Eating is an act

Agriculture an very important branch of economy for the majority of developing countries. Production of the agricultural products is the main source of currency for developing countries and currency is necessary for buying machines and equipment for the development of agriculture. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan talks about growing corn which is something that people in the United States uses a lot. Corn is used in many products, because corn is cheap and easy to produce. Pollan claims three things that are related to the growth of corn crops which are agricultural act, ecological act and last of all a political act. These three things are what keep farmers to keep growing corn crops and for the government to keep subsidizing them.
Eating has become an agricultural act. People keep agriculture moving when they go ahead and buy their favorite groceries. They support the farmers and the government when buying their products. About Five decades ago “Crop yields in agricultural systems depended mainly on internal resources… (Altieri, M.A. 1998). An internal resource means that no chemicals were added to the soil to create the nutrients that corn needs; it all depended on the soil to create its own nutrients. The growing of crops changed, because most of the farmers change to monoculture which only one kind of crop gets planted every year such as corn crops. As crops get planted every year on the same field, the soil’s nutrients starts to decrease and stops giving the nutrients that the corn needs to keep growing bigger and stronger. So the farmers had to find other ways for the soil to keep having the same nutrients or even more than the corn needs. That is when the technology was introduced to experiment with the corn and takes it to the next level. The way technology was used in corn was by adding large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides into the corn crops, an “estimated 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides where used only in the United States”. (Altieri, M. A. 1998). These 1.2 billion pounds or chemicals were used back in 1998 imagine how much chemicals are used today to keep producing corn crops.
The more monocultures are used the more chemicals the soil needs to keep giving the nutrients the soil needs. Not only it’s bad for the environment, but it damages the soil by using too many pesticides and fertilizers over and over again until the corn gives the most yields it can. Whitty explains “ Nineteen percent of US energy usage- about as much as is used to fuel our cars- is spent growing and delivering food to the average American consumes 2,200 pounds of food a year”. (Whitty, 2010, p.744). This means that each person consumes an average of 6 pounds per day, which is a lot for a single person to consume every day. People consume more food than what they need to keep their energy up. This is why the more feed people consume, the more carbon gets created in to the environment, damaging it little by little. It’s important for people to consume less food. By consuming less farmers won’t have to produce large corn crops creating less pollution for the environment.
The growth of corn is good because it is used for food products. It is also bad because the government uses it to make more profit off of it by using the ethanol that corn produces and by law every gas company has to put in the ethanol in their fuel in order for them to not have any problem with the government. According to corn pork in the tax bill “congress passed a law that will increase the use of ethanol until the year 2022” (McMahon & Alexander, 2010 P. 1). This means that until the year 2022 corn is going to be used to produce ethanol and include it on the gas that cars need to keep their engines running. All the government cares is to keep subsidizing farmers and the oil companies to keep producing corn and convert it to ethanol and for oil companies to increase the percentage of ethanol used in the gas.
In conclusion monoculture has become a business to grow crops, like corn because many people consume it and because the government only cares about subsidizing and are careless about what happens to the environment with putting ethanol to the gas for the cars. The bad thing is that farmers will keep investing more into the soil to keep having the same amount of corn each year. The government should stop making business with the corn and also stop making the gas companies to put certain amount of ethanol into the gas that cars uses and start to care more about the environment.

References

Altieri, M. A. (1998). Ecological impacts of industrial agriculture and the possibilities for truly sustainable farming. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, 50(3), 60.

Berry, W. (2010) Thoughts in the presence of fear. In R. John-Sheehan & C. Paine [Eds.], Writing today. (pp.761-6). Boston, MA: Longman.
McMahon, K, and Alexander, R. (2010). Corn pork in the tax bill. Washington Times, The (DC), 1.

Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York, NY: Penguin.

Whitty, J. (2010) Diet for a warm planet. In R. John-Sheehan & C. Paine [Eds.], Writing today. (pp.742-6). Boston, MA: Longman.