Paper for Sociology class but so very relevant for EVERYONE about HUNGER and our world

Myths of Hunger and Free Trade

(note for those who haven't recently studied Sociology "States" are countries, don't ask me why I just write like they tell me to)

Our world produces enough food to provide everyone the ability to consume 2500 to 3000 calories a day, consumption like that would have everyone overweight. 

A myth of hunger is that we do not produce enough food to feed everyone. Another myth of hunger is overpopulation of the world and specific States or areas within States is a cause of hunger. There are very heavily populated States that eat very well such as Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong. The last myth about hunger is that Free Trade can end hunger. Farmers who stop growing crops to feed their families and start growing cash crops to support the State’s exports find that the surplus of crops sent to market lower the prices and they do not earn enough to purchase the food needed for survival. Food that they grew themselves in years past.

Farmers who use the small-scale organic methods of growing crops to support themselves and those near them work to sustain the land. They grow more crops and animal varieties in a smaller space but produce more edible food than large cash crop farms. Small-scale farms care about the soil fertility and work hard to rotate the crops to not use up, or deplete the nutrients, but instead to build them up for the next year. Small farmers also save seeds and through a process of selecting only the best seeds from the best crops have cultivated over centuries the plants we have today.

Sadly our neoliberal economic policies are putting the small farmers out of business by encouraging farmers to “go big or get out” the big cash crop farms produce enough to drive the market price down for everyone making it impossible to sell a crop for more than it cost to produce it. The core zone countries have very large Agribusiness companies that create GMO (genetically modified seeds) that must be purchased to go with their chemicals, they also sell the fertilizers and process the foodstuff. The companies set the prices to purchase the seeds and the amount paid for the end result plus all the middle processes. The large companies that buy meat also force the large farmer who wants to produce meat to raise the animals in “factory” like arrangement where there are many animals forced into small spaces or cages. This makes diseases run quickly through the animals and forces the farmers to buy and use antibiotics to keep the animals healthy to reach adulthood.

The core zone corporations are winning because of the “stockholder” mentality where the bottom line or almighty dollar is more important than the land, animal or people involved in creating it. While the peripheral and semi-peripheral zone farmers are losing their livelihood, land and some are even taking their lives out of desperation and despair.

Genetically Modified Food

I am starting the last week of my Writing for the Biotechnology Industry class from North Eastern University out of Boston, MA. Before this class I knew nothing about scientific writing and in my previous five years of college courses in writing had never even used the APA style for references. I in my complete love for writing was extremely excited to learn Scientific writing and thus be able to better market my writing capabilities in the future.

I had no idea that this writing class would open my eyes to a world of science that I honestly did not know even existed. I know I live in a cave. Well, no not really but I do keep my nose to the grind stone and with school, a family of four kids, and either working or searching for work I don't usually watch a lot of television or read the newspapers. I know bad habits for a writer. I must admit this blog is forcing me to find out what is going on in the world around me.

I recently wrote a scientific review article for my Writing for the Biotechnology Industry class and learned so much interesting information that was both scary and exciting. I'm not really sure how I feel yet about finding out that whether I like it or not, I eat genetically modified food probably every day. When I sort it out I'm sure I'll share.

Our professor gave us a list of topics we could choose from for our scientific review articles our really big paper that we had been building up to writing over the last several weeks. I chose to take on "transgenic food and allergies in children". I am a mom with four children and two of them have food allergies so it made sense to me.

You may have heard me mention the title on my Facebook or Twitter as I was working on it or checked it out because of my Writing Updates Blog. The title is

More needs to be Done to Protect Children from Allergenic Transgenic Food

it can be found on my Online Writing Portfolio if you would like to read more. But I'm talking about it today because it could lead people who only read the title to the wrong conclusions. 

Yes, more needs to be done BUT there has never been a diagnosed case of an allergic reaction to a transgenic or Genetically Modified food. The biggest issue that I found was that we do not force the companies that produce genetically modified food to label it at this time. This is a suggestion that was made in several of the scientific articles that I reviewed and one that I carried through into my paper. 

It is the protection from the possibility of potential allergens that labeling will provide. I'm sure producers are afraid that such labeling will keep the population from purchasing their products and instead turning to local growers and farmers markets for their purchases. Which we should be doing anyway but that is another day's rantings. 

So get interested like I have recently in finding out just what it is that you are eating and what is going on in the biotechnology industry there is a lot of really great things out there like the rice that can grow fortified because of biotechnology with all sorts of good for you things in it so that people in developing countries can be healthier. They are using biotechnology to produce foods that used to be allergenic but will someday no longer elicit those reactions. And they have identified what causes hay fever and are working on that issue. 

So read learn and decide for yourself then let me know or just tell me now, what do you think about all this genetically modified food and biotechnology stuff?