Nicholas Kristof, writing in his column, had what I think is probably the best definition I have ever seen of the state of our agriculture…

I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all…a modern industrialized operation is…a calorie factory, without any soul.

The above quote is taken from the column in pieces with the emphasis being mine.

I personally think we have no idea what the outcome of the past three decades of industrial agriculture have done to us…yet. I feel it will be years before the final outcome is even suspected. What the combinations of growth hormones and antibiotics in their many forms have done to our bodies and the bodies of our children are unknown.

Every time I hear someone call America’s obesity epidemic a “lifestyle choice” I want to scream…It’s not a lifestyle choice it’s a food choice. When you eat the industrialized products of our industrial agriculture, even in their basic forms, your body is bombarded with chemicals and drugs in combinations no one has ever tested. Day in and day out you are being used as a test tube for the industrial ag corporations. Is there any wonder we are getting bigger by the decade as indutrial agriculture takes an ever bigger share of the market?

And to think, while family farmers go broke, the industrial agriculture group is holding out it’s hand for cash to help it survive it’s own over production…Another special interest with it’s hand in the American checkbook.

Anyway, go read Nicholas Kristof’s article…Dig through his archives…Go check out Grist and read some of what Tom Philpot has written on the matter. Educate yourself because this subject is important, and it will only get more so as the years go by…Food Policy is Health Care and you cannot disconnect the two.