Thursday, May 14, 2009

You are what you eat!

We know that the way the world produces food has changed over that last 50 years. Some argue that the "globalization" of food production has created food shortages, the disappearance of the family farm, and lead to widespread food borne illnesses. What do you think? Have the benefits outweighed the costs? Refer to at least one of the following articles in your response:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/nichols
http://www.farmaid.org/site/c.qlI5IhNVJsE/b.2723723/k.33DB/Globalization_and_Consumer_Choice.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no4/kaferste.htm

6 comments:

  1. I think because many family farms were forced out of farming the other farms have no more so many competitors and increase the prices a bit.
    The multinational agribusiness corporations make very much profit.And we have to pay more money for what we need.

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  2. It's right that there unbalance spreading of food all over the world. In general, we produce more food than we need and so a lot of eatables are thrown away, in contrast to the Third World, for example where the people often don't have enough to eat and where they would need the food that we throw away.

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  3. I think the biggest problem is the fact that many familiar farms can´t bear up with the big cheaper partly foreign farms. So there is a smaller offer which always leads to increasing prices. Thats exactly Stefans point and i agree on his opinion.

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  4. The negative affects of globalization of food are greater than the benefits. In only 5 years, 100,000 family farms were put out of business because they were importing the food they were using. I think thats messed up. I don't think we should import unless we need to. If we can easily grow corn here, then why import it from another country? To stay connected? Sheesh, get a penpal! I don't think taking peoples hard earned living and throwing it out just to import from other countries to keep up with the communication. Even if its not the communication with other countries that we are wanting, I still don't think its right to tell a hard working farmer to stop what he's doing, and probably the only thing he really can do since he probably didn't go to college, and find some other way to support and feed his family.

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  5. I think a big problem is there are less family farms, more people are going to the city to make food, which is bad for you. I dont think we should trade food either unless we have to and we trade stuff for food we can make here.

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  6. I agree with Brandon. We need more farms. Healthy ones too because some of them use chemicals to make the produce grow faster and that makes it bad for you. Also the food we make is not very healthy.

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