The Industrial Food System (IFS) is the production of animals, fruits, and vegetables, with a focus on productivity and being able to sell the cheapest product, or in other words to produce the highest output at the lowest cost (Wikipedia). Thanks to the IFS, out-of-season fruits and vegetables have appeared in supermarkets all over the world. Meat is now readily available at a low-cost and most Americans eat it for three meals a day. Factory farming and industrial agriculture are responsible for this drop in the price of food, as well as the overall drop in nutritional content of food.
The IFS puts an emphasis on producing/harvesting the most food in the shortest amount of time and for the least amount of money. This “system” appears to be a blessing: it makes food affordable and diverse.
What, if any, will be the cost to the environment and its inhabitants? Some critics of the IFS would argue that its primary problem is being inherently reliant on fossil fuels that have devastating effects on the environment (e. g. global-warming). The IFS negatively impacts the environment in more direct ways than emissions from fossil fuels; overpopulated cattle facilities produce copious amounts of waste that lead to disease and water pollution. Soil, air, and water pollution are also due to the petroleum-based chemicals that factory farming is dependent on. The Union of Concerned Scientists says in Sustainable Agriculture -A New Vision 2001: “All the crop land around you is doused with chemicals: herbicides to control weeds, insecticides to control insects, and fertilizers to stimulate growth.” Synthetic, petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides are implemented routinely in industrial agriculture and produce waste that is hazardous to humans and the environment.
The reliance on synthetic chemicals in order to produce efficient and cheap fruits and vegetables is what keeps prices low and at a steady flow into supermarkets. It is especially important in this day and age to know and understand the industrial system that more or less feeds us everyday. An ever growing disconnect between humans and their food exists because of the IFS. No longer are people reliant on their local farms for fruits and vegetables or meat; instead mega-corporations are driving prices lower and lower, so low that the local farmer cannot compete and must eventually sell his or her farm. There is no doubt that the IFS is economically damaging to farmers in the short-tem, but it is in the long-run where humans will learn of the true cost of this cheap and abundant food, produced by the agricultural juggernaut.
The IFS is in its essence an economy based on cheap food. Michael Pollan explains in Omnivore’s Dilemma:
Farmers who get the message that consumer’s only cares about price will themselves only care about yield. This is how a cheap food economy reinforces itself. (Pollan 136)
This means that when cost is the number one concern to consumers, providing cheap food must in turn be the number one priority of farmers and agricultural giants. The “cheap food economy” is what drives farmers and corporations alike to institute chemical practices that are inexpensive, effective, and allow the most amount of food to be grown or produced in the minimal amount of time. All to satisfy the worlds “need” for cheap food.
Certainly, there are those enlightened enough to realize some of the inherent consequences of the IFS, and there are those affluent enough to make a conscious decision to buy organic food from either local farmers or the health food giant that is Whole Foods.
Anyone who has ever ventured into a Whole Foods supermarket has surely seen an abundance of poultry, livestock, fruits and vegetables claiming to be “organic,” “natural,” “cage-free,” and “grass-fed”. This is not because Whole Foods feels some sort of moral obligation to provide the customer with the healthiest and cleanest product but, instead, it is a pure marketing scheme which allows the consumer to believe “…By buying organic he is returning to a utopian past,” but with “…The positive aspects of modernity intact.” This idea has worked quite well considering that Whole Foods has seen a 12 percent rise in sales during the first quarter of 2007 (Gross 5). Through “…farmers and consumers working together…” the organic market has become an $11 billion industry “…Without any help from the government… (And) is now the fastest growing sector of the food economy.” (Pollan 136). During the Vietnam War era, before the modern “boom” in the organic sector of the food market, it was common practice by critics of the military action to farm their own “organic” fruits and vegetables in protest of Dow and Monsanto. Both companies are among the world’s largest producers of pesticides, as well as the manufacturers of Napalm and Agent Orange, which was used to devastate the ecology of Southeast Asia during the 1960s-1970s (Pollan 143). Pollan describes, “…Eating organic…” as a way that the Anti-Vietnam War protesters “…Married the personal to the political”(143). Despite the IFS being based on productivity and quantity, it is also based largely on the idea of Monoculture, or farming one or very few species of fruit or vegetable at a time. A recent 2007 farm bill press conference on C-Span called the monoculture of today’s farms “devastating” to the ecology, but Joel Salatin has managed to accomplish a “Farm of many faces” (Pollan 128). The sustainable foundation that “Salatin has assembled at Polyface (farm), where a half dozen different animal species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the theme of symbiosis” (126) is a model farm for a positive future of agriculture. The companies mission statement declares that they “…Are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture…(Polyface Farms).”
