Final Essay

Despite the many conveniences the industrial food system brings numerous people around the world; its many faults can be detrimental to not only to ourselves, but the environment and everyone involved. People like Grant Baldwin, his wife Jen Rustemeyer, Joel Salatin and Scott Dodd are a small number individuals who are exposing the myriad of issues brought upon by this system, and coming up inventive and practical ways to resolve them. Food waste is one of the major problems the industrial food system wholeheartedly contribute to. Supermarket standards, as well as consumer mindset, and expectations are the primary causes of food waste. Supermarkets are a huge contributor to waste due to their exceedingly high standards. Grant and Jen state

Stores reject food on the basis of perfection, in an attempt to appear pristine, they even go as far as getting rid of truck loads of bananas because they do not conform to the correct size, shape or thickness desired (Rustemeyer & Baldwin 2014). Consumer’s are just as bad as the supermarkets, we don’t see wasting food as taboo and follow the mentality that “”what looks better tastes better” (Rustemeyer & Baldwin 2014). Wasting food leads to a multitude of problems such as pollution; by throwing our food into landfills, it creates excess amounts of methane which’ll wrecks our ozone and leads to global warming ((Rustemeyer & Baldwin 2014). Throwing out food not only waste money, but energy and time too! Grant equated throwing out one hamburger to taking a ninety minute shower (2014). That’s around one-hundred and eighty gallons of water wasted! Luckily for use, food waste is easily avoidable; The most important thing to do is to change our mentalities. We have to stop demanding perfection. One little bruise or an awkwardly shaped apple won’t kill us. Another solution is to plan meals ahead of time and take inventory of what we already have; by doing this we can limit the unnecessary purchasing of food and limit impulse shopping. We throw out half the food we

Industrial farming is such a problem because their focus is on quantity over quality. Quick and easy is the route industrial farmers take to produce their foods. They also rely on annual crops and fossil fuels to run their farms (Ostrander 2011). The consequences are shockingly apparent despite the industries attempts to hide them. All of the fossil fuels being used are awful for the environment. By feeding their livestock cheap feed stuffed with antibiotics, chemicals, and grain, that the animals have a hard time digesting, it forces them to produce more methane than they should (Scully 2005). All the chemicals found in the food we eat is detrimental to our health, causing preventable illnesses like type two diabetes and high cholesterol. Thankfully, Joel Salatin’s ‘back to basics’ approach to agriculture is not only refreshing, but extremely effective. Joel implements the practice of symbiosis, which handily solves two of the major problems caused by industrial farming. Joel’s symbiosis entails letting his cows feed off the land instead of using cheap feed; he then lets his chickens feed of the maggot and larvae found in the cow patties, and then let’s the patties act as fertilizer to regrow the grass (Ostrander 2011). This successfully deals with the toxic manure and soil fertility problems created by industrial farms, by using cow patties as fertilizers and not overworking the soil