The book the Agricultural Issues class will be reading is "In defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. The following is a couple of excerpts from the book. Please comment on whether or not you agree with the excerpt or not and why.
"Get out of the supermarket. As soon as you do, accountability becomes once again a matter of relationships instead of regulation or labeling or legal liability. Food safety didn't become a national or global problem until the industrialization of the food chain attenuated the relationships between food producers and eaters. That was the story Upton Sinclair told about the Beef Trust in 1906, and it's the story unfolding in China today, where the rapid industrialization of the food system is leading to alarming breakdowns in food safety and integrity. Regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa. Only when we participate in a short food chain are we reminded every week that we are indeed part of a food chain and dependant for our health on its poeples and soils and integrity on its health."
and:
"Today four crops (wheat, rice, soy beans, and corn) account for two thirds of the calories we eat. When you consider that humankind has historically consumed some eighty thousand edible species, and that three thousand of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the human diet....Humans are omnivores requiring somewhere between fifty and a hundred different chemical compounds and elements to be healthy. Its hard to believe we're getting everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, rice, and wheat."
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I believe that people should branch out in their food choices. Instead of comsuming processed foods, which have made long journey across continents, or that were processed in foreign countries, we should eat food that have local origins and therefore are fresh. "Man cannot live on bread alone" so he must seek other forms of victuals consisting of provisions found outside of the supermarket. Not only will this make man more accountable for the products he consumes but it will also bolster local economy, and encourage the resurection of the farmers market, and small farms.
ReplyDeleteI agree I feel that America doesn't pay attention to just how horrible our processed foods are. They are unhealthy and somewhat toxic to our bodies. The Book that Upton Sinclair wrote was "The Jungle". I belive that in this class we should also be required to read it. I read it in a US history class back in La Grande. We were on the subject of muckrackers and good old Upton was one of the most popular. Sorry that was a bit off topic what I was going for was that it reflected on how unsafe and unsanitary the packaging company was way back then. Its alarming to see that we still haven't really changed and even though we have rules the companies use them as more like guide lines.
ReplyDeletei never really made out the main for or against position in the first part of the book, so i will comment on both. Without the industrial advancements in our food industry we as people wouldn't have been allowed to have the population grow to over 6.5 billion people. Wether this is good or not is a matter of opinion and really doesn't matter. Industrialization in the food market is part of what made America such a desireable place. Not the market itself, but the jobs created by these markets made America the landing point for thousands if not millions of immigrants in the early 20th century. The bottom line is, wether you agree or not, people on this earth must be fed. Feeding 6.5 billion people is simply impossable without large-scale farming practices, both in the meat and the grain industry. Living in a utopian world would be great. Everything working out perfectly all the time, everybody being happy, and there being no issues are all things that most everybody wants. Unfortanitly we do not live in a utopian world and everybody has their own individual thoughts and beliefs. i believe that factory farms are neccecary but have room for improvment, and getting along as we do now, which is what the people want, would be impossable without industrialized food practices
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure if I fully understand the first quote but, if we can trust the food providers than, who can we trust? We would have to make or grow everything from scratch and many people don’t have the time nor the money for that.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this is true in a way when you think about it. If you go into a supermarket and you pick up an item in the food section and look at the lable it will most likly have a corn as a substance. so i beleive that wheat, rice, corn,soy beans.
ReplyDeleteToday we eat often without realizing what we are eating and where it came from. With only 2% of our population involved in production agriculture as a society we have become "removed from the farm." However, we are still completely dependant on our agriculture weather we realize it or not all of our food, health, and even life comes directly from our farms and soil.
ReplyDeleteCall me a hippy if you will but we are dependant on our sun and soil the sun we have little effect on but our soils are all to often abused and destroyed. By destroying our soils are we destroying our future? Are we over producing energy intensive crops like corn?
the current food industy may be discusting and possible unsanitary but it's the only way to feed the 6.5 billion people and soon to be 10 billion people. some previous post say we should try going local and it will boost the economy and farmers markets but that will only work in small agricultural towns or regions. the 10 or so farmers markets in portland would not come close to feeding to whole population in portland. So even though it may not be the best way to produce food it's the only sustainable way. i agree that corn is a very fossil fuel intensive crop but we dont have an alturnative to all the uses corn has.
ReplyDeleteI think that the 2nd statement is true. It is amazing that we are getting everything we need from processed corn, soybeans, rice, and wheat. But dont we also need meat i mean corna and wheat isnt everything that makes our diets. Meat is verry important to in our every day lives. True meat has corn and stuff in it but some times cows just eat grass so what if some people eat that meat. will it eventually become that every human only eats grass feed cows?
ReplyDeleteI so agree with Pollard but breaking the cycle is hard when you lead busy lives. I hate what has happened to family farms as a result of mega-acreage going to produce corn for corn syrup. All to go into our sweetened foods. I feel pretty guilty most of the time about that.
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