Without realization corn has gradually converted into one of our primary sources of energy. Over the years the human race has learned to manipulate corn in such a way that we have overproduced it. Therefore this new surplus of corn has lead us to reinvent the use of corn in many new ways. Ultimately, this reinvention of corn use has lead to many unexpected consequences within animals and humans lives.
Many people wouldn't consider corn a huge contributing element to their everyday diets. However the reality is that almost everyone consumes some type of corn daily. This is due to the recent reinvention of the use of corn which can be found in many foods and drinks in the American market. From soft drinks to candy bars corn is involved in almost
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For example Michael Pollan explains that due to this new overproduction of corn caused by human manipulating corn breeding many changes have arised. One of theses changes is the replacement of grasslands and farms by (CAFO) Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Consequently this replacement of long-established practices have resulted in many negative consequences for livestock. The most noticeable example being the life cycle of a cow. Due to the new changes cows no longer are raised in farms instead they are propagated in CAFO’s. This new development process ultimately rewrites the entire cows life cycle. Traditionally a cow is raised in a farm where it is free to roam and eat grass. The cow then contributes to the environment by fulfilling its ecological niche and fertilizing the soil with its waste. Therefore creating an environmental cycle in which it eats the grass and then helps produce more of it. However when cows are placed in CAFO’s this procedure is dramatically affected. Not only is the cow's life cycle disturbed but it is also shorten as cows are now slaughtered at the early age of 14 to 16 months thanks to the corn concentrated diet. This new rapid growth cycle in which cows have been adapted to have also resulted in many unfavorable effects. Due to the feed these cows are being raised on they “rarely live on feedlot diets for more than 150 days” (Pollan, 78). Hence the cows such as Steer 534 are provided with antibiotics to keep them healthy until they are old enough to be slaughtered. Nevertheless these antibiotics given to the cows can be said to ultimately be harmful to the consumers. Ultimately this new cycle in which cows play the primary role demonstrates how the overproduction of corn has affected traditional farming methods and stock
The U.S. government spends billions of dollars every year subsidizing corn production, livestock feed, processed foods, and ethanol production account for the greatest uses of corn in the United States. Supplying the livestock and processed food industries with cheap corn ultimately leads to an American diet that is heavily based on the consumption of meat and sugary processed foods. This diet is thought to contribute to America’s obesity epidemic. Corn subsidies also encourage production of ethanol. Ethanol may be no better than fossil fuels because of the required energy inputs and the environmental damage caused by its production.
In the New York Times article “When a Crop Becomes a King”, author Michael Pollan argues there is an overproduction of corn that does more harm than it does good. He writes this in response to a farm bill signed by then President Bush to increase the budget for corn production which caused much controversy. Pollan uses an infuriated and frustrated tone in order to convince American consumers that corn has taken over their environment and economy. Michael Pollan uses rhetorical strategies to challenge conventional views of corn and to argue against additional corn production.
There are many issues regarding the raising and producing of various livestock animals, and the use of pesticides on various types of crops. The movie Food.Inc does a good job explaining these issues, but in a very biased way. It makes agriculturists look like terrible people, when this is not the case.
Currently, the United States is the largest producer of corn in the world. In 2010, it produced 32% of the world’s corn crop. Corn is grown on approximately 400,000 U.S. farms, showing the importance of corn in the United States’ diets. Twenty percent of the corn produced is exported and corn grown for grain accounts for almost one quarter of the harvested crop acres in this country (National Corn Grower's Associatio...
We should be concerned about the health of the animals that we are eating because if they are not consuming any healthy food we will not get our required nutrients. In the movie Food Inc. it shows how cows are only supposed to eat grass which is essential to them however we are now feeding them corn which makes the cows bigger and fatter faster than usual but there are many things wrong with it. This could cause Cows to raise the acid level this also creates existence for the dangerous disease E. Coli. E. Coli is a bacteria that is inside your intestines that helps you break down food. When cows are fed corn it also decreases the healthy acids such as Omega-3 and increases Omega-6 which is unhealthy. We should also care about their living conditions because a cow is in one area for most of the day just eating corn and when cows eat corn they tend to poop a lot. It is crowded in the eating area for cows so when they poop it falls on the ground and they eat so much corn that they just keep pooping so eventually they start stepping in it and this would cause them to get diseases. Some farmers when they slaughter them they do check for diseases but some don’t, so the diseases travel with the cow and onto your dinner plate which means that you could be eating an infected cow without knowing it. This could give you diseases and it could cause death. In Food Inc. they showed an example of a boy called Kevin who died because of consuming some unsanitary meat. He got E. Coli and died 12 days later. This proves that this should not be taken lightly because many people die from diseases similar to this one.
Corn helps the cows, chicken, and other animals grow faster and produce more milk, etc. as well. Instead of animals being out free in their natural environment, they are more indoors tethered to machines, eating corn. 2) All life is based on nitrogen. It forms the building blocks of organic materials and genetic information. But most of the earth's 80% nitrogen is unusable, unless it is “fixed” by combining it with hydrogen atoms. In 1909, Fritz Haber figured out how to make synthetic, usable nitrogen, which geographer Vaclav Smil calls the most important invention of the twentieth century. Without it, the human population would eventually have starved. Creating so much extra nitrogen has disrupted the natural cycle of nitrogen production. The nitrogen that isn't used by the corn evaporates into the atmosphere, which creates acid rain and speeds up global warming. The excess runoff of nitrogen-rich water makes the algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico,
Although feeding corn to cattle speeds up the process until they reach slaughter time, evidence shows that feeding corn to cattle that are genetically wired to eat grass produces unhealthy beef which then plays a role in healthy people, minimizing the longevity in Americans. Furthermore, the logic of nature relies on complex mutual relationship where each animal contributes to the sustainability of their environment in a cyclic manner as stated in the chapter “All Flesh is Grass”:
Given the amount of resources that the world as a whole has access to why use corn as a source of fuel? Some would say that countries, such as the United States have an overabundance of food produce. Logically, those countries that have an over surplus of food MUST have enough to put a dent into the rapidly increasing costs of oil and gasoline. Unfortunately, that is a misconception. In order to produce enough corn to fuel the global economy it is important to analyze what that actually means for farmers and the government, not to mention the actual food supply. In order to produce corn ethanol, we must first grow an abundance of corn. Simple right? Wrong, corn is very draining on the soil it is grown, which, in short, means that whomever is growing the corn would have to rotate the corn plantation with something that will restore the nutrients of the soil. Unfortunately, that takes both time and money to do. The task would cal...
In today’s traditional factory farms, beef cattle are being raised in cruel living environments. In an article written by Berry Estabrook titled Feedlots vs Pastures: Two Very Different Ways to Fatten Beef Cattle, published in “The Atlantic” written December 28th, 2011 says that most of Americas beef comes from factory farms. They are crammed by the thousands into crowded, confined dirt lots. The cattle have hardly any room to move around and are forced to live in piles of their own excrement. Due to the many cows, they are deprived from ve...
Fast food consumption is taking America by a storm and it is for the sake of our lives. Fast food relies heavily on industrialized corn because of how cheap and easy to grow it is. With that being said, animals are being fed with corn rather than being fed with grass. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Rich Blair who runs a “cow-calf” operation s...
Animal and plant husbandry due to human growth has transformed into factories that pump out foodstuffs in higher quantities than imaginable centuries in the past. This is done through the use of monocultures, which produce one single crop in high quantities, and factory farming, compact animal lots that grow the animal as quickly as possible for slaughter. The shift to monoculture farming and factory farming was due to the rapid increase in population and advancements in farming technology, for example pesticides. In recent years the focus has shifted to escaping factory farming through organic farming. Organic farming produces foodstuffs without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or any other artificial factors. Organic farming focuses on natural development of organisms. Author Michael Pollan in his essay “The Animals: Practicing Complexity” describes his time at an organic farm and describes Polyface Farm as profitable, efficient, cheap,
Factory farming is where animals are packed as closely together as attainable, most never see or feel the sunlight, able to get fresh air or even able to turn around. These terrible conditions have serious effects on the animals physically and mentally. Illness spreads and fights break out between animals. This worldwide epidemic known as factory farming began when greedy people began to modify farms to maximise profit for themselves, but because of this, it not only has a terrible impact on animals but
As the class discussed in lecture, the myth created a personalized connection between the Native Americans and the Earth and allowed the Native Americans to identify with their landscape. Because they believed that corn came from recycled human flesh, they could see it as an animate, personalized being, rather than just an object. Merchant explains how the Native Americans also believed, because of the Corn Mother, that “the Earth would continue to regenerate the human body through the corn plant.” This shows that rather than just seeing corn as an object to cultivate, it was a sacred gift given to them by the land. Because the land gave the gift of corn to them, they believed the land should be treated with
Factory farming began in the 1920s soon after the discovery of vitamins A and D. Shirley Leung said, when these vitamins are added to feed, animals no longer require exercise and sunlight for growth (B2). This allowed large numbers of animals to be raised indoors year-round. The greatest problem that was faced in raising these animals indoors was the spread of disease, which was fought against in the 1940s with the development of antibiotics. Farmers found they could increase productivity and reduce the operating costs by using machines and assembly-line techniques. Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the fast food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; “they are food producing machines” (BBC). They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. The worst thing is that ...
A surprising fact is that most of the corn we produce in the United States is not actually eaten. In 2008 the United States produced a total of 12.1 million bushels of maize. Of that 5.2 million was used as livestock feed, 3.6 million for ethanol production, 1.8 million for exporting, .9 million for production of starch, sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, and oils, and finally .3 million for human consumption in grits, flour, alcohol, etc.