Health care reform demands U.S. food policy and agricultural reform
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"Lance Armstrong serves on the President's Cancer Panel, which released a report this year concluding that processed forms of corn and soybeans - heavily subsidized commodity crops- are known contributors to obesity and chronic diseases, including cancer. The upcoming reauthorization of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (the Farm Bill) provides an opportunity that must not be missed to strongly increase support for fruit and vegetable farmers."
There is a connection between farm subsidies, health, and food security -- in both the United States and in countries like Haiti. The
US government's food policies and
profit priorities harm the planet, as well as the people who eat processed
foods, which are full of contaminants such as pesticides, additives, and bacteria from processing. This non-green diet
makes us sick and the chronic diseases it causes drive up health care
spending.
Too many people have had family members die of cancer or know someone very close who died of cancer. It's an unspeakable experience. It certainly makes your faith in scientific advancement falter.
Here's a case in point. For many
Haitians living abroad it's extremely ironic to see that the generation
of our grandparents and great grandparents actually lived longer than
our own parents and relatives who immigrated, work and live in the US
all their lives. It happened and is happening in this writer's family.
Both my grandmothers who lived their entire lives in a rural town in
Southern Haiti and many of their generation survived or are surviving
into and past their 80s. My grandmothers lived longer in Haiti than my
mother who immigrated to America. So many folks in America are dying
young from cancer, diabetes, and/or heart disease. Part of it is the
American diet.
In great grandma's Haitian countryside meat
was a luxury indulged in just occasionally and dairy was not a daily
staple. The old Haitian diet was organic and there was no US government "trying
to help the defense industry move over to a civilian use of their
nitrate explosives which became fertilizer, and their nerve gas, which
became herbicides and pesticides."
That's why taking on the
medical cost of health care is one thing, but there is something
seriously wrong with the Western food diet, not to mention the US
domestic and international harm done by farm subsidies that force US
farmers to grow commodity crops such as rice, soy, corn, sugar and
tobacco, and use toxic fertilizer that harms the environment, seeps
into the river system and kills the fish.
In the article The Carbon Trade , Janet Gilles makes the point, inter alia, that:
"the government pays to pollute the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The United Nations Environmental Group says nitrate pollution is the greatest threat to our fisheries worldwide.
In exchange for cheap corn fed beef, fish, chicken, and pork, which have little nutritional value as the animals are no longer getting the rich assortment of greens from their natural diet, we are killing the wild fish.
Right now, farmers are paid for the number of acres under cultivation for "commodity crops , which are crops that go to a manufacturer, such as Archer Daniels Midlands, before they go to the table.
Real foods, fruits and vegetables and nuts, are not subsidized. In fact, if a farmer getting his $200,000 a year for growing soy or corn decides to grow a few acres of food for the table (specialty foods in the legislation) , say he decides to grow some tomatoes, he loses his entire $200K.
No more crop rotation. Only industrial agriculture gets the subsidy." ( The Carbon Trade by Janet Gilles, Sept 11, 2009.)
US farm subsidies don't just hurt US citizens, our children, US food
security and the environment, but of course, also other nations these toxic
foods are shipped to, like Haiti.
US subsidized rice is
inferior to the organically-grown Haitian rice and is actually killing
Haitians in Haiti. Here's an example:
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