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Is a radical restructuring in food production on the way?

by Monica Davis (davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com)
The national security issue that we need to be looking at is not what some terrorist organization might do, not the possibility of some war game scenario coming true, but the actual vulnerability and inefficiency of our food supply and food production system right here, right now, today.
chicknveggie.jpg
From the smallest ferret, to the mammoth sized elephant, mammals spend a great deal of their time foraging for food. Hunting, gathering, growing and preparing food takes a great deal of human industriousness and resources as well.

The emergence of the “Green Revolution” deluded us into thinking that we had finally “conquered nature”. Petro-chemical derived fertilizers allowed us to pull unimaginable amounts of crops from the earth, a process which banished hunger and famine in many parts of the world. In the process, we used up a lot of carbon-based fuel, generated unimaginable carbon-based pollution and became dependent on a petro chemical-based agriculture system. The agro-chemical industry gave birth to industrial agriculture, and eventually pushed millions of family farmers around the world out of business.

…chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food)

Because oil and fossil fuels were so plentiful, we looked at the ease of using fossil fuel-based fertilizers and fuel, without paying attention to the complete energy-crop formula. Namely, that the amount of energy required to fertilize, plant and harvest food exceeds the dietary caloric value of the food. In short, it takes 10 calories of energy to grow enough food to generate one calorie of food energy for human consumption.

Simply put, while the modern agricultural phenomenon has generated huge strides in the amount of food we can produce, built in inefficiencies from production-to-consumption energy ratios to processing/transportation/waste costs generate a negative output. In other words, modern agriculture uses more energy to produce the food than the food produces as dietary energy.

The 10:1 production-consumption ratio means that modern agriculture requires ten times the energy to produce your food than you get from eating it. Not only is modern agro-production hugely inefficient, but it takes a massive amount of energy to haul out of season, non-regional produce around the country, and around the world, too.

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto)

So, what we now have is a mechanized, industrialized agriculture behemoth that consumes nearly 20 percent of the nation’s energy output, and takes twice as much energy to produce food as we get eating it. All of this at the expense of family farmers and sustainable farming practices.

Again, going back to Pollan: a single plate full of food has an energy bill that we can no longer afford, if we ever could. According to Pollan, “… when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.” (Ibid)

The intensive, concentrated food production is not only a sustainable living issue; it is also a security issue as well. Our mega-agriculture companies are simply too concentrated and too vulnerable to bio-terror attacks and built in errors.

Think of the numbers of recalls we have had over the past few years. Millions and millions of pounds of beef have been recalled due to possible e.coli and other pathogenic contamination. Spinach, peanut butter, and millions of pounds of meat and meat products.

According to the National Institute of Health, food contamination sickens more than 70 million people annually.

Each year, 76 million people in the U.S. get sick from contaminated food. Common culprits include bacteria, parasites and viruses. Symptoms range from mild to serious. They include
· Upset stomach
· Abdominal cramps
· Nausea and vomiting
· Diarrhea
· Fever
· Dehydration
(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/foodcontaminationandpoisoning.html)

Food borne diseases are another problem, particularly with industrialized agriculture’s far-reaching marketing system. A single company can produce millions of pounds of food that is transported nation or worldwide.
Foodborne Diseases:


· Botulism· Campylobacteriosis· E. coli· Hepatitis A· Norovirus Infection· Salmonellosis· Shigellosis

Infectious diseases spread through food or beverages are a common, distressing, and sometimes life-threatening problem for millions of people in the United States and around the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates 76 million people suffer from foodborne illnesses each year in the United States, accounting for 325,000 hospitalizations and more than 5,000 deaths. (http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodborne/default.htm)

The national security issue that we need to be looking at is not what some terrorist organization might do, not the possibility of some war game scenario coming true, but the actual vulnerability and inefficiency of our food supply and food production system right here, right now, today.

When 76 million people get sick annually from contaminated food; when 325,000 people are hospitalized as a result of consuming contaminated food; when 5,000 people die each year from infectious diseases generated by contaminated food, we have a problem.

As of 2005,
Terrorists killed 14,602 people and carried out approximately 11,000 attacks last year, according to a report [PDF] scheduled for release Friday morning by the State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center. That's more than double the incidents and fatalities in 2004, when 3,192 attacks killed 6,060 people, NCTC reported last July. (Corine Hegland, NationalJournal.com,” Terrorist Incidents, Deaths More Than Double In 2005”)

Now, what this means is that in the United States alone, more people have been injured or killed by food-borne pathogens and contaminated food than have been killed worldwide by terrorists. So, the question I want to ask is this: what is more dangerous to us, the food production system with its long transportation/delivery lines or terrorists, who so far have only managed to take down 2 buildings and kill less than 4,000 people in the continental US?

We must change the way we produce, transport and consume food because the current monolithic system is dangerously vulnerable to contamination, infiltration, manipulation, sabotage and fossil resource depletion. We use too much fossil fuel, too much fertilizer and pesticides. We use too much fossil fuel to plant, harvest, transport and process food.

The large-scale industrial farm “efficiencies” are countered by the costs of resource depletion, food chain vulnerability and transportation expense. If we can “efficiently” grow millions of acres of crop X, but the energy deficit of growing vs. its output as body fuel wipes out the alleged efficiency, then it is time to move to a better model.

Ultimately, if we are going to get anywhere near a solution of the oil dependence-distance equation in food production and consumption, we must decrease the travel distance, energy consumption and production scale of our agricultural system. It has become too large, too inefficient and too vulnerable to systemic failure. Industrial agriculture, as a self-serving, incestuous, energy depleting food production model must either be replaced or tweaked to decrease energy usage.

About the author:
Ms. Davis is an author, poet, public speaker, radio personality and columnist. She has written hundreds of articles on land loss, sustainable living, civil rights and economics and is published in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. Her articles on foreclosure fraud, land theft and document deception have been published in ezines, and banking magazines, both in print and on-line. One of her articles on land theft in the black farm community has been read into the Congressional Record.

Ms. Davis's land loss have been used by home schoolers in New Zealand. She has presented papers at conferences and university programs and has conducted book signings and presentations at museums. She is currently booking speaking engagements for 2009 and may be reached at davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com
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