Nurses know better than anybody that the American food market has actually contributed to an epidemic of weight problems and hypertension unprecedented in current history through unfettered marketing, food ingredients and mono-crops. If we fail to address the terrible effects of 'Big Food' then this might likewise become a nation whose population is also dealing with a wellness crisis.
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According to The New York City Times, a substantial part of the money spent on healthcare in this nation deals with chronic diseases connected to diet. But it's not simply the health of people at threat, the health of the planet is likewise suffering. Even President Obama acknowledged that "our farming sector really is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector."

Small family farms across America have actually largely been replaced by mega-agricultural corporations operating substantial livestock feeding lots and a concentrating of our food production in large-scale facilities and on giant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 market in America - that's trillion with a T - with big corporations from farms, to feeding lots, to supermarket controlling almost the entire process from seed to table.

In an innovative decision that supported genetically-modified foods, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of seed patents - fertile soil for Monsanto, which was currently establishing numerous genetically-modified (GM) seeds. There is growing issue that introducing foreign genes into food plants might have an unforeseen and negative effect on human health. The British Journal Lancet took a look at the effects of GM potatoes on the digestive system in rats and discovered "appreciable distinctions." Considerable study continues the important question of the harm of GM foods.

This whole system has extremely 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 break outs of food-born illness originating from large cleaning and product packaging plants.

President Obama did attempt to fight back and exert some much-needed control over the food industry - enough so that a group backed by pesticide and fertilizer producers called the Obamas, "organic limo liberals" and called on Michelle Obama to use pesticides in the White House garden.

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

It is particular that business farming will try to apply impact over the new administration at the expenditure of the family farmer and at the expense of the health of our country.

There is an alternative design for feeding our country using less chemicals, causing less damage to the environment and promoting much healthier consuming routines. That alternative comes from a country that could not be more various from ours - Cuba.

What Cuba can teach us

Because of the USA-led embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the small island country was left in a precarious food situation, unable to import fertilizers, pesticides, or food products to feed its residents. It likewise implied that what food Cubans could grow, they primarily ate themselves instead of cycling through animals.

At the exact same time, the Caribbean island had to resolve the issue of farming in the age of severe weather events.

These factors added to Cuba being much more prepared for scenarios now facing lots of countries throughout the planet. Cubans mastered what is now called "agro-ecology" in contrast to our nation's mainly commercial agriculture. Small scale farmers in Cuba are leading the country's farming movement and promoting sustainable practices like planting flowers to attract useful insects and nitrogen producing beans to fertilize the soil. Cubans needed to find creative ways to till the soil and plant crops without fossil fuel-fed equipment.
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Out of necessity

Cuba now produces nearly all of its own produce and much of its own meat. These agricultural developments were not made out of ideology. Rather, Cubans acted out of requirement, to meet the requirements of a hungry people.

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, researchers fear that our world is on the edge of no return from worldwide warming. If we do not downsize our farming usage of fossil fuels we might tip the thermometer completely for our warming world, leading to the very same type of food insecurity across the globe that Cubans faced.