    And crown thy good with brotherhood
    From sea to shining sea!

References