Nurses know much better than anybody that the American food industry has added to an epidemic of weight problems and hypertension unmatched in recent history through unconfined advertising, food ingredients and mono-crops. If we stop working to attend to the devastating effects of 'Big Food' then this might likewise become a country whose population is likewise dealing with a health crisis.

According to The New York City Times, a substantial portion of the cash invested on healthcare in this country deals with persistent diseases linked to diet plan. But it's not just the health of people at threat, the health of the planet is also suffering. Even President Obama acknowledged that "our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transport sector."
healthchemist.co.nz
Small household farms throughout America have mainly been replaced by mega-agricultural corporations running big livestock feeding lots and a concentrating of our food production in large-scale centers and on huge farms.

Much at stake

The farming industrial complex is a $1.5 trillion-dollar industry in America - that's trillion with a T - with huge corporations from farms, to feeding lots, to supermarket controlling nearly the whole process from seed to table.

In a revolutionary choice that supported genetically-modified foods, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of seed patents - fertile soil for mega-agribusiness Monsanto, which was currently developing lots of genetically-modified (GM) seeds. There is growing concern that introducing foreign genes into food plants may have an unforeseen and unfavorable effect on human health. The British Journal Lancet took a look at the impacts of GM potatoes on the system in rats and discovered "appreciable distinctions." Considerable study advances the necessary concern of the damage of GM foods.
vitalhealthmatters.co.nz
This entire system has incredibly little oversight. And we have actually seen the repercussions - under-regulated fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide saturated mono-crops of soy and corn changing little scale multi-crop farms, increases in greenhouse gases produced by large livestock operations, and even recent break outs of food-born diseases originating from big cleaning and packaging plants.

President Obama did attempt to fight back and exert some much-needed control over the food market - enough so that a group backed by pesticide and fertilizer producers called the Obamas, "organic limousine liberals" and contacted Michelle Obama to use pesticides in the White House garden.

President-elect Trump now acquires a beautiful garden loaded with healthy natural foods. How will his garden grow?

It is specific that business agriculture will try to apply influence over the new administration at the expense of the family farmer and at the expense of the health of our country.

There is an alternative design for feeding our nation using fewer chemicals, causing less harm to the environment and promoting healthier consuming routines. That alternative comes from a country that couldn't be more various from ours - Cuba.

What Cuba can teach us

Because of the USA-led embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the small island country was left in a precarious food situation, unable to import fertilizers, pesticides, or food to feed its citizens. It also suggested that what food Cubans could grow, they mostly consumed themselves instead of biking through animals.

At the exact same time, the Caribbean island had to fix the problem of farming in the age of severe weather events.

These factors contributed to Cuba being far more prepared for circumstances now facing many countries across the planet. Cubans mastered what is now called "agro-ecology" in contrast to our nation's primarily commercial farming. Small scale farmers in Cuba are leading the country's agricultural motion and promoting sustainable practices like planting flowers to bring in handy pests and nitrogen producing beans to fertilize the soil. Cubans had to discover imaginative ways to till the soil and plant crops without fossil fuel-fed equipment.

Out of need

Cuba now produces nearly all of its own fruit and vegetables and much of its own meat. These farming developments were not made out of ideology. Rather, Cubans acted out of requirement, to satisfy the needs of a starving people.

Cuban agriculture can in some methods be seen as an example for the United States of a farming system that is sustainable for the health of our individuals and the health of our planet.

Already, researchers fear that our planet is on the verge of no return from worldwide warming. If we don't downsize our farming use of fossil fuels we could tip the thermometer completely for our warming planet, causing the exact same type of food insecurity across the world that Cubans dealt with.