By the time most food we eat in the U.S of A enters our body it has traveled an average 1500 miles. The farming community throughout the nation has fallen in size over the last 100 years at an exponential rate as agri-culture has turned into agri-business. 2,000,000, people now represent the farming community of the united states: half of one percent of the population of the country (down from 25 percent 100 years ago).
The changes in farming that have led us to this point relied initially on fossil fuels for transportation, later on fossil fuels for fertilization, and soon after on fossil fuels for pesticides. This has amazing and far reaching consequences for every aspect the earth’s ecosystem, from worldwide carbon and nitrogen cycles, to our place in the food web and our place in the global economy. Much of what we eat in the form of packaged foods or fast foods is derived from corn or soy beans. If you eat meat, then those animals were fed primarily (if not exclusively) on processed corn and soy.
The peak of united states oil production occurred 35 years ago, and our primary sources are now the same as the other 2 billion people demanding it worlwide. In the fruit and vegetable trade, US imports are increasingly outpacing US exports as we come to rely further on fossil fuels for our transportation of more of our food.
In the “best case” projections for continued reliance on fossil fuels, hypothetical as they are, this agribusiness process can only last another 100 years at most optimistic.
in the meantime, what can we learn from cuba, and how can we prepare?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnLvP57UWh8
