After I finished reading The Hundred Year Lie, I moved on to the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I encouraged many of my friends to read this amazing book but most did not want to know the truth. I found this very discouraging but realized that maybe they just needed a "taste" of what the book was trying to explain. So this is what I intend to do here. I can not re-write the book but I can break it down into the basics to make it more understandable and easier to digest (no pun intended :)
Corn is cheap. Corn is a commodity. It wasn't always this way either. Before the Nixon administration, US farms were paid not to produce certain crops in order to keep prices stable on the domestic and international markets. But in came Earl Butz (Secy of Agriculture under the Nixon Administration) in the 1970's and everything changed forever. He believed in the consumption model. More is better. So he instituted a policy of govt. subsidies that encouraged farmers to produce as much corn as they possibly could and the government would pay for what they couldn't sell. In search of "unlimited" profits, these farms began to steer away from the diversity model of sustainable farming and chose to become large monoculture farms just growing corn. The more corn they grew, the more money they would make "in theory". New hybrid seeds were developed that increase yields. Fertilizer (made with fossil fuel) took the place of the sun to speed up the harvest and growing season. Yields were being achieved that had never been seen before. However, these monoculture farms were also unknowingly destroying the fertility of the land. Even more directly, as this commodity corn flooded the market, the price began to fall. Now there was a huge corn surplus and no one to buy the corn. That didn't last for long. With a cheap ingredient on the market, market forces took hold and news ways of using this cheap ingredient emerged. Corn became the main ingredient in animal feed and the rise of the CAFO (conentrated Animal Feeding Operation) came to be. I won't go into details of the horrible conditions on the CAFO but lets just say that cows, pigs and chickens were not really meant to consume all this corn. To begin with, the corn isn't even edible as it is. Its commodity corn which needs to be processed in order to be digested. But cows still can't properly digest it. They have rumens which are meant to digest grass. The corn just fattens them up (marbleing) and gets them sick (the need for antibiotics and vaccines). This is the majority of the meat that we consume in our diets today. Its the meat in restaurants and the meat in your grocery store. The bigger, the better, the more marbeling, the choicer the cut. Its insane but that is how the market was directed. We all believed it was good for us.
The corn that wasn't going to CAFO's went to the big processing plants that make all the basic sweeteners, thickeners, viscosity agents and shelf stabilizers found in most processed foods. I am talking about fructose, dextrose, maltodextrin, xanthan gum, gum arabic and most ubiquitously high fructose corn syrup. There are thousands of these "ingredients" in processed foods and most of them have over 25 letters in their name and can not even be pronounced. Look on your labels, I am sure you will see at least three or more of the ingredients I listed in all of the foods in your pantry. High fructose corn syrup, a highly concentrated sugar is found in almost all soda, cookies, candy, cake, bread, and most products found on the shelves of your local grocery store. These products are cheap because their ingredients are cheap. But sadly, this processed corn is a major contributing factor to the rise in Diabetes in today's society. Its no secret that Diabetes runs more rampant in socioeconomically poor communites. They can not afford to buy organic and thus are perfect prey for these mass marketed products. What's scary is that there is more corn than meat or bread in a happy meal at McDonalds. We are essentially walking ears of corn. But it all goes back to that cunsumption model of "more is better". Consume more and we will make more. We will make it bigger and cheaper and faster and "better" all so you can continue to purchase it on more occasions and consume it in a plethera of ways. This is not good for humans or the environment.
All those monoculture farms are running off the toxic chemicals from the fetilizer and it's getting into our streams and rivers, polluting wild life and creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The soil on these farms won't be usable in a couple of decades and then what will we do? Farms will begin to disappear and what was once a staple in the American economic system will cease to exist. Farms are already disappearing because their once profitable corn crop is now so unbelievably cheap that even the govt. subsidy can't cover the cost to grow it. Small farms are being bought up for their land and only the few and most profitable farms will survive. The story is heartbreaking.
Its hard to change this system now that the wheels are in motion and the train is rolling at 100mph. However, it is reversible but it will take a lot. The meat lobbyists are a powerful group in Washington and they are out to protect their own. Cargill (the owners of almost ALL of the CAFO's and corn elevators) pay large sums of money to the govt. to keep the corn cheap. Its a vicious cycle and no one is watching out for us guinea pigs or the poor helpless environment.
So I read this book and was disgusted. I wanted to go "off the grid" for my groceries and looked for ways to do it. Thats when I found the Weston A. Price Foundation.
No comments:
Post a Comment