Nurses know much better than anybody that the American food market has actually added to an epidemic of weight problems and hypertension extraordinary in current history through unfettered marketing, food ingredients and mono-crops. If we stop working to resolve the terrible effects of 'Big Food' then this could likewise end up being a nation whose population is likewise facing a wellness crisis.

According to The New York City Times, a huge portion of the cash invested in healthcare in this country treats chronic diseases connected to diet. But it's not simply the health of people at threat, the health of the world is also suffering. Even President Obama acknowledged that "our farming sector in fact is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector."
theshop.co.nz
Small family farms throughout America have actually largely been changed by mega-agricultural corporations running huge animals feeding lots and a focusing of our food production in large-scale facilities and on giant farms.

Much at stake

The farming commercial 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 grocery stores managing practically the whole procedure from seed to table.

In a revolutionary decision that supported genetically-modified foods, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of seed patents - fertile soil for mega-agribusiness Monsanto, which was already establishing lots of genetically-modified (GM) seeds. There is growing issue that introducing foreign genes into food plants might have an unanticipated and unfavorable effect on human health. The British Journal Lancet analyzed the impacts of GM potatoes on the digestive tract in rats and found "considerable differences." Considerable study continues the essential question of the harm of GM foods.

This whole system has remarkably little oversight. And we've seen the consequences - under-regulated fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide saturated mono-crops of soy and corn replacing little scale multi-crop farms, increases in greenhouse gases produced by large animals operations, and even current outbreaks of food-born diseases originating from big cleaning and product packaging plants.

President Obama did try to eliminate back and put in some much-needed control over the food industry - enough so that a group backed by pesticide and fertilizer manufacturers called the Obamas, "natural limousine liberals" and called on Michelle Obama to use pesticides in the White House garden.

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

It is particular that business agriculture will try to apply influence over the new administration at the expenditure of the household farmer and at the expenditure of the health of our nation.

There is an alternative model for feeding our country using fewer chemicals, triggering less harm to the environment and promoting healthier consuming practices. That alternative originates from a nation that could not be more different from ours - Cuba.

What Cuba can teach us

Because of the USA-led embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tiny island nation was left in a scenario, not able to import fertilizers, pesticides, or food to feed its people. It also implied that what food Cubans might grow, they mainly ate themselves instead of biking through livestock.

At the very same time, the Caribbean island needed to fix the issue of farming in the age of severe weather occasions.

These aspects added to Cuba being even more prepared for situations now dealing with lots of countries across the planet. Cubans mastered what is now called "agro-ecology" in contrast to our nation's mainly commercial farming. Small scale farmers in Cuba are leading the nation's farming movement and promoting sustainable practices like planting flowers to attract helpful bugs and nitrogen producing beans to fertilize the soil. Cubans had to discover creative methods to till the soil and plant crops without fossil fuel-fed equipment.

Out of necessity

Cuba now produces practically all of its own fruit and vegetables and much of its own meat. These farming advancements were not made out of ideology. Rather, Cubans acted out of need, to fulfill the requirements of a starving people.
healthchemist.co.nz
Cuban farming can in some ways be viewed as an example for the United States of a farming system that is sustainable for the health of our people and the health of our world.

Already, scientists fear that our world is on the edge of no return from global warming. If we don't downsize our farming usage of fossil fuels we could tip the thermometer permanently for our warming planet, leading to the very same sort of food insecurity across the world that Cubans faced.