Final essay #2

The world we live in today is a horrible place that most of us are sheltered from by the luxuries we buy. Things never used to be this way. Before agriculture, humans only took from nature what they needed to survive. When agriculture came around, so did the need to control and manipulate nature because of the rising population. In modern times nature is continuously being destroyed. The human population skyrocketed when fossil fuels started being used heavily. With the human population so huge, agriculture needs some help from scientific research to feed everyone. Food in our culture is one aspect of a larger nightmare.
Food is becoming more and more unnatural. With the growing population people are looking for ways to produce food as quickly as possible and as cheap as possible. With this mentality, problems always occur. Corn, soy, wheat, and rice are the 4 main plants grown on farms. Corn is used in far more products than most people know. It is made into high fructose corn syrup which is used in all of the soft drinks. And corn is also used to feed the cows in the feed lots to make them get to slaughter weight the fastest way possible. They force the cows to eat corn instead of grass which is what they were meant to eat. The corn causes the cow’s health problems which get to their worst point just as they are slaughtered. In the slaughter houses, the conveyor belts are running too fast for the average person to handle let alone untrained illegal immigrants. They are treated badly and get paid very little. They often get cut by the knives they use and take drugs to help them stay focused. The worst part about food is the creation of fast food. People can order their salty, tasteless, greasy food and eat it while driving in their cars. Obesity and diabetes are just two of the various health related problems fast food has caused humans. All of this is made possible by the use of fossil fuels. Fertilizer, pesticides and the trucks used to transport the food all use oil. The world revolves around oil these days.
The larger nightmare includes oil, poverty, nuclear weapons, global warming, and corporations. There are conflicts in the Middle East and oil has something to do with it. Innocent people die because people want oil. While most people have food and a place to live there are always those who don’t. If world war 3 were to start because of an oil dispute I don’t think it would last very long because nuclear weapons would kill everyone in an instant. Global warming is destroying the planet because of humans. In the last century we have done more damage to the earth than anyone ever imagined could be done. Corporations only care about money, not how they affect everyone else. The workers might be mistreated, or the environment might be harmed, but everything is fine if they are creating profit.
There are many more destructive things on the earth and as long as there is oil to fuel everything, these things will continue. More corn will be grown, more cows will suffer their horrible lives, and more trucks will release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere helping global warming. Food in our culture is one more aspect of a larger nightmare.

Final Essay #1

The history of food is a very long history and boring up until the last 1% of human existence. Humans were hunters and gatherers. This means that they went around looking for plants to eat and animals to hunt. People weren’t overweight and they traveled a lot looking for more food. Occasionally there were some problems like when they hunted woolly mammoths to extinction. Hunting and gathering was the only life for humans and seemed to be fine until agriculture was developed. People started to domesticate animals and started growing plants. This allowed the tribe to grow in size, have food available and allowed more time to sit around and relax. This allowed cities to appear. Things stayed like this until the invention of the tractor in the early 1900’s. Tractors allowed more food to be produced for less money. Industrialized food really started in the 1950’s after World War 2 because while looking at the enemy’s research labs that had poisonous gas, they were able to switch some molecules and make pesticides. The variety of foods being grown decreased and now the main products are corn, soy, rice, and wheat. Corn is used in a countless food items because scientists discovered its many possibilities including high fructose corn syrup which is used as sweetener in soft drinks. Corn is also used to feed the animals we eat. Just as the plants are grown and sold in the most efficient way, animals are treated the same way. They are kept in big buildings cramped into small spaces and fed with corn, something cows aren’t made to eat, just to get them heavier the quickest way possible. Health problems have appeared in humans that are food related because of this new system. Obesity is just one thing that would never have happened if we were still hunters and gatherers. This modern food system relies on fossil fuel. They need it to fertilize the plants, to keep bugs away, and to distribute the food. It is destroying the earth. Fishing boats are catching all the fish and destroying the bottom of the ocean so the fish can’t reproduce, and using pesticides and fertilizer destroys the natural ecosystem that would be there. If they stop using those things, nothing would be able to grow naturally. As everyone knows, fossil fuels will run out. This system cannot last forever and based on calculations by scientists, peak oil will come very soon. As the oil decreases, more and more sustainable farms will appear. Sustainable farms need very little oil and some don’t need any. Using nature’s relationships farmers will be able to produce a good amount of food. For example cows will eat grass and their waste will lie on the ground and flies will lay eggs in it and then the farmer will bring in chickens to spread the waste which helps fertilize the grass and they eat the maggots the flies eggs have hatch into. When there isn’t enough oil to ship it or when the price is just too expensive, people will have to live close to a farm or start their own. People won’t start hunting again because there isn’t enough game out there but people will learn about wild plants and start gathering those.