A century ago, there was a genuine and serious shortage of food in the United States. Agricultural science went to work to create more efficient ways of producing and storing food with the hope that hunger could be a thing of that past. Better living through chemistry found its way into the food system. In 1900, farmers produced about 20 bushels of corn an acre. Today, that number is nearer 200.FI What's more, we invented modern ways of processing foods that exponentially increased shelf life -- so we were learning all sorts of new ways to store calories for a rainy day (or a major drought).
All of this efficiency isn't without its merit. We are an exploding population facing a number of challenges and concerns about food shortages. Somewhere in the mix, though, the wheels came off. Somewhere we stopped making food, and started churning out food-like products.
I don't begrudge genuine advances in agriculture. What I detest is the big lie -- the one that tells us that we either support high tech agribusiness or we want to let poor people starve. That leaves Big Ag, Big Pharm, and Big Chemical beyond reproach in all of their practices -- because they produced a necessary solution a century ago.
It's time we call this a logical fallacy.
Some of the data in this post is taken from the film Food, Inc., and can't be easily linked. I'll mark those instances with a superscripted "FI". If you're interested, you can learn about screening the film here.