The Food System Revealed

Recently, in iMentor we have been
studying the food system. At first I thought that the food system really
wasn’t important. When I heard that chemicals were used in our food, I
started to wonder how the food I ate was being made. I know  that many
people feel that this issue is not important, while others say it is
important. After doing this study, I feel that its important to know how
your food is produced. For example, I heard that “..if you take care of
the grass, the grass will take care of the animals.”

One thing that I know
for sure about food systems is that they take a lot of work, and its a
delicate system. Now that I’ve studied food systems, I believe that they
are very important to the world, because you have to eat the food that
they make everyday . You don’t know the processes and the people who
have to work to make your food. Personally, its funny to me how everyday
billions of people go to the supermarket, and they don’t know where
their food comes from. They just pick up the food, and they eat it.
Before watching FRESH, however, I was one of these people. I didn’t know
or really care about where or how my food was produced.

I did some research on
the food systems. In the movie FRESH, they provide a lot of opinions
and information on the food system. In the movie, Michael Pollan says,
“If you keep animals on farms, their manure is a blessing. You can use
it to grow other crops; you can close the nutrient cycle: the animals
can eat the crop waste, the parts of the plant you can’t sell and they
produce fertility for your field.” This statement made me realize how
many farmers out there don’t farm using inorganic techniques, and they
don’t close the nutrient cycle. If they do this, then they save money
and energy, and it is overall better for the environment. It made me
wonder why other farmers didn’t use these techniques.

In another quote that I
heard in the movie FRESH, it made me nod my head in agreement with the
person who said it. “If you’re committed to healing the land, then do
something different. If you look at  the template, and look at the
pattern and say: how can we most closely approximate this? Lets treat
the herbivore like a herbivore first  and then the other things will
fall into place. “This is true because the herbivores are supposed to be
treated as herbivores. They should not be eating the meat that the
farmers are feeding them. Instead, they should just be eating vegetables
and grain, that could be enhanced for their health. Once you do right
by the cows, then everything else will be right as well.

All of this makes me
think that no one really cares about how or where their food comes from.
They just eat what they want, and don’t even think about how it was
produced and whether or not it is healthy for them. People just want
convenience, and that’s why they simply go to the supermarket to get
their food. However, there are some people who want better for their
health, and that's why they go to markets where the food is fresh, right
off of the farms. The movie FRESH has opened my eyes to what goes on
behind the food we eat everyday.