Our food is under threat. It is felt by every family farmer who has lost their land and livelihood, every parent who can't find affordable or healthy ingredients in their neighborhood, every person worried about foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened food safety laws, every farmworker who faces toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work.
When our food is at risk we are all at risk.
Over the last thirty years, we have witnessed a massive consolidation of our food system. Never have so few corporations been responsible for more of our food chain. Of the 40,000 food items in a typical U.S. grocery store, more than half are now brought to us by just 10 corporations. Today, three companies process more than 70 percent of all U.S. beef, Tyson, Cargill and JBS. More than 90 percent of soybean seeds and 80 percent of corn seeds used in the United States are sold by just one company: Monsanto. Four companies are responsible for up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. And one in four food dollars is spent at Walmart.
What does this matter for those of us who eat? Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, the destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of our water, and health epidemics including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms of cancer. More and more, the choices that determine the food on our shelves are made by corporations concerned less with protecting our health, our environment, or our jobs than with profit margins and executive bonuses.
This consolidation also fuels the influence of concentrated economic power in politics: Last year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more than $37 million used in the fight against junk food marketing guidelines for kids.
On a global scale, the consolidation of our food system has meant devastation for farmers, forests and the climate. Take the controversial food additive palm oil. In the past decade, palm oil has become the most widely traded vegetable oil in the world and is now found in half of all packaged goods on U.S. grocery store shelves. But the large-scale production of palm oil -- driven by agribusiness demand for the relatively cheap ingredient -- has come at a cost: palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are razing rainforests, releasing massive quantities of greenhouse gases and displacing Indigenous communities.
From the global to the local, nothing is more personal than this threat to our food. And nothing more inspiring than the movement that is fighting back. On Monday February 27, tens of thousands of people -- including farmers and food workers, parents and students, urban gardeners and chefs -- will participate in a Global Day of Action to Occupy our Food Supply.
Occupy our Food Supply is a day to both resist Big Food and highlight sustainable solutions that work for all of us. On February 27, more than 60Occupy groups as well as environmental and corporate accountability organizations are joining together. From Brazil, Hungary, Ireland, Argentina, the United States and beyond, people will be reclaiming unused bank-owned lots to create community gardens; hosting seed exchanges in front of stock exchanges; labeling products on grocery store shelves that contain genetically engineered ingredients; building community alliances to support locally owned grocery stores and resist Walmart megastores; and fighting back against industrial giants Monsanto and Cargill.
The call to Occupy our Food Supply, facilitated by Rainforest Action Network, is being echoed by prominent thought leaders, authors, farmers and activists including the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, Food Inc.'s Robert Kenner, and authors Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, Gary Paul Nabhan, and Marion Nestle, among others.
As Michael Ableman, farmer, author, and founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture puts it: "We need to focus on what we are for as much as what we are against; occupying our land, our soils with life and fertility, our communities with good food. We need to work to rebuild the real economy, the one based on seeds and sunlight and individuals and communities growing together."
If you eat food, grow food, love food, join us to Occupy our Food Supply.
Anna Lappé is author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork (Bloomsbury USA) and a board member of Rainforest Action Network. Willie Nelson is founder and president of Farm Aid.
David Katz, M.D.: Into the Mouths of Babes: The Case for Minding Our Business!
I show you all the materials needed to grow an indoor vegetable garden and give you step by step instructions for a successful garden.
ANYONE can do this. You do not need to have any experience. Plus I show you how to do it for very little money so it will NOT break your bank.
Perfect for anyone that wants to live " green ' or just wants to grow their own food without all the pesticides and chemicals they use on the food you get at the supermarket.
Let me know what you think.
http://youtu.be/7jCt2UhsaYg
I just heard that 3 other states are working on the same type of labeling initiative. WE NEED TO BECOME ACTIVE CITIZEN AGAIN!!! We can choose if it's either 1933 Germany or 1774 America!!!
Lots of formerly productive land growing up to bushes.
Yes,its not located in suburban areas,but who cares?
Northern Me.has lots of good soil types and it is very cheap.
If folks want to grow their own and not be relying on you,good luck to them.
Cattle Finished in some Manure Mt.feedlot.
You eat it
.I wont.
Greens are antioxidents.
In my mind, I have created a picture of leafy green vegetables
next to a picture of an active, healthy, stronger me.
The way some people get a rush from a beer..
I get a rush from a cheese sandwich piled high with spinach leaves.
It is something I have done for myself.
Sometimes it is only the time it takes to find a combination of healthy vegetables that suits your taste...or another food that masks a taste you have been conditioned to dislike..hotsauce is good...
that is keeping you from achieving true health and mental acuity.
With a sauce of prophylactic anti biotics.
Confinement animals get sick.
YOU know it.I know it.
Consider the fact that the methods you espouse are causing unimaginable environmental damage.
You are willing to destroy the earth for profit.
Talk about biting the hand that feeds.
:-]
Most people on HP are clueless about agriculture.
OCCUPY YOUR FOOD SUPPLY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Farmers on Hpost are standing up for food.
Farmers are finally being heard on this mostly anti-modern agriculture website.
We will not go back to obsolete 1940's farming methods! Occupy farms!
From there, choose how much money you want to put to work in your community. Our goal is a million people investing 1% of what they own, this decade, to rebuild the economy from the ground up... starting with food. If you want to be a part of it, know that over $14.8 million has been invested to date in 85 small and local food enterprises. In the words of Wendell Berry, it is going to take "millions of small acts." Let your first one be signing and sharing the Slow Money Principles.
You guys are brilliant ,thank you for putting in the time and effort to help make this happen !!
HAppy Occupy Your Food Day !!!
Fanned and Faved.
☮
It's about the corn, soy, and grains grown in our Mid West, with no crop rotation, and the use of GMO adulterated seed products, that are made into our simple basic grain products. Breads, chips, cereals
Monsanto, altered seeds. Injected with poisons.
And you wonder why people can't lose weight in the past twenty years. They are starving and our digestives tracks are shutting down.
or binge, carelessly because we are too tired to find the energy we have to prepare something healthy...
Starving ourselves makes us unhealthy and decreases our stamina and thinking power...so we just drag ourselves through each day...miraculously making it to the next day on fumes.
if we can never reach our individual and ideal weight...we may never begin to eat again...for health and pleasure and healthy pleasure.
We have not spent enough time acknowledging the role of brainwashing in our fast food culture and turning the tables towards healthy food.
My whole body feels better just by looking at spinach greens...eating them is like an added bonus...
it must be something that is learned through success...or none of us would feel that way.
I'll wait.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
This is a deceptive and misleading statement.
The only undeniable truth in that statement is the loss of millions of family farmers, and that is only because fewer people are farming because technology allows an individual to manage a much larger farm compared to only a few decades ago. The rest of these accusations are not necessarily due to large corporations: the exact same thing could happen under the watch of "millions of family farmers". What matter is how they farm, not who is farming or how many people are farming.
True, they should be paying proper attention to what they're growing and how they are going about it, but trusting to a monopolistic system is a grave error.
"Accusations" which are true and well-documented no longer can be called merely accusations, and large corporations have lobbyists who write laws to further the financial interests of the corporations REGARDLESS of the harm to us consumers. That is all.
That is certainly not true if all of those small farmers are located next to each other, and they all grow the exact same thing. Like I said: it matters how you farm, not who is doing it. A single farmer with 10,000 acres can grow 1,000 different crops, just like 10,000 small farmers with 1,000 acres each can grow the same crop. Your argument is simply not valid because it is so variable.
""Accusations" which are true and well-documented no longer can be called merely accusations..."
Ok, but they are still accusations, which I why I names them so...
My post was completely independent of what BigAg businesses do. It doesn't matter that they DO create giant monocultures which demonstrably deplete soil nutirients, resulting in heavy use of chemical fertilizers which result in run-off which contaminates streams. It doesn't matter that they DO have lobbying groups that have an undue influence on policy makers are significantly effect how food-related policies are handled in what is supposed to be a demoncratic republic that looks out for it citizens above all else. That doesn't have anything to do with my post, because I was pointing out the logical error of a statement about the implications of a large farm compared to a lot of small farms.
ROFL. What in the world are you talking about? Educate myself about what? What did I say that was factually incorrect? You did nothing but make a tangential and relatively irrelevant point. LOL...amazing.
Without the wealthiest 10% of the population, most organic food producers would probably go flat bust, and the remainder would be stuck in the depressing 1970s-style health market product style of business.
The corporate model of food production dominates because it provides cheapest available calories to low- and middle-income workers who are employed 40, 50, 60, or more hours a week. They don't shop at Whole Foods, and they don't have, by any means, the time (or, often, the yards) to grow their own crops, despite the paeans you normally see on message boards like this about how anyone with a 600 sq ft apartment with a window facing vaguely south can easily grow half their food needs by just spending a few minutes a day taking care of their "crops."
There's no real way out of this situation, unless you acknowledge that about 95% of the 99% are completely apathetic to the notions expressed in this article. A more equitable distribution of wealth is the only way to fix this.
Here's the catch, the upper 1% or 10%, or often even 50% of wage earners do NOT live in co-ops. In fact, most co-ops specifically strive to accommodate lower-income individuals. They are very popular amongst students, but are definitely multi-generational and are open to anyone. I live in a co-op and we have 5 fantastic vegetarian meals per week. We procure our food from farmers markets, CSAs, food cooperatives, etc. We also grow a ton of food ourselves in our 3 gardens.
It is funny that you feel only top-dog execs buy local/organic food. Last time I was at our local farmers market...I didn't see a single 1-percenter! (unless they were in a really good disguise). I did, however, see many of my own community members and friends, who all have modest jobs and incomes...
FYI...Whole Foods is *not* the only source of healthy food and healthy food is *not* inherently expensive.
Those are the bogus things they should end.
More giveaways to the wealthy.
Lots of wealthy dabble in that.
I know several.
Most are oil dealer-Farmers.
Guess what they make their$ in?