posted April 10, 2004 03:54 AM            

Symptoms of Problems in the area of Agriculture in the US

* a decline in teh number of farms (down to only 350,000 to feed 240 million)

* a catastrophic decline in the number of farmers (in 2000, less than 1% of the US population farms in the US, compared to over 40% at 1900)

* a steady increase for 60 years in the size of the average American farm

* a steady increase over the past 30 years in the age of the average American farmer

* a dramatic drop in food and fiber crop diversity

* "farm gate" prices (the price a farmer gets fro her produce or animal) for 80% of crops and animals are the same - not adjusted for inflation - as they were 20 years ago

* a steady and compounding increase in the enviromental destruction caused by farming (soil, water, air, climate, biodiversity, etc)

* a rapidly increasing, extreme extinction crisis - the 6th great one on earth
-of native species
-of agriculture as opposed to the sole focus on agribusiness

posted April 10, 2004 11:44 AM            

and I'm n o t just talking about republicans here. Look at Gore for example. THIS guy had the bright idea that ALL of the world's food production should be done in the equatorial region of the world and farming everywhere else should stop! That has got to be the stupidest, least ecologically sound thing I've ever heard. And that guy claims to be this big enviromentalist and all. What a joke.

posted April 10, 2004 12:03 PM            

* the highest rate of hunger and homelessness in 30 years in the US
-14 million in the US do not have enough to eat

* the urban poor often have little or no access to fresh food
-many major cities have no food stores in poor communities
-many cities have little or no public transportation links from communities without food stores to communities with food stores

* the poor cannot afford to buy food

* yet, food in the US is the "cheapest" in the world - costing the average US citizen just 7% of their annual income (compared to 15% ormore for most other industrialized countries, and up to 60% in many under-developed countries)

* the US taxpayer pays billions of dollars each year for corn, wheat and other "farmers" to overproduce, then dump that surplus on the markets of developing countries at prices lower than local farmers in those countries need to charge to break even
-leads to genetic pollution of local seed stocks with, for example, GE corn (like the case in Zambia and Zimbabwe)
-leads to the collapes of local, subsistence farming worldwide

* in the US, we serve our children low nutrition school lunches, often with publicly subsidized, very low quality surplus food (cheese, pork, wheat, corn, etc)
-30% of US children get 50% of their daily nutrition through their publicly funded school lunch programs
-Taco Bell and other fast food corporations provide some 15% of US school lunches

* the miles food travels from producer to plate ("food miles") increases annually. On average, a bite of food anywhere in the US has traveled 1500 miles

posted April 10, 2004 01:23 PM            

quote:

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There are powers that be who would like to see the majority of Americans doing generic service type jobs that are easy to train people for. So we are a bunch of interchangeable atomatons who like to shop shop shop

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What powers? Who?

And I have yet to state my opinion about the topic, so please, do not infer any particular opinion from my question. With such a strong statement I'm simply interested in your source of info for such a thing.

posted April 10, 2004 01:45 PM            

Major corporations like Walmart, Home Depot... the corporate mouthpieces that do their bidding like AOL/Time Warner, ABC, CBS who shamelessly program Americans to consume consume consume and the politicians who get paid by the corporations to do their bidding. It's hard to point the finger at any one group responsible because the powers that be have many many arms.