Food around the world
Kelsey Murphy
10/12/09

Everyone knows that food is a necessity to survive. But what most people don’t know is what’s in the food they’re eating or where it comes from. Like myself, I don’t always pay attention to what I’m eating or what could be in it that could be causing some kind of disease from the pesticides. Although this is an intense issue in the cycle of food processing, I would like to discuss more about where our food comes from and where it’s going in my intro. Because do we really know? The US is known for a supplying a good amount of food to Americans. After all we are the fattest Nation. Even “Fed Up” mentioned how the US is over producing food and it’s not being distributed enough.

We’re always hearing about starving children on the news while we sit in front of our TV eating Big Macs and Super Gulps. In my opinion I feel we’re being rather stingy and selfish about our food and that it should be evenly distributed throughout the world so there wont have to be such a thing as starving. I honestly don’t believe that it would be that hard to ship some food over to another country. Yes it may be expensive to bring over but there has to be a way to get around the cost. Maybe I’m wrong. But we’ll never know till we try.

My special assignment group is Garden Layout. A part of garden layout is the different types of farming such as monocultures and polycultures. Monoculture is where one crop is grown and produced over a large area of land from a different variety of farmers. While polyculture is multiple crops in the same space with much more diversity of natural farming. Farmers involved in polyculture are also more likely to travel with their food to sell it at places such as the Farmers Market. From both the movie “Fed Up” and the reading we were assigned in class, it had mentioned how growing smaller community gardens would bring together more organic farming and healthier people. As
well as saving money. Even though this is a good idea, there are places such as New York where people cannot and will not find a place to farm their vegetables and fruit. This is causing people to do what’s convenient for them, which is driving to the nearest grocery store and buying their more so unhealthy food.

According to the EPA, “Before a company can sell or distribute any pesticide in the United States of America, EPA must review studies on the pesticide to determine that it will not pose unreasonable risks to human health or the environment.” I thought that this was interesting because we still hear about these different diseases that are caused by pesticides such as, brain cancer, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, lymphoma, and cancers of the stomach and prostate. . If these are still occurring after the EPA has “reviewed” the health of our food, how can we trust them and the food we eat? Not only is it a health hazard to people, animals, and even soil, but mostly importantly the children. As their bodies grow then need the right nutrients, and with the different chemicals they’re eating, their hormone cycle can become messed up leading to an unhealthy life as they get older. Once pesticides are used in farming, it spreads through the soil and is there to remain for the future generations. Even after rainfall those chemicals from the fields can be washed into rivers. So since there are no pesticides in organic farming, not only is it keeping us healthier, but also it’s not polluting our water.

Although it may seem like organic farming is the best, there are some down sides to it like low productivity. Another well-known con against organic farming is the price. At most organic grocery stores prices can range from 50-100 percent more than a traditional grocery store, which not everyone can afford in this economy. I think this relates a lot to my senior project because my partner and I will be creating a broacher with information on where you can buy organic/healthy food at a decent price since it seems to be an issue for many people. We also plan on taking lots of high quality pictures of the organic food we make, and even having a map of where you can eat healthy in San Diego for a cheap decent price. I feel there is no doubt that organic farming is the better way to go considering the pros overrule the cons, but people should always know there is alternatives to eating healthy if money becomes a huge issue.



*http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/food/govt.htm
How the Government Regulates Pesticides | Pesticides | US EPA
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
* http://ask.metafilter.com/98669/Could-we-feed-the-current-world-population-using-purely-organic-farming-methods
Could we feed the current world population using purely organic farming methods? | Ask Metafilter
Ask Metafilter | Community Weblog
* http://www.grinningplanet.com/2006/update-2005-05-24/pesticides-in-food.htm
Pesticides in Food
Clean Funny Cartoons / Environmental Issues ... on Grinning Planet