The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Posted with permission from the author:

From: Geraldine Perry healthadvantage@comcast.net
Subject: USA products - 1st step: BUY LOCAL when possible

In any attempt to buy products made in the USA, why not start with food? Consider:

Agribusiness and its partner (in crime, some would say) the food industry represent about 1.5 trillion dollars of an approximately 11 trillion dollar economy. (Health care - or more accurately, sickness care - represents a similar, but growing amount, while the military is somewhere around double that.) Most of the money flowing into these economic sectors goes directly into corporate coffers and CEO paychecks, while we end up with toxic, nutritionless food, a trashed environment, and declining health - despite all the propaganda to the contrary.

By buying most of our food directly from small farmers (within 300 miles of where we live whenever possible), who farm responsibly and sustainably, we can accomplish several things:

#1. REDUCE ENERGY CONSUMPTION. For example, our food production system now consumes 17% of the total US energy budget. Much of this use is not always obvious. For instance, 1 ton of chemical fertilizer requires 10 tons of crude oil to manufacture. In addition, the food we eat, on average, travels some 1300 to 1500 miles from market to table. Because of factors like these, estimates are that it takes 10 calories of energy to produce one calorie of food - when food is produced within the agribusiness model. This same agribusiness model has driven down the profit margin of the small family farmer from 40 cents in 1900 to less than 10 cents today for every dollar we spend for food. The rest (of our food dollar) goes to packaging, transportation, marketing and the increasing chemicals and other inputs used by the farmer, giving a whole new meaning to nutritionless food. Subsidies do little or nothing for the small farmer - it is the agribusiness and food conglomerates who actually benefit from your generosity and mine.

#2. IMPROVE HEALTH. 95% of the food now eaten by Americans bears NO resemblance to real food, the kind of food a farmer actually grows. Thus, most of us - even when we try and yes, even when we "eat organic" - are eating food that does nothing to help us maintain our health, and may in reality be making us sick over time. If you take a prescription for any health condition, your body is telling you it needs help NOW. Eating fresh, sustainably grown foods is the best way on earth to maintain and even improve health. This includes fresh, unpasturized, unhomogenized milk and milk products from pastured animals, meat from humanely treated, pasture-fed, HEALTHY animals, and chemical-free produce grown in well-managed, untreated soil. (Read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price.) When you are able to maintain health, or improve health through natural means, the medical cartels get less of your hard-earned money - and you get fewer chemicals in your body.

#3. HELP THIRD WORLD FARMERS, AND REDUCE WORLD HUNGER. Contrary to modern propaganda, global food production is great enough to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food for every man, woman and child in the world today. Even with falling grain production (due to over-farming) the US produces more than twice what we need to feed ourselves. Surprisingly and again contrary to modern propaganda, worldwide studies show that small farms are anywhere from 200 to 1000% MORE productive per acre than larger, agribusiness-style farms. Sadly, small farmers everywhere have been crushed by corporate agribusiness, but the situation is now especially dire in third world countries where trade agreements like the WTO have basically forced these farmers into the agribusiness model. This model requires them to grow "commodity crops" for rich countries and at the same time drop those indigenous crops which have fed and sustained these poor countries for centuries. Then, because this agribusiness model produces a world-wide over-supply of Commodity crops (mostly grains), third world farmers are driven out of business because they (and all other farmers) are forced to sell their commodity crops below production cost. When these small farmers go out of business, giant agribusiness corporations pick up their land "for a song." Subsidies help the agribusiness corporations of the rich countries, while small farmers everywhere are left "to the wolves" so to speak. And once again, the big money goes into corporate coffers and CEO pockets, while increasing numbers of people starve and the rest of us eat toxic, nutrtionless food. In reality world hunger is and always has been a political decision made by those who stand to profit from it. (Read World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Alternatives to Economic Globalization and also Stolen Harvest: The Highjackingof the Global Food Supply)

#4. IMPROVE THE ENVIRONMENT. Perhaps second only to the military, agribusiness (and its associated businesses) is a major polluter of or land, water and air. For example, the EPA has identified the runoff from assorted agribusiness activities as the greatest overall source of pollution in US lakes and rivers, responsible for about 70% of the pollution in these waters. At least half of our nation's rivers have been impaired in some way by agribusiness and more than 40% are so damaged they are not suitable for drinking, fishing or swimming. Runoff from nitrogen fertilizer is the single largest source of water pollution in the world, and it is seriously impacting freshwater and ocean fish populations. Then there are the 4.7 billion pounds of pesticides used worldwide - with over one billion used in the US alone. 28% of US lakes have advisories against eating fish which are contaminated with chemicals ranging from mercury to PCBs to dioxins to an assortment of other organochlorines and chemicals used in agribusiness activities. The world's fish supply has become so contaminated that some holistics are actually warning us NOT to eat most fish. In addition, most farmland today is dead, toxic and "in a condition to blow" (as in the dust bowl days) - directly as a result of agribusiness-style methods. I could go on but you get the picture.

#5. Last, by buying our food directly from small farmers, we can DIRECTLY AND EFFECTIVELY HELP LOCAL ECONOMIES AND AT THE SAME TIME REDUCE THE PROFITS OF THE CORPORATE CARTELS.

Geraldine Perry
healthasdvantage@comcast.net