The Modern Food Industry

Being a member of the FFA for the past  seven years, I have learned a lot about where our food comes from, and how it is made. I have noticed that one of the biggest problems that our society faces is with our food. The food industry today focuses on mass production at the lowest possible cost. This has resulted in unnecessary pollution, and low quality, unhealthy processed foods.  The government is partly to blame for this negative turn in the food industry.
    The food industry is nothing like it used to be half a century ago. Everything has changed from how crops and animals are raised, to the crops and animals themselves. Farms used to be very diverse, raising many different animals and crops. Now farms only contain one crop and nothing else. This change came after the invention of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms. Chemical Fertilizers were invented after World War II when the government had a lot of excess Nitrogen used for making bombs. They hired scientists to find a use for the nitrogen, and the result was fertilizer for corn. After these inventions, crops were able to grow bigger faster, and more crops could be grown on the same amount of land. The crop that took off after these inventions was corn. Needing a use for all this corn, the USDA helped fund research to alter it into practically everything. Now corn is so widely used that it is in almost everything, from your gasoline to your hamburger. It has been processed into so many different things that it is in almost every type of processed food in the supermarkets. Also, now our livestock is being fed corn, and is being grown on large feed lots. After farms started to grow only one crop, grocery stores have to get their fresh produce from further away then before. For food to stay fresh after traveling long distances, it either can not ripen on the vine, or has to contain preservatives.  These changes that government helped take place in the food industry are now beginning to cause many different problems.
    The first major impact that the food industry is causing problems in is on the environment. A lot of how the food industry operates uses up a lot of energy, and as a result pollutes. To manufacture the chemical fertilizers and pesticides requires a lot of energy, and to distribute them among the fields uses even more. Also, now that food has to travel greater distances to get to the store, it requires more gasoline and oil to get it there. The food industry is polluting and using more natural resources then necessary. Another thing that is causing pollution is over use of the fertilizers. When farmers spray too much fertilizer on their crops, rain washes the excess fertilizer into our water supply, and into the rivers. This is causing major problems in some areas, such as in the gulf where there is now a ‘dead zone’ from excess fertilizer runoff.
    The second major impact of the problems of food industry is on the consumer’s health. One thing that Americans like is cheep food that tastes good and is easy to prepare, and the government helps make this happen for us. In order to meet these three demands, most foods today are processed. This is where the roll of corn, as mentioned earlier, comes in. Corn is in most all of these processed foods because it is extremely cheep to grow, and it can be altered into almost anything. Part of the reason why corn is so cheap to grow is because the government encourages it. They subsidize farmers per bushel of corn that they grow, so they can then sell it below the cost of production. These processed foods also contain a lot of preservatives, salt, and many man made ingredients that are not good for people’s health. These products are considered healthy by the USDA and the FDA, and advertised as being healthy because they add in vitamins and minerals, but processed foods in excess are still bad. By eating a lot of processed foods, Americans are seeing a rise in diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. These problems could be avoided if most of the food in the food industry was not processed.
    One of the biggest issues that today’s society is facing today is with the food industry. The main two problems, unnecessary pollution and low quality, unhealthy foods, can be changed. These changes can start as simply as eating more unprocessed foods, and shopping at places like the local farmer’s market, where you know your food has not traveled from several states away to get to you. In addition to this change that needs to take place at home, the government needs to stop encouraging the production of cheep corn. Instead of subsidizing farmers for corn, they should spend their money on remodeling the current food industry into something better for our health and our environment.

Legalizing Marijuana

After reading my fellow classmates blog, Marijuana should be legal across the United States, I had this in response:
I agree that marijuana should be legalized in the United States for several reasons, many of which you mentioned. To add to your argument, if marijuana was legalized, the government could put a tax on it like they have on cigarettes. This would be taking advantage of a large, untaxed (because its sold on the black market) potential source of income for the federal government. Many people feel that if you legalize marijuana, usage of other illegal drugs will rise. I feel that this is not the case. Buying marijuana puts people into the places and situations where the other dangerous and addicting drugs are. When they go to buy marijuana, they are pressured and enticed into experimenting with other drugs. If marijuana were to be legalized, people would be able to go to their pharmacy to but it, and will not be around, or pressured into using the other drugs.
Although I feel that marijuana should be legalized, it should have restraints on it similar to alcohol. There should be an age limit on it of either 18 or 21 to deter the use of it by adolescents. Also, people should not be allowed to drive under the influence because marijuana can slows peoples reaction, distort their perception, and can render their judgment. Since alcohol consumption is legal and produces worse consequences then marijuana, under the same type of alcohol laws, marijuana should be legalized.