The same agricultural policies that made farmers into commodity crop growers are at the root of the current obesity epidemic. According to a report by the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy called "Food Without Thought: How US Farm Policy Contributes to Obesity, "the problem with the extensive use of cheap commodities in food products is that they fall into the very dietary categories that have been linked to obesity: added sugars and fats. US Farm policies driving down the price of these commodities made added sugars and fats some of the cheapest food substances to produce. High fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oils " products that did not even exist a few generations ago but are now hard to avoid " have proliferated thanks to artificially cheap corn and soybeans. [13] In other words, US farm policies make poor eating habits an economically sensible choice " with long-term negative health consequences for consumers and economically devastating consequences for family farmers.
More Americans are coming to understand the connections between their personal health, the economic heath of their communities and their long-term food security. Without a doubt, they know something has to change.
In response, people are setting up their own alternatives to the physically, environmentally and socially unhealthful industrial food system by developing an array of farm-to-consumer networks. The rapid increase in farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture schemes, community gardens and home gardens reflect this growing understanding. People across the country are taking steps to shorten food miles and the food supply chain itself.
Their story is told in a video produced by Ruell Chappell, the founder of Springfield, Missouri's Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance, that underscores why it is so important that communities, once self-sufficient, organize local sourcing for their food.[14] In essence, the Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance, like countless other groups around the country, is striving to re-create what CED's "Adaptive Program for Agriculture destroyed.
Of course, the localization movement, though still in its early stages of development, hasn't gone unnoticed by agribusiness, which recognizes that the movement directly competes with the highly consolidated retail chains for the consumer dollar.
The Return of Monsanto's Public Policy Strategist to Government Service
While Michelle Obama's organic White House garden is a testimony to the importance she places on safe fruits and vegetables in her family's diet, her husband is ignoring the fact that our food supply is overflowing with FDA-approved unsafe, toxic chemicals pumped into it as pesticides, sweetners, colorings, preservatives and flavor enhancers. Rather than address these more far-reaching food safety issues that affect everyone's long-term health, the Obama administration has made a far less pervasive problem its central food safety cause. And " remarkably " it named Michael Taylor Senior Advisor to the Commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration to oversee the implementation of new food safety measures.
Many people have expressed shock at this development, as Taylor, it can be argued, has done more than almost anyone in recent memory to undermine the safety of the food supply. He was instrumental in implementing biotech-pleasing policies that forced unlabeled genetically engineered food on an unwilling public. At the time Taylor bid the wishes of vested interests to get this product commercialized pronto, the government's own scientists warned of the dangers GMOs could pose.
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