Our Food is Killing Us

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I examine the causes and destruction of our current industrialized food system. Specifically, I dive into the capitalist commodification of food, and how most of the industrialized farming that takes place in the imperial core doesn't produce crops for our consumption. Instead, the majority of the "food" we grow goes toward animal feed and biofuels. In addition, the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that our current industrialized farming system gobbles up are derived from fossil fuels. Essentially, fossil fuel corporations are laundering their dirty fuels through the very chemicals farmers use to grow their crops. Our food system is broken. We're in desperate need of a new agro-ecological revolution.

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Some visuals courtesy of Getty Images
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:23 - The Shape of Industrial Agriculture
4:03 - Our Food is Fossil Fuels
9:40: Get Big or Get Out
12:59 - Industrial Agriculture's Environmental Destruction
17:49 - Beyond Capitalist Agriculture
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Check out other Climate YouTubers:

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#farming #agriculture #climatechange

[OurChangingClimate]

🍂 Where do you get your food? How would you like your food system to change?

[Freesorin]

As someone who works on a small, family owned polyculture farm, one of the biggest issues we have is we are effectively prohibited from composting the immense amounts of organic waste we produce because of waste disposal regulations. We want to reduce our reliance on expensive synthetic fertilizers but the laws are just too complex and labyrinthine to do so safely.

*EDIT* Okay so after having a longer discussion about this with my boss I have learned that in fact we are not legally prohibited from composting. The main reason why we don't is actually for fear of soil born disease. Basically if we throw a diseased pepper into a field to decompose, the germ gets in the dirt and will stay there forever and spread. This would make any future attempts to grow peppers in that field effectively doomed. A more understandable but still unfortunate reason that has the same end result. I guess commercial compost goes through a decontamination process.

[aubreejobizzarro]

I HIGHLY encourage people to reach out to their local friendship center/ indigenous community centers and ask how you can support their Traditional Food and Food Sovereignty programs. Indigenous communities across the Americas are holding 90% of the native biodiversity to the lands we inhabit and we NEED to support and protect what we still have in our ecological communities. If you love “Indian tacos”, go support the Aunties and Uncles protecting the traditional foods! Food Sovereignty is going to be big in the following decades, and we have to be able to decolonize from the commodity mindset that’s infiltrating every corner of our lives.

[aenorist]

As a sidenote: Even the worst factory farm can get more reliable, higher quality yield while slashing 90% of its costs, with barely a few seasons of transition to regenerative techniques.

Its mostly a mental / educational issue. Farmers are tought from fossil fuel / agrochem textbooks at agrochem-financed schools and innundated with advertising that ought to be illegal.
Any actually competent land management is buried at best, its teachers attacked / threatened / falsely sued / straight up murdered on the orders of an industry that needs to be destroyed if the species is to survive.

[Praisethesunson]

If it weren't for climate change, the nitrogen runoff from massive corporate agriculture systems would be one the main environmental issues today. My favorite takeaway from capitalist based agriculture is that soil is not treated as a base where tons of life lives. It is a patch of dirt and chemicals to add more chemicals to for the sake of commodity speculation.

One thing was left out. All that food that ends up on the "global market" is controlled by 4 corporations. ADM(Archer Daniels Midland), Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfuss. Just so they can speculate on the prices of that food, and intentionally let literally tons of food rot(where starving people are within walking distance of that food) so they can make profits for a handful of already wealthy ghouls.

[erincarr]

This is why I started farming. I've worked 5 different organic farms. I now work for a nonprofit farm that teaches youth and college students how to farm. We donate half of the food to the food bank. I've also started a small homestead and we are not a nuclear family we are a community of a couple families.

[austinhernandez]

Things that we need, like food, water, shelter, healthcare, transportation, education, etc should not be commodified. They are all human rights and should only be used for human need, not greed. Because doing so comes at the expense of human suffering and deaths, wars, economic collapse, and destruction of the entire planet.

[libertyblueskyes]

SO TRUE. We can reinvent our agricultural systems into permaculture, water harvesting, food forests that work with nature instead of going against her.

[gabriellegibby]

I love my garden so much, even when a rabbit family digs in and ruins my green beans.

Alot of people find growing intimidating, my best advice is to ignore the influencers lush gardens and just try somthing approachable to you. Even something as small as taking a tomato seed out of your morning blt sandwish and putting it in a cup of dirt and just seeing what happens. Even if you dont get anything, you will learn something about growing food. And theres value in that.

[solarityacres]

Agroforestry, regenerative agriculture, permaculture. These are the solutions, but they can't be commodified as heavily.

[SteadySehnsucht]

I’ve started backyard gardening with long-term plans to scale up to where I can also help feed my neighbors for free. I live in a neighborhood full of elderly couples on fixed incomes and I worry about how they will feed themselves as things continue to get worse, and I know even the “organic” food at the stores is often less nutritious. Hoping to scale up a little more each year as I learn.

[WannaKnowAll]

I started a backyard garden focused on permaculture. I have a whole ecosystem working for me and its been some of the most delicious vegetables I've ever had.

[alexskeens]

Keep it up bro your videos are extremely important, we need more videos to have more information to help with the fight, we need people to share videos every social media documentation and more content the more we're able to pinpoint the harm to individual entities I feel it will be easier to force them to change

[JonGiraffe]

"90% of Earth's topsoil at risk by 2050"

This line sticks out to me because there seems to be a lot of things that collapse at or before that year. "Weird" how its the commonly cited year for "carbon neutral" plans.

I'd love to see a video that digs more into 2050.

[purpleicewitch]

Important to note that the kinds of technology that gets developed depends on what the current economy is like. So if we were farming to actually feed people instead of just for profit, over time we'd be inventing different things to better suit that goal (and likewise for every other industry). Just to expand on your good point that better, non-capitalist farming doesn't mean a return to the middle ages.

[christopherfarrell]

One thing this video did not talk about is thanks to this industry, we can no longer drink our water and we are actually out of water in all the nearby towns. What is there is transported from somewhere else and contains high traces of deadly bacteria, nitrogen, and dangerous metals. We can't even boil our water anymore and expect it to be clean. This is true for a whole region.

[oliverc]

Very well done. I work a very large food and nutrition NGO with a presence across Africa and Asia. We work closely with UN agencies and with governments around the world. I think you covered a lot of very pertinent points here, albeit with a bit of a US focus. A good analysis.

I think it would have been right to talk about nutrition outcomes as well as environmental and socioeconomic issues.

I think it's also important to continue acknowledging the need for more nutritious food on less land. We can't really compromise on overall yield, so your final note on mixed production systems was excellent. Needless to say, we should also be tackling food loss and waste alongside.

Thanks for shining a light on this. The most critical item on the world's agenda.

[toyotaprius]

FUN FACT

The Great Irish Famine was manufactured by the British Empire. Armed soilders were instrumental in ensuring that commercial produce from Ireland was exported into British markets, ensuring thr protection of private capital and markets.

[roaldpage]

What else seems missing from this equation that used to bolster soil quality is compost. Living in a small rural Canadian town with parents who grew a vegetable garden I was deeply familiar with the process of recycling the vast array of leftover food into a potent fertilized soil over the course of a couple years. This made sure that the garden never lacked nutrients.
If all the extra food that ends up in landfills were to instead be composted and returned to the field it would likely also reverse some of the damage and keep soil healthy along side polycropping.

[Xivanari]

This is very good, but i wish it focused even for a minute or two more on solutions based perspectives, namely Permaculture and Permaculture economics (please read appleseed permachltures 8 forms of capital if you havent already).

Thanks for making this important video!