The solution to Fix a Fundamentally Broken Food System - Coursework Example

Solution to Fix a Fundamentally Broken Food System Currently, the food system has been thrown in turmoil because of the manner in which food production is conducted as well as the organization and consolidation of the industry itself. Fixing this broken food system means that one has to move beyond the focal point of consumer choice to assess the industrial, scientific, political and social structures which support an unhealthy system. Dealing with this issue will require more than just personal voting and choice; it has to take an old-fashioned political activism. . The issue of “foodopoly” has to be addressed head-on (where there are a few corporations which manipulate the food systems from the starting point to the dinner plate. This essay aims to illustrate what the crisis is and the reasons as to why the society has to do a lot more than just creating food hubs. Whereas the rhetoric in America is all about free market and competition, the public policy is inclined toward facilitating a small group of companies to manipulate each aspect of the food system in the country. Presently, about twenty food corporations generate most of the food that Americans consume, this includes organic brands. Well over half of all store sales of grocery, are controlled by four large chains which includes Walmart (McMillan 319). A single company takes over the organic grocery industry. Furthermore, one distribution corporation has a monopoly on availing organic products into different communities in the country. What is more, the scientific field has been given room to do as it pleases; the industry of biotechnology has turned out to be so manipulative that it can even purchase public guiding principles. Scientists have been given the go ahead to carry out their scientific works with little regulations on the side effects of their discoveries. Currently, they are controlling the genomes of every living creature- fish, animals, seeds and microorganisms. This has allowed corporations to have control over the foundational building blocks of life, which threatens the veracity of the global hereditary commons as well as the collective food security of the country. Biotechnology has shifted into the arena of science invention, as scientists actually desire to come up with life-forms and put them up for sale. It is important that regulation has to be imposed on the biotechnology industry in order to reform the current dysfunctional food system. The good-food movement often overlooks these structural flaws, and often focuses on developing an alternative model from scratch which will eventually go beyond the dysfunctional food system. However, such an approach brings about the question of how many and whom? A close study at the current local food statistics illustrates this point. A study done by the United States Agriculture Economic Research Service Department in 2011 shows that, “Despite increased production and consumer interest, locally grown food accounts for a small segment of U.S. agriculture. For local foods production to continue to grow, marketing channels and supply chain infrastructure must deepen.” (Low and Vogel). This study discovered that the degree of direct marketing to end users is common in the West Coast, Northeast, as well as some built-up areas outside the scope of these regions. Direct selling of food that is made locally at CSAs and farmers’ markets, together with the sales of local food to restaurants and grocery stores generated 4.8 billion United States dollars in sales in the year 2008. Such a figure is insignificant compared to the trillions of dollars in total sales from the convenience stores, restaurants, food service companies and grocery stores. As per the USDA, only five percent of the farms which sell into the neighboring food marketplace are expansive farms (having over 250,000 dollars in yearly sales). However, these farms distributed 93% of the local food materials in restaurants and supermarkets. 81 percent of farms which sell local food are minute, with less than fifty thousand dollars in yearly sales. 14 percent of farms involved in the sale of local foods are of medium-size, having close to 50,000nto 250,000 in total sales annually (Low and Vogel). The medium and small sized farms sell about three quarters of local food directly to the end user (Both farmers and CSAs’ markets). However, they sell only seven percent of local food stuffs in restaurants and supermarkets. In as much as the large farms totaling 5,300 averaged 772,000 dollars in the sales of local food, the small farms only sold 7,800 dollars and the medium-sized farms managed to sell only 70,000 dollars of local food on average (Mannering). It is worth noting in the findings that nearly half of the farms which sell locally are situated near the metropolitan counties, in comparison to just a third of all the farms in America. This shows the nature of complicatedness facing the farmers who produce wheat, corn, soy as well as cereal grains and other feeds for product markets when they are switching their operations in the farms to direct sales to end users. Such farmers put on the market crops which will re-enter the food cycle as a constituent of another food- such as an oil, sweetener, starch or animal feed. The absence of a local marketplace, a network of distribution, or in a lot of cases the necessary equipment needed when harvesting or processing local foods has proves to be a major hindrance in creating a different food system. One can observe the map of the expansive agricultural centre of America to realize that the small number of remaining farmers involved in growing of millions of acres of soybeans and corn, do not actually live in a place where they can directly sell to the end user. Most farmers do not have nearby rich built-up areas where they can market their crops. It is hard for them to alternate from commodities to fruit and vegetables even if a market was present, since they have put all their investments s in the necessary machinery to plant and harvest soybeans and corn, not tomatoes, broccoli or lettuce. Overly simplistic remedies are often presented by a select few in the movement of the good-food which takes the centre of attention from the key origins of the dysfunctional food system- consolidation, deregulation as well as the manipulation of supply of the food by a handful of powerful companies. Among the most common policy solutions presented as a way out for this dysfunctional food system is doing away with farm subsidies. This remedy implies that there are some farmers who have doctored a farming policy which enables them to benefit from government payments, whereas small farms have not support. Those in support of this response believe that if these misapplied subsidies are done away with, the system will begin to have some sanity. Regrettably, the movement of the good-food has been absorbed by distorted and oversimplified analysis of farm information. It is founded on a misleading misinterpretation of USDA’s statistics which greatly overstates the number of farm operations that operate full-time. A close examination at the Census of Agriculture of the USDA implies that a third of the two point two million entities reckoned as farms by the organization make sales less than 1000 dollars a year. It is quite interesting that such small business ventures are tallied in as much as they are nowhere near being farming operations that run full time. In most scenarios, these are actually rural residences and not farms whose owners are retired (Mannering). The idea of considering such small business ventures as farms changes the statistics on the total number of the farms in America. Furthermore, it also makes it look like only minute percentages are paid by the government. In the real sense, the country has less than a million farms that operate full time which are left and nearly all of them, large and small alike, receive government subsidies. However, this is not to imply that the system of subsidy is a good policy. On the contrary, it is a sign of food production system which is broken. If farmers are penalized for policies which influential grain traders have lobbied for, the nation will never come up with a food system which can be sustained. Most average family farmers receive an average income totaling 19,277 dollars- a figure which incorporates a government financial backing. The price of fertilizers, seeds, fuel as well as other farming inputs is on a continuous rise as such industries continue to become increasingly monopolized. Most of the farmers are attempting to cling on to their farm lands and make a living from it. Theses farms are being lost at an amazing rate, which results to the merging of the small farms into expansive, corporate-run business operations having contract labor and full-time managers. Instructing these farmers that they are required to produce vegetables for the market of the local farmers once their subsidies are removed does not present a realistic answer for them as well as their communities. The people in the rural zones are seeing the profit and the wealth coming from farming being sucked up by the largest food conglomerates in the globe. Economically feasible farms are the livelihood of rural zones. Their incomes generate a fiscal multiplier effect the moment supplies are locally brought. The money also stays within the population. The loss of millions of hog, dairy farms and cattle in a span of almost thirty years has not only drained the economic base from the rural communities in America, but their vitality. Such areas have become abandoned and impoverished, and the only optimism for jobs emanates from extractive industries like hydraulic fracturing and staffing prisons. Evidently, there is something very wrong in a society which does not cherish nor value authentic food which is grown on family sized farms. There are quite a number of benefits of the vulnerable midsize farms seen in the contemporary economic landscape. Such farms fall between the small-scale farms which deal directly with the end users and the large farming operations. The midsize farms also provide open spaces, diverse landscapes, wildlife habitat, and pastureland and crops which are instrumental in reducing flooding and erosion. These are the kind of farms which could be transformed to supply organic food for long periods. Most are located in the South and the Midwest, where there are no large populations to directly buy from them. However, they have the competence of producing food for most Americans- when given a chance (Yo). Altering farming policy so as to provide that opportunity is important in the efforts of preventing the rural areas in the country from turning into industrial sites. Furthermore, it also helps to remake the food system in America in a logical way. It is important that the key structural problems which have formed the food dysfunction to be addressed. This includes the lack of enforcing the antitrust laws as well as failure of regulating foods which are genetically modified and selling of junk food materials to children. It is not surprising that Pollen’s chapters on fast food chains are so critical of how science has been integrated into food production. In this chapter, Pollen goes ahead to include baking powder as being among the active ingredients on a listing of “quasiedible substance,” (113). It appears that he used that name because of its chemical elements. In this instance, Pollen criticizes something quite new; chemical compounds in baking powder-having the effect of transforming something traditional to be more appealing. The country needs to move over and above the simplistic solutions and the stereotypes if it is to develop a movement which is wide enough to steer policy changes. It is still worthy to note that most individuals are still a number of generations away from the know-how of growing their own food. This consequently leads to a lot of misconceptions- from over-idealizing its backbreaking, hard work to the farmers’ dismissal as selfish, ignorant and greedy individuals. Having a good understanding of the intricate challenges that farmers face is essential to creating a rural fiscal development plan. This will give farmers the capacity to have a decent living while at the moment providing affordable and healthy food choices for the American citizens. Before things get out of hand, the country has the chance of altering the path of the development of its food system away from laboratories and factory farms and move toward a system which is economically as well as ecologically sound. The monopoly control can be challenged by demanding for the restoration of the antitrust laws and their enforcement. America has the luxury of having the land as well as the human capacity to produce real food which is healthy. However it requires a gigantic effort which includes streamlining the manner in which that food is cultivated, sold and distributed. This ultimately means coming up with a movement which will keep the policy makers on toes, so that farm and food policy is changes and safety, health and environmental laws are followed to the latter. It will require extensive grassroots recruitment to oppose the multi-national corporations which gain their profits from holding hostage the farmers and the end users and, more immortality, to demand for the accountability of the elected officials in the country for coming up with policies which make the American citizens fat and sick. It is important that people should have a good understanding of the complexities that the problem presents in order to champion for their solutions. It is quite difficult for the nation to buy out its way out of this predicament. The movement of the local food is quite inspiring and also uplifting. Furthermore, it indicates that the nation is finally making bold moves towards the right direction. However, it is high time that each and every individual in the country has to stand up and do more than just voting with the forks. Altering the dysfunctional food system has now become a political act. As Pollan argues, taking control of cooking might be one of the most critical steps anyone can do to make America’s food system more sustainable and much healthier. Currently, there is deliberate attempt to undermine food culture to sell processed food. This is the point where the notion of slow food which Pollan talks about comes in. this concept is about food that is fair, good and clean (Pollan 259). Slow food is concerned with how food is produced in the farms as well as how chemical-free and humane it is. The food industry has for a long time desired to impose itself in the family unit; to get between kids and parents. Therefore, slow food entails recovering the space around the family and maintaining the influence of food manufacturers outside homes in an effort of fixing the broken food system. Furthermore, there are some bills in America’s political system which have to change because they are not acting in the best interest of the American citizens. For example, the health care bill has not improved the lifestyles of the American citizens. People are still becoming obese, sick and even some die. Serious changes have to be implemented in the health care bill to mitigate this issue. Obesity rates have also been on the increase especially among the adolescent. Lack of access to healthy food is a key contributing factor. Here, it is important that one has to consider the interrelationship between healthy food materials and healthy soils. In regard to this line of thinking, one realizes that restoration of healthy soils is key to having healthy food. Works Cited Low, Sarah A., and Stephen Vogel. "Direct and Intermediated Marketing of Local Foods in the United States." USDA . N.p., 27 May 2012. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. . Mannering, Lee. "USDA report examines impact of locally grown food." pma xchange. N.p., 14 Nov. 2011. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. . McMillan, Tracie. The American way of eating: undercover at Walmart, Applebees, farm fields, and the dinner table. New York: Scribner, 2012. Print. Pollan, Michael. The omnivores dilemma: a natural history of four meals. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. Print. Yo, Leo. "Forum Post: Food and Land at the Service of People: an Interview With Peter Rosset." Occupy Forum. N.p., 24 Feb. 2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. . Read More