Entry #9: Food For Thought

     

     Writing an essay about food for my English class has certainly got me thinking more about food, in all sorts of aspects. I can't believe how much of an effect commercial farming has on the environment. Just the example of the role fertilizer play is baffling. Here's roughly how some of it can go, from what I've read:

1. In order to specialize in growing a certain crop, commercial farmers have developed the practice of growing crops in "monocultures". This means they grow a single crop in a single field, year after year.
2. The specific crop demands certain nutrients from the soil and pulls them out in excess. The soil begins to get damaged, running out of this nutrient the crops need and then the crops struggle to grow.
3. Fertilizers with those chemicals are synthesized and put into the soil. Unfortunately, the fertilizer damages other microbes and organisms responsible for keeping the soil healthy. This damage causes the soil's structure to become damaged.
4. The damage to the soil affects its ability to hold water, making it rely on irrigation. Unfortunately, the soil's ability to retain chemicals that crops use (like those in the fertilizer) is also damaged. This means the chemicals can leach away into nearby bodies of water and into the atmosphere.
5. In the atmosphere, they become greenhouse gases. In the water, nitrogen from the fertilizer create blooms of algae which sap oxygen from the water, creating something called hypoxia. This lack of oxygen makes large areas of the water inhospitable for sea life, creating areas called "dead zones."
6. The soil eventually erodes and fails to produce what it once did, necessitating deforestation of new areas to make room for more commercial crop growth.

     It's terrible, it seems like in the name of what our sensibilities define as efficiency we create an endless chain of problems where they never existed before. Soil also plays an important role in storing carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere. As we destroy soil and trees, we remove vital parts of our ecosystem and potential defenses against our contributions to anthropogenic climate change. And that whole system only represents one of the problems I came across. It really becomes an endless rabbit hole on nearly any issue you look at.

     I was also shocked to learn that nearly the majority of crops we grow don't go to us, but a large percentage go to livestock to feed our meat consumption habits. I read that about 55%, or slightly over half, go to us. It seems like if we could reduce our meat consumption, we could also have a serious effect on the damage done by growing monocultures. If the demand for meat changed considerably, the demand for crops grown in monocultures would necessarily have to change.

     This idea of monocultures being bad clicked with me in an especially odd way. I started to view those carefully managed fields of grain that are so indelibly inscribed in our idea of America, the 'amber waves of grain', as something darkly modern. Hearing the complaints by current and former farmers- about being shafted by modern agricultural business- made me begin to wonder if I had it all wrong. 

      Are these fields, that are so deeply considered part of the identity of salt-of-the-earth, rural America- throwbacks to a simpler time- actually symbols of a destructive, corporate interest that will now fight tooth-and-nail to preserve their bottom line? It seems this is the type of imagery some people would use to invoke images of a long-lost, simpler time but there doesn't seem to be anything lost or simple about it. I wonder if the emotional context we have for this image is all wrong. There's a probably a better way to say all of this, but its pretty fresh in my mind as of now.

     Overall, as I've previously said on this blog, I'm sure these are issues that cannot be tackled individually. Grassroots energy (no pun intended) being built is undoubtedly good but there is too much of a reliable profit motive ingrained (ugh) in commercial farming.  Environmental regulations need to be placed- globally- and strictly enforced on farms. Industries producing pesticides and synthetic fertilizers may need to be closely regulated as well, if not partially dissolved.

     Immediately, this all begins to become overwhelming when you consider what this might do to food prices. I won't lie, I'm nearly giddy to see the type of conversations this type of issue would spark. For too long, first-world, urban convenience has kept so many people isolated from the material effects of climate change. If we began to rip the band-aids off all at once, what would that change look like in the life of everyday people? I can't even begin to imagine; would it be drastic? Or, in the life of most people, would it come as a minor inconvenience that most would adjust to and internalize in the course of a few years- or even months?

     Either way, I think making individual changes is important not only for normalizing the concept of giving up comfort/convenience for sustainability, but for your character and education. Lifting weights has taught me a good bit about what I need to eat and made me reflect on what I once ate in the past, I eat 3100+ calories a day now, often eating the same amount of meat or less (10oz, five at lunch and five at dinner) that I ate before I started working out. However, learning about food seems to make me more conscious of the ethics of where my food comes from.

     I think its plainly clear that the popular, commercial agricultural system that exists the world over is unsustainable and unethical, but its so widely prevalent. It seems impossible to not be at least partly complicit in it. Food farmed by organic means does not yield the quantities commercial farming has become capable of so the price difference and prevalence coerces people, especially people with less money, to participate. I really struggle to define this as an informed choice, or to even to consider calling it a "choice" without nuanced discussion to be a responsible thing to do. 

     All of this tends to overwhelm me, who has time to contemplate all this stuff? And, when they're done, where do they find the time to fight for it? Overall, I don't think we should accept anything less than sustainable, environmentally friendly agriculture. After that, I think there's a very difficult conversation about humanity to livestock that I think bears a heavy toll on a lot of us meat-eaters.

 

     Which brings me to a quick question I've been considering ever since visiting Lee Lee's, an Asian market. I saw chicken feet, chicken hearts, cow liver- a couple of months later, at a Mexican supermarket, I saw a whole frozen sheep's head! Would us Americans eating less common cuts of cows, pigs, chickens (and even sheep) decrease the demand for meat and crops grown to feed livestock? Americans usually only eat certain parts of these animals so we, and other similar countries, create demand for those parts that is much greater than the rate most people demand less common parts like tongue, brain, liver, etc. What happens to these parts when there's no demand for them, I wonder? Do they just get thrown out?

     It seems counter-intuitive, but could more parts of the animals we're so fond of eating result in people eating less of them overall? I wonder.