As a nation, we have come to depend on a food system full of hidden costs and false promises.
The industrial food system, which receives the lion’s share of public and private investment, focuses on the yield of just a handful of crops and animals and dismisses the many environmental and public health costs associated with an increasingly global and industrial food supply. These costs speak to the inefficiency of a food system driven by expansion, corporate consolidation and the push to maximize profits, generally at the expense of family farmers, food quality, environmental health and community well-being.
Industrial agriculture does not serve family farmers, our economies or public well-being. Instead, we continue to see the negative impacts of unchecked market power and the loss of family farmers from the land. With rising production costs, environmental degradation, climate change and worsening public health crises linked to diet, the industrial food system is starting to buckle under its own weight.