Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
reduce the amount of meat we eat! Why not shift some of the acres from
feed-grain production to organic food crop production? Because even our
diet is influenced by corporations.
As described in Nestle's topic
Food Politics
(2002), our dietary guidelines
are clearly influenced by the food industry, whose vast profits are used to
buy off our politicians and scientific community. Initially, the recommended
food pyramid was supposed to read, “Go easy on beverages and foods high
in added sugars.”But thanks to strong lobbying from the sugar industry, our
guidelines now state, “Choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake
of sugars” (Nestle 2002, 81).Whose advice is this, anyway? The food industry
or independent nutritionists? Nestle notes that Americans drank twice as
much soda pop as tap water in 1999, and the pop companies specifically
target kids with their advertising. According to Nestle, we should organize
at the grassroots level and protest the agenda of the food industry. We can
learn lessons from the existing fight with Big Tobacco to formulate and
effectively fight against Big Food. In addition to educating the population
about “dietary literacy,” one way to combat this questionable corporate
influence on our government is simply to go back to fewer processed foods.
Buy organic fruit, vegetables, and grains and cook them yourself.
Organic farming is a viable, ecologically responsible means of produc-
tion that is increasingly acknowledged. Recipes in mainstream magazines,
for example, now suggest using organic produce (e.g., Better Homes and
Gardens 2003). At the same time there are a handful of irresponsible but
much publicized foes of organic agriculture, who have made faulty claims
about agriculture. Dennis Avery and his son Alex, both of whom are sup-
ported by the Hudson Institute, a conservative political group funded by
agrichemical corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont, are vocal
opponents of organic agriculture (Avery 2000). They have cited inaccu-
rate information in their arguments against organic farming. For example,
Avery claims that the use of toxic natural pesticides such as dormant oils
and sulfur has exploded because of organic farming. In fact, each of these
is used more commonly on conventional farms, with dormant oils used
on 70-90 percent of some industrial tree fruit crops and sulfur used on
many other conventional fruit crops (Creamer 2001). Further, Dennis Avery
interchanges the words
natural
and
organic
food when citing specific figures
(Burros 1999), which any expert and most consumers know is inaccurate.
Avery's vocal but invalid criticisms of organic farming are fictional at best.
Unfortunately, the Averys tend to make splashy stories for the media and
are often portrayed as agricultural experts. Dennis Avery provided opin-
ionated, unverified claims for John Stossel's inaccurate piece of journalism
[188],
(6)
Lines: 103 to 109
———
0.0pt PgVar
———
Normal Page
PgEnds: T
E
X
[188],
(6)
