Problems of the Food System

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We live in an age in which we have come to expect everything to be instantaneously at our fingertips. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant tea, and even instant mashed potatoes. We can walk down the street at 5 in the morning and get a gallon of milk or even a weeks worth of groceries at our discretion. Even though it is great that food is now readily available at all times, this convenience comes at a price, for both the producer and the consumer. Farmers are cheated out of money and are slaves to big business, workers and animals are mistreated. And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the procedures of the instantaneous food system are left unchanged due to the obliviousness of the consumers and the dollar signs in the eyes of the government and big business. The problem begins with the mistreatment and exploitation of farmers.

Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...

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...g it. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Works Cited

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. N.p.: Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma. N.p.: Penguin Books, 2006. Print.

"Monsanto uses patent law to control most of U.S. corn, soy seed market." Cleveland National News. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. .

"Artificial Hormones." Sustainable Table . N.p., 1 Nov. 2011. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. .

"U.S. Food System Facts Sheet." Center for Sustainable Systems . The University of Michigan , 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. .

Food Inc. . Prod. Robert Kenner. 2008. CD-ROM.

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