Problems

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby."

-Bill Mollison

Agribusiness
A term used to combines agriculture and business.

Biotechnology
A range of tools, including traditional breeding techniques that alter living organisms or parts of organisms to make or modify products; improve plants or animals; or develop microorganisms for specific agricultural uses. Modern biotechnology today includes the tools of genetic engineering.

Conventional Agriculture
Generally used to contrast common or traditional agricultural practices featuring heavy reliance on chemical and energy inputs typical of large-scale, mechanized farms to alternative agriculture or sustainable agriculture practices. Mold-board plowing to cover stubble, routine pesticide spraying, and use of synthetic fertilizers are examples of conventional practices that contrast to alternative practices such as no-till, integrated pest management, and use of animal and green manures.
ilrdss.sws.uiuc.edu/glossary/glossary_allresults.asp

Factory farm
A large-scale industrial site where many animals (generally chickens, turkeys, cattle, or pigs) are confined and treated with hormones and antibiotics to maximize growth and prevent disease. The animals produce much more waste than the surrounding land can handle. These operations are associated with various environmental hazards as well as cruelty to animals.

Feedlots
Buildings, lots, or a combination of buildings and lots in which animals are confined for feeding, breeding, raising, and/or holding. The concentration of hundreds or thousands of animals in a confined feedlot facility drastically reduces the welfare of these animals, creates health risks, promotes the spread of disease, and yields tremendous quantities of animal waste, which pollutes the natural environment and threatens human health.

Food Security
The term "food security" originated in the international development literature of the 1960s and 1970s, and at that time (and still in many usage’s) referred to the ability of a country or region to assure an adequate food supply for its current and projected population.

"Sustained access to food at all times, in socially acceptable ways, to food adequate in quantity and quality to maintain a healthy life."
Life Sciences Research Organization in 1991

Problems and Statistics

-The number of people without enough to eat on a regular basis remains stubbornly high, at over 800 million.

Governments (Food as a weapon)
-Kleptocracy: A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.

“There is no such thing as an apolitical food problem.”
Amartya Sen, a Noble Prize winning economist

“The distribution of food within a country is a political issue. Governments in most countries give priority to urban areas, since that is where the most influential and powerful families and enterprises are usually located. The government often neglects subsistence farmers and rural areas in general. The more remote and underdeveloped the area the less likely the government will be to effectively meet its needs. Many agrarian policies, especially the pricing of agricultural commodities, discriminate against rural areas. Governments often keep prices of basic grains at such artificially low levels that subsistence producers can not accumulate enough capital to make investments to improve their production. Thus, they are effectively prevented from getting out of their precarious situation."
Fred Cuny - Famine, Conflict, and Response: a Basic Guide; Kumarian Press, 1999.

-Dictators and warlords have and can use food as a political weapon, rewarding their supporters while denying food supplies to areas that oppose their rule. Under such conditions food becomes a currency with which to buy support and famine becomes an effective weapon to be used against the opposition.

Monopolizes trade
-Farmers are free to grow cash crops for export, but under penalty of law only able to sell their crops to government buyers at prices far below the world market price. The government then is free to sell their crop on the world market at full price, pocketing the difference. This creates an artificial “poverty trap” from which even the most hard working and motivated farmers may not escape.

Principles
-Food Security represents at least a partial answer and in some cases a complete answer to many of the profound challenges now facing this country and the world. http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/521738.html
-United States is drastically cutting back on spending for sustainable agriculture. The government may not be in a position to help and secure our food consumption and quality.
-Population growth

Genetic engineering
The science of changing the DNA of a plant or animal to produce desirable characteristics. Examples of desirable characteristics include fast growth and unusually large size. This is a very controversial science that many believe has not been adequately tested and studied. In addition, not everyone agrees that the plants and animals that are genetically engineered are safe for humans to eat or safe for the environment if released.

GMO
Genetically Modified Organism. This is a plant or animal that has been genetically engineered. Many industries support the development and use of GMOs while many consumers and organizations question their safety and have called for adequate and independent testing of GMO products. It is legal for farmers in the U.S. and some other countries like Argentina to produce and sell certain GMOs for human and animal consumption, but in other places like Europe and Japan, they are banned until further testing can be done to prove they are safe.

Green revolution
The Green Revolution is a process of technological development of agricultural techniques that began in Mexico in 1944 by Norman Earnest Borlaug (winner of the 1970 Noble peace prize) and has since spread throughout the world. It is based on petroleum-based soil inputs. It was a planned international effort to end hunger funded by: Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and many developing country governments.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
http://wparks.myweb.uga.edu/ppt/green/sld001.htm

Hormones
Chemicals found naturally in animals' bodies that control processes like growth and metabolism. Synthetic (man-made) hormones have been developed for a number of purposes, including treatment of hormonal disorders in people, and also for promotion of unnaturally fast growth in farm animals. One of the most well-known and controversial hormones used in farming is recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone or rBGH, which is genetically engineered and injected into dairy cattle. (See rBGH.) Scientists have linked excess hormones to cancer.

Hormone Free
The USDA has prohibited use of the term “Hormone Free,” but meats can be labeled “No Hormones Administered.”

Mass media
“The mass media have largely maintained silence about the genetic engineering revolution in agriculture, and government regulators have imposed no labeling requirements. The result is the public has little or no knowledge that genetically altered foods are already being sold in grocery stores everywhere.”
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=757

Monoculture
Monoculture is the destruction of a diverse ecosystem and replacement with a single species or crop. This is common practice in modern agriculture, where large acreages of crops are grown for sale to other regions or countries. Monocultures deplete the soil, and fruits and vegetables become more susceptible to pests and disease than those grown in a diverse crop environment, thus requiring larger amounts of chemical sprays.

Pesticide
A substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pesticides can accumulate in the food chain and/or contaminate the environment if they are misused.

rBGH Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone
recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST) This is a genetically engineered hormone that is injected into dairy cows to increase their milk production. Cows injected with rBGH have shorter life spans and are much more likely to suffer from udder infections. rBGH is only legal in three countries: the United States, South Africa, and Mexico. RBGH has been banned in Canada, the European Union and elsewhere because of inadequate testing and some evidence that it leads to cancer.

Soil Depletion
The consistent erosion of our top soil due to the down side of the chemicals used in the “Green Revolution”. was based upon petroleum-based soil inputs that artificially injected “nutrients” into the soil, thereby greatly increasing crop yield. There is also growing evidence that our soil is at the breaking point, and that the inputs are no longer holding the soil together as they once did. The outlook here is quite bleak.