The food we eat contributes 11 percent of the total
household output of greenhouse gases which cause global warming; 21
percent of common and 13 percent of toxic air pollution; 47 percent of
common and 26 percent of toxic water pollution; and 78 percent of
aquatic and 54 percent of terrestrial habitat alteration.
Most of the world's fresh water and land is used in
agriculture. Our North American diets are particularly water
intensive. It takes 5,020 litres of water per person per day to
produce what we eat. Compare this to 2,810 litres per person per day
in Latin America, 2,530 litres in China, and 1,760 litres in Africa.
Much of this difference is accounted for in the quantities of meat
(production and processing of meat takes a lot of water) and irrigated
crops we eat. Meat production and processing contributes four times
more water pollution than fruits, veggies and grains. Pesticide
contaminants to water are roughly the same in both categories.
Livestock production in Canada over the past five
years has increased, in some cases dramatically (cattle 4.4%, pigs
26,4%, chickens 23.4% and sheep 46%), and the per capita demand for
meat worldwide is growing. This has led to the development of giant
feedlots or mega-barns where animal husbandry is replaced by
mechanized production. Unlike the traditional mixed farms where
livestock raised was well-matched with crops that could use the
manure, these feedlots generate huge amounts of liquid manure that
must be stored and disposed of. Most often, the volumes of manure
overwhelm the ability of local cropland to absorb it all safely.
Gigantic liquid manure lagoons can leak or rupture, contaminating
groundwater, streams, rivers and estuaries with nitrates, phosphates,
antibiotics and other drugs, and disease vectors like bacteria and
viruses. Factory farms are also a source of toxic air pollution and
noxious odours.
Aquaculture has developed along the same trajectory.
Over 20 years, small family fish farms including those in the Bay of
Fundy have become huge industrial-scale feedlots with control or
ownership increasingly concentrated in a few large hands. Chemical
inputs - drugs, pesticides, feed contaminants, anti-foulants, dyes -
and fish excrement have become a huge source of pollution to coastal
waters where aquaculture is practised. Now even shellfish aquaculture
is growing so large that there are localized impacts on the seafloor.
Industrial scale growing of monoculture crops also has
a huge environmental impact. Overworked soils cause irreplaceable
topsoil to erode and soil health to decline. Chemical fertilizers used
to compensate for degraded soil pollute groundwater and surface water.
Toxic pesticides used to control insects and kill weeds inject poisons
into the air, water and food we eat. This chemical-dependent crop
production has become dominant over the past thirty years.
Metz
Farms
(image: pigs.poop.politics)
As small farms have disappeared, food is grown further
away from consumers, creating vast distances over which food is
transported. Unless you are an exception, the elements of the supper
you will serve tonight will have travelled 2,400 kms to get from the
field to your table; from six to 12% of your food dollar pays for
transportation. As much as 75% of the food we eat is now processed in
some way.
All of this adds up to an extremely energy intensive
food system. In the US, studies show the food system accounts for
almost 16% of total energy consumption. Since most of this is fossil
fuel based (chemical pesticides and fertilizers, machinery and
transportation), the food system is a major producer of greenhouse
gases, which cause climate change. Tackling climate change will
eventually require a dramatic reorientation of agriculture to reduce
fossil fuel dependency at all levels of production.
Besides these environmental problems, chemical
sensitivities, allergies, compromised immune systems, obesity, heart
disease and cancer are among the many ailments with possible dietary
connections. Then there are the thousands of e-coli infections caused
each year by eating or handling contaminated meat from huge packing
plants where speed, not care to prevent cross-contamination, counts
for everything.
Such problems are endemic to today's industrialized
food system - capital and energy intensive, mechanized, geographically
concentrated, large scale production of single species of either crop
or animal. The production sites are further-than-the-eye-can-see
fields of monoculture crops, and feedlots, barns or ocean cages
containing tens and hundreds of thousands of head of livestock or
fish. Depending on the product, whether crop, meat or fish (industrial
aquaculture), production and distribution are supported by chemical
inputs: insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, parasiticides, synthetic
fertilizers, antifoulants, vaccines, antibiotics, preservatives and
dyes among others.
(image: pigs.poop.politics)
This industrial food system is driven by transnational
corporate processors (e.g. Maple Leaf, Cargill, McCain, or in
aquaculture, Nutreco) that are vertically integrated through the
entire food system. Large food processors either own or contract
directly with production units (farms). They also supply seed,
chemicals and feed, and sometimes own supermarket chains. They dictate
production conditions such as irrigation, animal confinement, seed
(increasingly genetically engineered), species or breed, chemical and
pharmaceutical treatments, among others.
In an unending quest for market domination, corporate
processors put the squeeze on local processors by keeping prices low
and then moving in. In the Maritimes, for example, soon after Hub meat
packers in Moncton shut down and slaughterhouse operations moved to
Larsen in Nova Scotia, Larsen was bought by the Canadian giant Maple
Leaf. In order to keep food prices low, unions are busted (witness the
shake-down of the meat-packing industry in the west by Maple Leaf
after Wallace McCain took the helm), the price paid to the producer is
near, at, and even below the cost of production, and expensive,
powerful lobbies are mounted to keep environmental and health
standards at bay.
This system, backed up by government policy and
subsidies, has put a lethal squeeze on small-scale producers across
North America. Many a farmer - potato, hog, beef - has been driven out
of business by having to sell to a processor for less than the cost of
production too many years in a row. From nearly 50,000 farmers in the
early 1950s in New Brunswick, we are now down to a couple thousand or
so.
With NAFTA, that trend is moving into Mexico. Peasants
who can't compete with the mega-farms of southwestern US (most of
which are dependent on irrigation) are being forced off their land.
The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), now being
negotiated with Central and South American countries, will push the
trend even further south and is being vehemently opposed by
small-scale producers there who see the end of local agriculture and
food self-sufficiency as the price to be paid for so-called free
trade.
As
food has become corporate and globalized, it has also become cheap to
buy. How is it possible that strawberries from California are sold
cheaper in the supermarkets than local strawberries can be at the farm
market? The fact is, we are paying a very dear price through
environmental degradation, health problems, loss of jobs and
communities, and a decrease in food self-sufficiency.
Here is the essence of the food problem: calories. In
exchange for cheap food, we have turned food - the stuff of life -
into a commodity that takes far more from the earth and from society
than it puts back. Consider this. It takes 10 - 15 calories (units of
energy) to produce one calorie of food energy by industrial
agriculture. This calculation considers chemical and feed inputs,
water use, processing, and transportation. How sustainable is that? If
all are to be fed, the industrialized food system must be transformed
to make a lighter footprint on the finite earth. We are what we eat,
after all.
Such transformation will only come at the hands of
consumers, where the only leverage for change remains. We need a
revolution in buying and eating food, one which brings us back to a
respectful relationship with the earth and sea that sustain us. The
rise in popularity of organic food is one indicator that change is
possible, but it isn't enough. Transnationals trade in organic food,
too. Buying locally, as well as organic, and engaging in food politics
to support local production and build local markets, are also key. The
seeds are planted for a sustainable food system. It's up to us to
nurture them to maturity.
ou
are what you eat. With the discovery of mad cow disease in Alberta,
this time worn maxim has a new significance, and that's a good thing.
With graphic images of feedlots, rendering plants, and vegetarian
animals being fed livestock parts fresh in our minds, now is the time
to consider the nature of the food that fuels our bodies, and from
whence it has come.
