The System Has Fed Us But Left Us All Starving

There have been quality issues with the food we eat now. Though mass agriculture may seem like a reasonable explanation as to why the nutritional value of our food has decreased (lower mineral, vitamin, and micronutrient density), an article published by the USDA says otherwise. “High population density is not necessarily related to land degradation; it is what a population does to the land that determines the extent of degradation. People can be a major asset in reversing a trend towards degradation. However, they need to be healthy and politically and economically motivated to care for the land, as subsistence agriculture, poverty, and illiteracy can be important causes of land and environmental degradation.” Mass agriculture isn’t bad, but sucking every dollar out of the soil for profit is. Alanis Obomsawin once said, “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

Rather than struggling to change the current system, we need to build a new one that makes the old one obsolete using the following guidelines:

The last point is key because the devolution of power allows for local farmers and citizens to be autonomous in there manufacturing of goods and services. It prevents further exploitation of the land they all live on. It’s very easy for a corporation to come in and destroy a town’s ecosystem, leaving the town in pieces when the corporation’s home base is thousands of miles away. If the townspeople are left to run the farms, we are more likely to see humans taking care of the environment as it is their home.

These are just my thoughts on a Wednesday afternoon listening to a Podcast. If you have ideas or thoughts of your own, please leave them in the comments below.

Thanks!

Related posts:

Podcast by Shauna Brennen and Stephanie Rolof. “COMMUNITY GARDENS” is published by The Planet Magazine in The Planet.

In the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reelection, the Communist Party of China has begun to take steps to realize Xi’s vision of China as an authoritative power on the world stage, adeptly…

Her mind was filled with useless information — what he was allergic to, his favorite foods, his favorite type of onion. All of that information was worthless now. She realized that she might as well…