Nurses understand much better than anyone that the American food industry has actually added to an epidemic of obesity and high blood pressure unmatched in current history through unfettered advertising, food ingredients and mono-crops. If we stop working to address the devastating impacts of 'Big Food' then this might also end up being a country whose population is also facing a wellness crisis.
According to The New York City Times, a big part of the money invested in health care in this nation deals with persistent illness linked to diet. But it's not simply the health of individuals at threat, the health of the world is likewise suffering. Even President Obama acknowledged that "our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transport sector."
Small family farms across America have actually mainly been replaced by mega-agricultural corporations running huge livestock feeding lots and a concentrating of our food production in large-scale centers and on huge farms.
Much at stake
The farming industrial complex is a $1.5 trillion-dollar industry in America - that's trillion with a T - with huge corporations from farms, to feeding lots, to supermarket managing nearly the entire procedure from seed to table.
In a groundbreaking choice that supported genetically-modified foods, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of seed patents - fertile soil for mega-agribusiness Monsanto, which was currently establishing lots of genetically-modified (GM) seeds. There is growing concern that introducing foreign genes into food plants may have an unexpected and unfavorable effect on human health. The British Journal Lancet examined the results of GM potatoes on the digestion system in rats and discovered "considerable distinctions." Considerable study continues the necessary question of the damage of GM foods.
This entire system has incredibly little oversight. And we've seen the consequences - under-regulated fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide saturated mono-crops of soy and corn changing little scale multi-crop farms, increases in greenhouse gases produced by large animals operations, and even recent break outs of food-born diseases coming from big cleaning and product packaging plants.
President Obama did try to combat back and exert some much-needed control over the food industry - enough so that a group backed by pesticide and fertilizer manufacturers called the Obamas, "organic limousine liberals" and contacted Michelle Obama to utilize pesticides in the White House garden.
President-elect Trump now inherits a stunning garden filled with healthy organic foods. How will his garden grow?
It is certain that business farming will try to apply impact over the brand-new administration at the expense of the household farmer and at the cost of the health of our country.
There is an alternative model for feeding our nation using less chemicals, triggering less harm to the environment and promoting healthier consuming routines. That alternative originates from a country that could not be more different from ours - Cuba.
What Cuba can teach us
Because of the USA-led embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tiny island country was left in a precarious food circumstance, not able to import fertilizers, pesticides, or food to feed its residents. It also implied that what food Cubans could grow, they mainly ate themselves instead of biking through livestock.
At the same time, the Caribbean island needed to solve the problem of farming in the age of severe weather events.
These factors contributed to Cuba being even more prepared for circumstances now dealing with lots of nations throughout the world. Cubans mastered what is now called "agro-ecology" in contrast to our country's mostly commercial farming. Small scale farmers in Cuba are leading the country's farming motion and promoting sustainable practices like planting flowers to bring in practical bugs and nitrogen producing beans to fertilize the soil. Cubans needed to find creative ways to till the soil and plant crops without fossil fuel-fed machinery.
Out of necessity
Cuba now produces almost all of its own fruit and vegetables and much of its own meat. These agricultural improvements were not constructed out of ideology. Rather, Cubans acted out of requirement, to meet the needs of a starving individuals.
Cuban agriculture can in some methods be seen as an example for the United States of a farming system that is sustainable for the health of our people and the health of our world.
Already, scientists fear that our world is on the edge of no return from global warming. If we don't scale back our agricultural usage of fossil fuels we could tip the thermometer completely for our warming world, leading to the same kind of food insecurity around the world that Cubans faced.
