Essay On Food Industrialization

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Thomas Jefferson once said: “agriculture is our wisest pursuit because it will in the end contribute most to the real wealth, good morals and happiness.” However, the advents of modern agriculture through food industrialization may have brought him to question his own predictions. The industrialization of food is the narrowing and simplification of the food chain into a system that meets standards of quantity, uniformity and cost ultimately leading to a Western diet that threatens sustainability of life and the environment. Tom Urban (1991) was the first to coin the term industrialization of food describing it as: “a process by which consumers wants and needs were fed back into a production and distribution system to provide desired quantity, availability and price” (p. 4). Beginning in the early part of the 20th century agriculture was transformed from a diversified system of small-scale farmers who labored in the field to a complex system of large, technologically-dependent manufacturing of commodity crops like corn and soy (Dimitri, Effland & Conklin, 2005, p. 1). This emerged in response to changes in farm policy and the industrialization of other sectors of society that encourages industry to “get big or get out”.
A number of changes in farm policy and …show more content…

The surplus of carbohydrate from corn, wheat and soy in the food supply eventually translated into a surplus of calories and sugar used to create fast, cheap and convenient food products for the American consumer. Michael Pollan implicates these changes in the arrival of the Western diet and all of its consequences saying: “these changes have given us the Western that we take for granted: lots of processed food and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything-except vegetables, fruits and whole

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