As you are driving down the highway, you start to think that you’re hungry. You’ve been eating fast food for the last several meals because you’ve been on a trip, so you tell yourself “Whatever you do, don’t eat McDonald’s.” I know that that thought has run through my head. What we see here is that people have become overexposed to eating out, with an average of almost six times a week and surprisingly enough, we’re getting tired of it. The fast food rage has come to a halt within the last year, and things are changing. People are finding new ways to eat fast and healthy. Let me walk you through what this food trend is, the reasons behind it, the people behind it, and how it affects American Agriculture and Fast Food. The pressure is on for …show more content…
Keystone foods, produces 400 million pounds of chicken, 260 million pounds of beef, and 25 million pounds of fish a year (McDonald’s, 2014). This company goes above and beyond USDA regulations to meet McDonald’s strict animal welfare, product safety, and quality requirements. The apples found in Happy Meals are from a Michigan apple grower named Mike Dietrich. There are three generations of active farmers in the family and farm the same land they farmed in the 1850’s. They say that McDonald’s holds them to a high standard and they consider it their job to see to it that they deliver a good tasting apple (Dietrich, 2013). In each burger, wrap, salad, and more you’re going to find lettuce grown in the Salinas Valleys in California. Lettuce farmer Dirk Giannini has been farming for eighteen years and says that it is a fourth-generation family tradition. His farm provides lettuce for 80% of the nation. Giannini says that agriculture is the backbone of our world and that he works hard every day to provide top quality “from field to fork” (Giannini, 2011). What I have come to understand from these examples is that because of the trends in the last few decades, production agriculture has had to become larger, more diversified, and more specialized itself to get the job