How Does Feeding America Affect The Economy

Former president George Washington once said, “Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man,” (George Washington Quote). Since Washington’s presidency, countless advancements and developments within the agricultural industry have allowed the United States to grow, develop, and become one of the most prosperous countries in the entire world. Nevertheless, this prosperity is also marked by several key historical events, such as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, which have caused the core values and traditions that this great nation was built on to slowly disappear. Today, the majority of Americans have no knowledge, understanding, or appreciation for the agricultural industry, causing them to take for granted the basic necessities they rely on each day. This disconnection has created a gap between producers and consumers, which is known as

Every living organism on the planet has to eat and without farmers that production is lost. Crash Course reports, “Before the Industrial Revolution about eighty percent of the world’s population was engaged in farming to keep itself and the other twenty percent of people from starving. Today, in the United States, less than one percent of people list their occupation as farming” (“Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution”). That leaves only one percent of people to feed the other ninety-nine percent of people in the country. What if something were to happen to this one percent? People are completely reliant on this small group of people to care for them, this must be unbelievably stressful on these farms knowing the demand. If the population continues to grow at it’s projected rate, then starvation will only worsen and America will face a large tribulation as a

Traditional agriculture methods are taking a toll on the environment! Crop yields worldwide are not increasing quickly enough to support estimated global needs projected for 2050, the year when Earth’s population is estimated be over 9 billion people (Alexandratos; Bruinsma, 2012). Developed nations must learn to grow more crops with less farmable land and water. By 2030, global water consumption will increase by 30% (Fox, 2013). Developing countries with access to farmable lands must double production, and overall global food production must increase by 50-70%. Global meat production must increase from 200 million tons to 470 million tons (FAO, 2009). In many areas of Africa where meat production is scarce, gorillas are being hunted as a source

Agriculture has always been and always will be a part of society, but do the people outside of the agriculture community know anything about the farms and the regulations of farms of today’s world? The federal government should support the family farms of today rather than the industrial side of agriculture.

The Agriculture sector has changed monumentally over the past century in response to vast economic change and technological advancements. Farm subsidies are various forms of payments from the federal government put in place in an effort to stabilize prices, keep farmers in business, and ensure quality of crops. The federal government currently pays $20 billion in cash each year to US farmers and spent an estimated $250 billion between 1995-2005. Presently, a new farm bill is passed every five years

In the USA today, there is a large quantity of food whose prices are quite affordable to many. Agricultural advances in technology are to be acknowledged for the large amounts of food in the country. Progresses in the mechanization of farming for example have brought about improved agricultural output over the recent years (Marian, 2016). Production of food has increased, while overburdening of land has been reduced significantly. A major disadvantage of mechanization nonetheless has been loss of human labor. But this tends to have an effect on a few people since not too many of the country’s population are directly involved in agriculture. This concern has been dwarfed by the recent uneasiness that has been brought about by

Today, with the rise of corporate farms, higher taxes, huge incentives to develop farm land, and low food prices, small farms are going out of business and not producing food anymore. In the 1990's, only 2% of the American people actively farmed. Even though there is a decrease in farming, each farm produces at least enough food for 120 people plus themselves. These 120 additional people include 95 people from the U.S. and 25 who live overseas (Byrd, Shaw, and Webster, 1997). Another reason for this decrease in farms is the increase number of factories and other better paying and more secure jobs. Farmers have found that it is easier to have a factory job than to farm.

Since 2008, a shortage of food causing a food crisis is sweeping the globe. "The breadbasket of the world," the United States also cannot escape it. There is not always enough food for this world, so people have tried all kinds of ideas to produce more food. Unfortunately, land is limited for every country, and people have to raise the output of every land. At the beginning, people used grafting. Grafting merges the advantages of two plants. For example, the seedling of a corn which is drought - tolerant was transplanted to another kind of corn which is high-producing, and the final corn will be drought - tolerant and high-producing. Though the result is very good, it’s very difficult and expensive to transplant every plant. People innovated hybridization plants, but they are not stable. When the gene was found, many scientists began researching how to transplant the gene to another plant, and then we created Genetically Modified Organism food.

In an increasingly globalized world, productivity and efficiency is crucial to the survival of agricultural businesses. Today, a smaller number of farms produce an increasingly larger amount of produce. Since 1920, the average farm size has grown over 300 percent (Ikred). Productivity is at an all time high, and in recent years the U.S. has had a “tremendous increase in international agricultural trade (Brown, 2011, p. 168).” For consumers around the world, this means cheaper, more accessible food, which is crucial for a rising world population with limited resources. However, the mid-size farmer is diminishing in number. We will look at what trends are causing the downfall of the mid-size farmer. What this means for rural communities, and whether or not these trends are inevitable.

Economically, the corporate food industry and industrialization of agriculture has created millions of jobs that keep people employed. With such a rapidly growing population everyday, more jobs need to be created and more people are needed in agriculture than ever before to keep up with the demand for food. The development of industrialized agriculture solves both of these problems by providing the jobs people need, while meeting the demand for food. It also not only employs farmers but agriculture can employ people like truck drivers to deliver food or factory workers to clean or process food. Furthermore, the agricultural industry is able to beneficially hire unskilled or immigrant workers. Many agricultural jobs are considered menial, so

Food production shortage: one of the planet’s most prominent future issues. Today, most of the world’s agriculture and farming is able to keep up with the over seven billion people residing on Earth, but the future suggests problems. “The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.” (Texas A&M AgriLife Communications). This hypothesis is based upon the exponential population growth that is occurring on Earth and that food production may not be able to supply people efficiently.

Barack Obama once said, “Nobody who works full-time should have to live in poverty.” Migrant farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida are well underpaid for the work they provide. A full days of hard labor is worth only forty-two dollars… That type of income barely passes the United States poverty line. Pickers can be out in the fields picking tomatoes from five in the morning to eight at night - in dangerously hot conditions. Workers carry, pick, and throw about four thousand pounds of tomatoes in a day’s worth of work, all while being paid only a penny per pound. The Immokalee community produces millions of dollars in produce farming, but the wealth does not stay with the pickers or the community. As one may have guessed, pickers are at the bottom of the food industry supply chain while supermarkets such as Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Publix are at the top. Supermarkets control how farmers grow the crops, the quality of the produce, and most importantly the price of the crops in the market. As a whole, supermarkets gross half a trillion dollars in profit a year, beating out companies such as Apple and Microsoft.

To achieve the goal of creating more food with less land and less resources than ever before, the members of our industry need to become savvier to technology, and quite simply need a stronger and larger work force. Currently, many people of our state and nation see agriculture strictly as a labor-intensive industry with no room for brain power or office jobs. Many Americans still see jobs in the agricultural industry as what is has always been, “[a] low paying job with no benefits, no laws covering or protecting them” (National, 85). These high paying jobs are going unfilled because of the lack of highly educated workers with college degrees and knowledge to complete the job tasks. The agriculture industry also isn’t taking a stand to combat this lack of college graduates into the agricultural field of work. Many agriculturalists don’t have the time to market themselves and their work because they are too busy working to feed the population.  With only 2% of American people working in the production agriculture industry (World), the voices of these workers aren’t being spread and non-agriculturists simply aren’t being exposed to the opportunities present in agriculture jobs. Thus, the open jobs are staying unoccupied and students aren’t pursuing higher educations to fill them, leaving the agriculture industry with a shortage of workers.

The USDA recorded value of crop production in the United States in the year 2015 was 186.2 billion dollars. The agricultural industry in America is an economic giant. It provides a consistent food supply to many countries around the world, not to mention the United Sates. It stimulates and stabilizes the economy, all while bringing in billions of dollars every year. While these things are very beneficial to this country, the agricultural industry also depends, at least in part, on funding from the government through agricultural subsidies.

The modern economy consists of the commodification of everything. From education to tourist attractions, it’s no surprise that food and land has been manipulated to produce monetary outputs. What was once considered simply means of survival has evolved into an industry dominated by corporations that use unsustainable methods of production, therefore rapidly exhausting our natural resources. The shift from traditional farming with appropriate appreciation for the environment has long been discarded in many regions and replaced with monopolies which place quantity over quality. Agricultural minorities have begun to demand the restoration of old means of farming but have been criticized that regression can have no positive outcomes. By returning the sovereignty over food to small-scale farmers and rural groups, are we moving backwards or is it just a familiar revision to improve the future of agriculture?