The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (2007) poses the question: “Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?” The image below displays that in the United States federal food subsidies have an inverse relationship with federal nutrition recommendations. Policy disjunction between federal nutrition recommendations and federal subsidies for food production yields an unhealthy relationship between humans and the environment. It is important to investigate the historic, political, and economic contributions to this issue and to assess the consequences using the geographic theme of human-environment interaction. This investigation leads to consideration of the possibilities for hope and healing in the future. Finally, it is important to reflect on the reasons agriculture is an important topic for the field of education and how the food system can play a role in the classroom.

Agricultural Politics

Agriculture in the Classroom

Agriculture in the United States: A Look at Subsidies and Health

Kristi D. Brand-NeurothRavenwood High School

Agricultural changes have had significant implications for the health of people and the earth’s soil in 21st century America. The current policy disjunction between federal nutrition recommendations and federal subsidies for food production yields an unhealthy and complicated relationship between humans and the environment. However, there is room for hope! Politicians, business leaders, community leaders, and teachers alike are taking note of the importance of the agricultural sector and its vital sustenance to the health of humans, watersheds, biodiversity, rural communities, and international relationships. Educators are beginning to understand how valuable the topic is to a wide range of disciplines. Schools are devising new ways to teach students about the importance of understanding where their food comes from. Promoting national discourse about the nature of federal subsidies and their relationship to health would be an important step in healing unhealthy agricultural habits. The classroom is an excellent place to begin this important conversation.

Introduction Agriculture and Human-Environment

Interaction

Historic Roots

Economic Implications

The Future of Agriculture:

Possibilities for Hope and Healing

Two students in Nevada County, CA work together at a schoolyard garden.

“History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the

King’s bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly”

(Belasco, 1999, p. 27-28).

How did the United States get to a point in history where a salad costs more than a Big Mac? The changing nature of U.S. farming from 1930 to 2011 can be summed up by looking at some of the major trends of this time:

1)changes in the food supply2)rapid commercialization3)mechanization and increasing productivity4)a reduction in the number of farms and farmers5)a reduction of the number of commodities produced on each farm6)farmers seeking off-farm work because middle-men are obtaining more and more of the profit7)a dramatic increase in U.S. exports8)the externalities of waste increasingly dumped on others

“In the United States, established and entrenched agricultural and economic policies now serve as formidable impediments to the success of new

public health policies that are needed to address pandemic obesity” (Tillotson, 2004, p. 620).

“The ideal corporate customer today is the ‘industrial eater’…who does not know that eating is

an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical.” – Wendell Berry (Belasco, 1999, p. 30)

“Attention to food reveals our bodies as complex assemblages inexorably implicated in other

assemblages – not only the molecular assemblages that organize nutrition and ecology, but industrial

assemblages of production and distribution, economic assemblages of labor and exchange, and cultural assemblages of cuisine and class.” (Lavin,

2009, p.2)

Conclusion

“As the food system goes, so goes the rest of society.”

(Thu, 2009, p. 13)

Why should teachers incorporate agriculture into their lessons?

1. Agriculture is interdisciplinary! This topic includes literature, nutrition, economics, biology, history, geography, and earth science.

2. Food is a common denominator and easily garners students’ attention. Kids connect to food, agriculture, and natural resources in their daily lives through food, clothing, shelter, energy use, and nature.

3. The food system has relevance to making decisions, solving problems, and critical thinking. In an increasingly urbanized society, students are often alienated from the earth that sustains their life and often do not see their interests in the health of the water or the land. Thus, this topic is crucial for students to understand so they may advocate for their health .

In an era of globalization, the future success of U.S. agriculture is inextricably linked to the health of the global agricultural community. The popularity of alternative agriculture is growing. Many alternative movements place less emphasis on production of commodities and more emphasis on the protection of culture and the environment (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2002). While the future is uncertain, key political, economic, environmental, and educational actors are getting involved to propose solutions to the problems caused by policy disjunction.

The U.S. government no longer deals with small, struggling, diversified farms, but rather with powerful multinational food conglomerations with large profits.

The fundamental issue here is that the United States has highly efficient food policies on the supply side, but a lack of effective food policies on the demand side, hence creating a conflict between economic and public health policies.

Observing this issue at the intersection of human-environment interaction yields a more comprehensive picture of the cost of agricultural trends since the 1930s. Some of the costs include:

1)the unsustainable use of resources through over-consumption of meat

2)waste of edible food3)reduction of biodiversity 4)increasing use of fossil fuels5)air and water pollution6)waste management issues