Farmageddon

When you take a look at the state that the health of our country is in today it is no wonder that many people are looking towards healthier living as a means to pursue happiness. One aspect that is at the forefront of this movement is healthy eating, but fresh and organic food is not something that it always so easy to come by. In our grocery stores you can immediately observe which foods are easily accessible. As soon as you walk in the first foods you see are the pre-packaged sugary foods that cost the least amount of money per calorie respectively. The healthy natural and organic foods ring the outer most limits of the store making them the most inconvenient to reach and therefore the least likely to end up in your cart.

In a documentary called Farmageddon by Kristin Canty we see various groups of farmers that had been working to provide their communities with safe, healthy foods but were forced to stop. The small farmers in this film faced blocks not only from their state government but from the federal government as well. The government came in basically wanting to know what these farmers were doing that was not “science-based” which is essentially anything used that was not pesticides or other chemical fertilizer type substances; natural organic forms of growing produce.

As of right now in the United States genetically modified organisms (GMOs) do not have to be labeled. So the big juicy red apple you buy at the store could be the handy work of a farmer with a green thumb or it could be genetically modified to catch your eye and make you want to buy it. We do not know because there is no law that states that we need to know. However, at the moment a small time farmer has to go through stacks of paperwork in order for their food to be given the label of 100% certified organic. On the other hand chemical farmers do not need to give out a label that explains all of the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow their foods. The legislature on food in the US right now is somewhat of a “one-size-fits-all” when the fact is that there need to be specifications for different types of farming. There is not much government infrastructure that supports the small farms in this country and it shows.

In the United States the rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and much more have been steadily increasing over the years. This directly correlates to the increase in processed foods and lack of availability of organic foods. Many of these changes have to do with rumors and unnecessary policies. For example, raw milk used to be a classic American staple food but slowly through policies set forth by the FDA as well as ideas spread through the people said that it was dangerous and raw milk eventually faded away and even became illegal in some states such as Maryland. There are still activists that promote the consumption of raw milk and there have been several stories from farmers that say their inventory has been seized under no real legal reasoning. The laws on organic food that have been set forth and the regulations on these foods has become so strict that it makes it nearly impossible for organic farmers to continue on in the way that they previously have been. Due to this fact fresh and organic food is less available and more expensive and this has been a huge contributing factor to the decrease in overall health of America. We need to go back to what we once knew and get rid of the pesticides and the chemicals and start eating real food again.