Non-Industrialized Food

Consumers are forced into believing that they are observers of the market and food production systems, however, they are the controllers. When we take into consideration the health of our environment, what our market is made up of matters more than the size of it and as consumers, we have the power to influence that. Our food system currently is made up of industrialized food, which feeds the majority of Americans, and non-industrialized food that feeds the few and elite. Non-industrialized food is shaking up our market, but not enough to change the system completely. The non-industrialized food gives the consumer the false belief that they are changing the market through their individual conscience purchase, which creates no real demand from …show more content…
This is accomplished through education, which creates paradigm shifts and a growing concern for an issue. As a society we are in desperate need of a paradigm shift so that we can better understand our impact on the environment, the toxic hazards we are truly exposed to, and improvements that we can make. This paradigm shift is not acquirable while we continue to live our lives running on the treadmill of production and consumption. There is an insufficient amount of political will or moral imperative to change the way food is distributed and this can change through activism that moves away from the intensification of resource use. When our economic mindset overcomes our environmental mindset we are unable to make improvements as a society. In order to move past our reliance on industrial agriculture, we need to become part of a deliberative and participatory democracy that is willing to take action on the systems that we feel do not align with our …show more content…
Success in the future will simply involve new ways of thinking. Sustainable agriculture is a movement that will create systems that mitigate or eliminate environmental harms that industrial agriculture has been causing. These actions towards sustainability will recognize that natural resources are finite, there are limits to economic growth, and we need to allocate resources. These solutions will preserve topsoil, biodiversity, and communities and will consider long-term interests instead of short-term interests such as profit. Urban agriculture and alternative marketing are two factors that will play a large role in our future food systems because they place importance on producing crops and meat at a local scale with real interactions with the farmers. Urban agriculture will reduce the energy necessary for transport and it can create economic development while also improving food security. Alternative marketing will be in the form of farmers markets and community-supported agriculture, which will give the consumer a direct link to their food supply (Horrigan,