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Nurses understand better than anybody that the American food market has actually added to an epidemic of obesity and high blood pressure unmatched in current history through unfettered advertising, food additives and mono-crops. If we fail to resolve the terrible impacts of 'Big Food' then this might also end up being a country whose population is also facing a health crisis.
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According to The New York Times, a huge part of the cash invested on healthcare in this country treats persistent illness connected to diet. But it's not just the health of people at threat, the health of the world is likewise suffering. Even President Obama acknowledged that "our farming sector really is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector."

Small household farms across America have mainly been replaced by mega-agricultural corporations running substantial animals feeding lots and a concentrating of our food production in massive centers and on giant farms.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 huge corporations from farms, to lots, to grocery shops managing nearly the whole process from seed to table.

In an innovative choice that supported genetically-modified foods, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of seed patents - fertile soil for mega-agribusiness Monsanto, which was currently developing lots of genetically-modified (GM) seeds. There is growing concern that presenting foreign genes into food plants may have an unanticipated and negative effect on human health. The British Journal Lancet examined the effects of GM potatoes on the gastrointestinal system in rats and found "considerable distinctions." Considerable study continues the important concern of the damage of GM foods.

This whole system has extremely little oversight. And we have actually seen the effects - under-regulated fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide saturated mono-crops of soy and corn replacing small scale multi-crop farms, increases in greenhouse gases produced by big animals operations, and even current outbreaks of food-born illness originating from big cleaning and product packaging plants.

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

President-elect Trump now inherits a gorgeous garden full of healthy organic foods. How will his garden grow?

It is specific that business farming will try to put in impact over the brand-new administration at the cost of the family farmer and at the cost of the health of our nation.

There is an alternative design for feeding our country using less chemicals, triggering less harm to the environment and promoting much healthier eating habits. That option originates 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 nation was left in a precarious food situation, not able to import fertilizers, pesticides, or foodstuff to feed its people. It likewise meant that what food Cubans might grow, they mostly consumed themselves rather of cycling through livestock.

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

These elements contributed to Cuba being much more ready for scenarios now dealing with numerous nations throughout the world. Cubans mastered what is now called "agro-ecology" in contrast to our country's mainly commercial agriculture. Small scale farmers in Cuba are leading the country's farming movement and promoting sustainable practices like planting flowers to bring in valuable bugs and nitrogen producing beans to fertilize the soil. Cubans needed to discover creative methods to till the soil and plant crops without fossil fuel-fed equipment.

Out of need

Cuba now produces practically all of its own produce and much of its own meat. These agricultural developments were not constructed out of ideology. Rather, Cubans acted out of necessity, to satisfy the needs of a starving individuals.

Cuban agriculture can in some methods be seen 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 planet.

Already, researchers fear that our planet is on the edge of no return from global warming. If we do not scale back our farming use of nonrenewable fuel sources we might tip the thermometer completely for our warming planet, resulting in the very same type of food insecurity around the world that Cubans dealt with.