The Agricultural Worldadamsedu.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/4/1/28419347/industrial... · 2018-02-15 · Reduction of financial risks as family farms decline, corporations take more of

Industrial Agriculture

Industrial Farming

Definition:

the current stage of commercial agriculture resulting from the shift of the farm as the center of production to a position as just one step in a process that begins on the farm and ends at the table of the consumer

AGRIBUSINESS

commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations

Industrial Farming (ctd.) Benefits

Reduction of financial risks as family farms decline, corporations take more of the financial risk and they are more capable of handling the potential risk.

Economies of scale reduce costs and provide more uniformity

Access to more distant markets.

Impacts

Use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to manage monoculture crops potentially releases toxic chemicals into rivers and groundwater as well as the food itself

Use of irrigation. These farms can be large and perhaps excessively large which would put a strain on the local water supply

Biotechnology (GMOs) results in farmers would mean loss of genetic diversity (loss of biodiversity) and potentially represent a danger to the environment and present health concerns for the consumer

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC

Purpose Sale “off-farm” Commercial

Family use Subsistence

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC



% of Farmers Low 2% in US/Canada

High (labor-intensive) 50% in LDCs Large % of economy women

Agricultural Workers

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC





Technology mechanized farming Fertilizer/hormones/GMOs Transportation

by hand “intensive” (Boserup) Some diffusion von Thunen’s model

Area of Farmland Per Tractor

Figure 10-6

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC







Farm size Huge Largest 5% produce 75% of output in US

Small, densely packed, all land used (terracing) Inefficient

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC







Farm size Huge Largest 5% produce 75% of output in US

Small, densely packed, all land used (terracing) Inefficient

Relationship to other businesses

Agribusiness/commercial agriculture (large corps.) Integrated into food-production 20% US labor force in food-processing factory farms monocultures

Since consumption is on farm little connection to agribusiness Polyculture

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC

Market National/Global Why? Transportation Refrigeration Corporations Local food movement (“farmer’s markets” oppose above)

Farm/Local market Water access issues Von Thunen model (Intensity of cultivation declines with increasing distance from market) Lack of refrigeration, transportation infrastructure, chemicals Some plantations growing cash/luxury crops

MDC vs. LDC MDC LDC

Market National/Global Why? Transportation Refrigeration Corporations Local food movement (“farmer’s markets” oppose above)

Farm/Local market Water access issues Von Thunen model (Intensity of cultivation declines with increasing distance from market) Lack of refrigeration, transportation infrastructure, chemicals Some plantations growing cash/luxury crops

Diet/food Variety

great variety processed/preservatives more and even excessive amounts of meat -meat takes “more” to produce (more resources at work) -obesity is a major problem in MDCs -Eat too many calories -Eat more fast food and processed

little variety Seasonal More natural not enough protein or less protein -eat just enough calories -more likely to cook food

Characteristics of Corporate Farms • Concentration

• # of farms has decreased

• ownership is more concentrated.

• In the U.S., four companies control 81% of cows, 73% of sheep, 57% of pigs and 50% of chickens

• Example:

• In 1967, there were one million pig farms in America

• as of 2002, there were 114,000

• Monocultures

• Factory farming

Monocultures farms that produce single commodities

average about 14,000 acres

roughly the size of Manhattan.

And the future? Thomas Dorr, undersecretary of agriculture for rural affairs,

predicts that 250,000-acre behemoths will dominate

# of farms in Iowa, would drop to 120 from 89,000.

"Get big or get out" farmers have been told for years.

Benefit of big farms: inexpensive food.

Americans spend a smaller % of their disposable income for food than anyone else in the developed world.

What's wrong with megafarms and monocultures

To sustain their unnatural existence, they require

enormous quantities of pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics simply to survive.

The result? Pollution, erosion and diseases that spread easily among factory-raised, immune-deficient animals.

Sadly, these farms aren't going away.

In a perverse logic, a farm needs to get ever larger and more specialized to survive.

# of farms with annual sales of more than $500,000 has increased 23 % from 1997 to 2002.

American farm policy, with a dazzling menu of subsidies, will keep us on this path for the foreseeable future.

Fewer and fewer family farms

Factory Farms • Confinement in high stocking density

• systematic or “planned”

• produce the highest output at the lowest cost

• economies of scale,

• modern machinery,

• biotechnology (vitamin supplements and hormones)

• Requires antibiotics/pesticides to slow spread of disease

• usually associated with meat production (pig and chicken), milk and eggs

Factory Farms Animal welfare impacts:

Close confinement systems (cages, crates)

control movement or actions regarded as undesirable.

Fast-spreading infections encouraged by crowding and stress

Debeaking (beak amputation without pain killer) and other animal abuses

Environmental impacts:

Deforestation for animal feed production

Unsustainable pressure on land for production of animal feed

Pollution of soil, water and air by nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer used for feed-crops and from manure

Worldwide reduction of genetic diversity of livestock and loss of traditional breeds

The Difference Between Small and Large Farms. Why some people insist on buying from small family

farms?

food is fresher, less processed, generally tastes

better

political and social considerations:

supporting small farmers

preserving farmland

reduce the number of industrial farms

move away from an agricultural economy that

encourages the production of commodities

like corn, soy and sugar at the expense of just

about everything else.

Growth of the Organic market in MDCs

Definition:

Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity

Relies on crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation to maintain soil productivity.

It controls pests only by excluding or limiting the use of synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides.

minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.

First-World Problems

Artificial and Changed Ingredients and Preservatives

• Refined sugars.

• include glucose, dextrose, fructose, and galactose

• all of which offer little or no nutrition.

• cause weight gain and promote storage of fat.

• Bleached White Flour Bleached

• “manufactured creation”

• stripped of its natural nutrients and fiber

• makes bread softy and fluffy.

• has little nutritional value to your diet.

• Refined Flour

• low-nutrient calories, carbohydrate imbalances, altered insulin production

Pink Slime

Pink Slime • The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-

microbial agent in meats, which allows manufacturers to use otherwise inedible meat, connective tissue etc.

• "Basically we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans."

• the chemical, used in fertilizers, household cleaners and even homemade explosives, was also used as a ground beef filler. • Can be up to 15% and still be labelled as 100% ground beef

• Even more disturbing, St. Louis-based dietician Sarah Prochaska told NBC affiliate KSDK that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the "component in a production procedure" by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.

• x

Other Ingredients • Propylene glycol:

• similar to a dangerous anti-freeze.

• prevents products (ice cream) from becoming too solid.

• BPA: chemical bisphenol-A – Uses in the process of making cans and plastic bottles

• Effects

• The Worst: brain development during pregnancy

• Possible: link to obesity and stress levels (children)

• Phosphoric Acid

• acidify foods and beverages such as various colas

• Correlation between soft drink consumption and osteoporosis (literally "porous bones")

• Calcium deficiency in post-menopausal women

• X

Osteoporosis (you are what you drink)

Trans Fats Trans fatty acids

unsaturated fat (monounsaturated or polyunsaturated).

Unlike other fats, trans fats are neither required nor beneficial for health.

[1] increases the risk of coronary heart disease.

[2] health authorities worldwide recommend that consumption of trans fat be reduced to trace amounts.

trans fat may increase

weight gain and abdominal fat despite a similar caloric intake with other foods.

Benefits

Give foods longer shelf life

Preservatives help guarantee sale

Where Do You Find It?

Trans Fats NAS has concluded

no safe level of trans fat consumption.

A 6-year experiment showed

monkeys fed a trans-fat diet gained 7.2% of their body weight

compared to 1.8% for monkeys on a mono-unsaturated fat diet.

Researchers at Harvard

“trans fat clogs arteries”

estimated that 30,000 Americans die each year because of trans fats.

may also contribute to Type II diabetes.

McDonald's • After 7 years of testing

McDonald's found a suitable trans-fat-free oil that won't change the taste or texture of its top-selling menu item:

• french fries

• As obesity rates have risen, the fast-food industry (with McDonald’s being the largest and best known) has come under pressure to change its menu offerings.

Corn Syrup Since 1980, obesity rates have climbed at a rate similar to

that of high-fructose corn syrup consumption.

Corn Syrup Since 1980, obesity rates have climbed at a rate similar to

that of high-fructose corn syrup consumption.

the body metabolizes fructose in a way that promotes weight gain. Fructose doesn’t prompt the production of hormones that help regulate appetite and fat storage

Produced in manufacturing facilities across the American corn belt, high-fructose corn syrup is not a product that you could cook up at home using a few ears of corn.

"Fat Land" by Greg Critser, generated more awareness of high-fructose corn syrup saying that the syrup made consumers fat because it was cheap, and thus food makers could afford to offer it in more products and bigger portions. Manufacturers had always been able to buy the sweetener at

prices 20 percent to 70 percent less than those of sugar.

allowed soft-drink companies to create larger sizes that were only marginally more expensive

X

in the 1980's, supersizing began in earnest. In 1983, for example, 7-Eleven rolled out its 44-ounce soda and, in 1988, the huge 64-ounce. And McDonald's began supersizing its drinks in the late 80's. But whether all of this would have happened anyway, even if sodas still were sweetened with pricier sugar, is hard to say, according to analysts.

New Studies • Cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and

soft drinks can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.

• Can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

• It's Not “Natural” (7Up is Wrong!) • Fructose bypasses the digestive process that breaks down other

forms of sugar. It arrives intact in the liver where it causes a variety of abnormal reactions, including the disruption of mechanisms that instruct the body whether to burn or store fat.

• Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a strictly controlled diet, including high levels of fructose, produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

• X

Addendum

• The results? Total fat mass remained the same across all beverage-consuming groups, but regular-soda drinkers experienced dramatic increases in harmful hidden fats, including liver fat and skeletal fat. The regular-soda group also experienced an 11 percent increase in cholesterol compared to the other groups! And don’t think switching to diet varieties will save you from harm: Artificial sweeteners and food dyes have been linked to brain cell damage and hyperactivity, and research has shown that people who drink diet soda have a higher risk of developing diabetes.

Are You a Lab Rat?

• Mountain Dew contains a flame retardant.

• It is not that that drink is worse than many others but that many companies experiment with what they put in their products.

• Much of this material is new and that makes your generation the lab rats for figuring out what is right and what is wrong.

• X

Bart: I don't know where you magic pixies came from but I like your pixie drink.

Fast Food World Despite changes, the food industry is still a business. They

want their products to sell and are not so concerned about health risks.

The nation's No. 2 chain is ignoring concerns with a 730-calorie breakfast sandwich.

BK’s Enormous Omelet Sandwich, the two-egg-sausage-cheese-and-bacon combo packs 47 grams of fat -- five more than the chain's signature burger, the Whopper.

"Americans are telling us that this is what they want," said Denny Marie Post, chief concept officer at BK.

some restaurateurs rebelled against healthier options, beefing up offerings -- literally. It's a move that's paid off.

Fast Food World As countries transition from LDC to MDC

food production becomes more of a business.

takes on the benefits/problems of agribusiness

Asians (especially those from Far Eastern nations like China, Korea and Japan), are acutely susceptible to Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease

develop it at far lower weights than people of other ethnicities.

60% more likely to get the disease than Europeans.

danger is compounded by the recent and sudden collision with American culture.

Urban lifestyles more sedentary

More (bad) calories are available

# of obese people has 3x since 1992 to 90 million

Definitions:

• Obesity: Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher.

• Body Mass Index (BMI): A measure of an adult’s weight in relation to his or her height, specifically the adult’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of his or her height in meters.

Source of the data: The data shown in the following maps were collected

through CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Each year, state health departments use standard procedures to collect data through a series of telephone interviews with U.S. adults. Height and weight data are self-reported.

Obesity Trends Among U.S. Adults Between 1985 and 2010

Obesity Epidemic Hits Child Safety Seat Many young children are too heavy for standard car-safety seats,

and manufacturers are starting to make heftier models to

accommodate them, according to research on the obesity epidemic's

widening impact

More than a quarter of a million U.S. children ages 1 to 6 are

heavier than the weight limits for standard car seats, and most are 3-

year-olds who weigh more than 40 pounds, the study found

Weight and Gas Mileage The obesity rate among U.S. adults doubled from 1987 to 2003,

from about 15 percent to more than 30 percent. Also, the average weight for American men was 191 pounds in 2002 and 164 pounds for women, about 25 pounds heavier than in 1960, government figures show.

Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That's the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage.

The amount of extra fuel consumption blamed on weight gain since 1960 — 938 million gallons — would fill almost 2 million cars with gas for an entire year. However, that is only 0.7 percent of the total amount of fuel consumed by U.S. passenger vehicles each year, Jacobson said.

Obesity trends • In 1990, among states participating in the BRFSS,

• 10 states had a prevalence of obesity less than 10% • no state had prevalence equal to or greater than

15%.

• By 2000, • no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 10%, • 23 states had a prevalence between 20–24%, • no state had prevalence equal to or greater than

25%.

• In 2010, • no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. • Thirty-six states had a prevalence equal to or greater

than 25%; • 12 of these states had a prevalence equal to or

greater than 30%.

Obesity Trends* Among U.S. Adults BRFSS, 1985

(*BMI ≥30, or ~ 30 lbs. overweight for 5’ 4” person)

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2000

Obesity Trends* Among U.S. Adults BRFSS, 1990, 2000, 2010

(*BMI 30, or about 30 lbs. overweight for 5’4” person)

2010

1990

No Data <10% 10%–14% 15%–19% 20%–24% 25%–29% ≥30%

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The Agricultural Worldadamsedu.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/4/1/28419347/industrial... · 2018-02-15 · Reduction of financial risks as family farms decline, corporations take more of