Reflections: Weeks 5 & 6

Wow I can't believe we're already on week 5& 6 review! Feels just like yesterday when we were babies at this blogging thing. Now I feel like we're well on our way to becoming professional bloggers ;)

Week 5

A few things we did in week 5 were reading Chapter 15: Feeding the World, completed another Eye Opener called CSIP and watched a film, "Diet for a New America" for which I wrote my first review on. Feeding the World was quite an interseting chapter that was eye opening and even a little shocking to me. It focused on the environment, population and the food supply of our earth. I found it alarming that at some point, not too far away, our future demand of food will pass our food supply! I chose to visit the CSPI website where I did a Tour of the Food Supply. I learned quite a bit on the food factories, farm animals, grains, and a lot more. If you haven't been there yet I recommend checking it out! The film, Diet for a New America was really interesting. I feel that by doing a review on it, I got into it a bit more. It was based on John Robbins talking about how the food choices we make every day effect our health, happiness, and the future of life on earth. Check out my review for more details on it!

Week 6

This week we had an Eye Opener of an indivdually assigned reading and watched the film "Future of Food". My assigned reading was on Chapter 29:Growers and Greens Unite. Basically what was going on in this chapter was that in some places farmers and environmentalists are coming together to solve problems together, rather than working against each other. Something I found interesting was that Organic farms are pretty limited to about 8,000 in the US, but they're profits are improving by about 25% each year! Hopefully these other farms will catch on soon. The film we watched was almost scary to me! It was talking in depth about the very disturbing truth behind unlabled, patented, genetically engineered foods. At first the concept seemed like a good idea, great lets make more food that could (weasle word) help feed the hungry. I see that being an awesome attempt, but in reality isn't the case. I think at this point scientist have gone too far. As a consumer there is no way to know if my food has been modified and I think I have the right to!

The past two weeks I have enjoyed reading the chapters and watching these films. My eyes have yet again, become more open! I look forward to the next couple weeks.

Eye Opener: Summary of Reading

Growers and Greens Unite
The title of this chapter really sums up what seems to be happening in some areas of our country. Despite the sterotypes of the diverse groups of farmers and environmentalists, it seems that they are overcoming this "mis-trust" to work together. "People with wildly different backgrounds are learning more about each other as the come together to defeat common opponents". The book stated stereotypes such as farmers are often seen as stubbon and narrowminded by the environmentalist and the environmentalist are seen as people who dispense rules and don't understand what really goes on in a farm. At this point, when farm factories (CAFOs) are becoming detrimental to the environment (and the surrounding people) farmers are even known to defy the Farm Bureau to join the environmentalist to help with certain issues. It was interesting to see that in hog farming factories, 1 hog produces two to four times as much raw sewage as a human being! In reality there are only about 8,000 farms that are "certified organic", but their profits are growing 25% each year. If only the CAFOs didn't consider this "alternative" farming as risky, they could see that there are other options. Durastic change isn't going to happen over night, but it's good to see that there is common ground of interest in change on the rise.

A few questions for discussion: Would our environment change durastically if these farms went to all "organic"? What would happen to the price of food? Would organic farming really be "risky" or is it just different?

Bottom line, whether or not a farm is organic or a big factory, they are all just trying to survive. With a main issue of whether they are doing it environmentally friendly or not, regardless it has to be a combined effort on both sides.

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