Issue Position: Food

Issue Position

Assuming access to air and water, food is the ongoing and most fundamental need we share as biological creatures. Sadly, in the world today food has become just another commodity for corporate profits. It was not always so.

As recently as the 1940s, most of our food was grown organically, perhaps with the addition of some nitrogen fertilizer, and most came from local sources. Then, as large corporations began the process of buying up local food purveyors and as World War II nerve gases were formulated into pesticides, the stage was set for the world of food we have today. It isn't very pretty.

When we look at the industrial food production process - which in the United States today means vast plantings of GM corn and soybeans, and vast amounts of Roundup and similar chemicals to keep down weeds and bugs -- we see a system totally at odds with nature and natural systems. Yet corporations like Monsanto, DuPont, AMD and others insist we need this system 'to feed the world.'

Curiously, in places like Europe, which banned GM crops 10 years ago, their yields are comparable to U.S. yields, and without the serious drawbacks of GM food production systems.

Then there's the processing. In the current food model, fast food joints and big box retailers are cramming as much salt, sugar and fat as possible into their offerings, their interest being money, and nothing else. Highly-processed, artificially-flavored, salt-laden food is hardly healthy. Yet that's 90% of what's available at big box stores, and 100% of what's available at places like McDonald's and KFC.

The ramifications of this system on human health are clear. The rate of obesity in this country is over 60%. Most of our most debilitating diseases these days come from a lack of good food. Diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cancers and many other maladies have bad food at their center. All this is again an indictment of our broken system.

The good news is there's a better way forward, and it's already coming into play. There's a lot of energy behind local, organic food production. We're seeing farmers, gardeners and entrepreneurs find new ways and new places to grow food that's high quality and great for our bodies.

We're seeing urban farms, symbiotic systems like aquaponics.

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