Food Myth Busters

Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 4

11. Only the largest 10 percent of farms support a household from farm income alone. In 2009, earnings from farming made up an estimated 9 percent of the average income from farm operator households. Economic Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Farm Household Economics and Well-Being: Farm Household Income," 2011. To learn more about the impact of farming loss on rural communities and the impact of companies like Walmart on the rural economy, read: Nelson Lichtenstein, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. New York, NY: Picador, 2010.
12. This debt and dependency is a primary factor in many social crises in the global South, especially the epidemic of farmer suicides in rural India. See, for instance, George Lerner, "Farmer Suicides in India Linked to Debt. Globalization." CNN World. January 5, 2010. To learn more about this dynamic, see: Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Hope's Edge. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003, Chapter: Seeking Annapurna. See also this powerful video about sustainable farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve4QdJjxuPo&feature=youtu.be
13. To learn more about the role of farm subsidies-and who really benefits-see for instance: Timothy Wise, "Understanding the Farm Problem: Six Common Errors in Presenting Farm Statistics." Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, March 2005.
14. The biggest players in the industrial food chain receive benefits in a multitude of ways, through regulatory loopholes that put the environmental cleanup burden of toxic farms on taxpayer shoulders, through commodity subsidies that enable grain traders to pay artificially low prices to growers, and more. To learn more about some of the benefits accrued to the biggest players, see: Environmental Working Group, "Government Records Show Crop Insurance Subsidies Are A Boon To Big Farm Interests." May 31, 2012
15. See: Craig Cox, Andrew Hug, and Nils Bruzelius, "Losing Ground," Environmental Working Group, 2011. As much as 90 percent of U.S. cropland is losing soil above the sustainable rate, according to Dr. Pimentel. "In the last 200 years of U.S. farming, approximately 30% of farmland has been abandoned because of erosion, salinization, and waterlogging." See: David Pimentel and Nadia Kounang. "Ecology of Soil Erosion in Ecosystems." Ecosystems: 1998, page 418. See also: David Pimentel et al. "Environmental and Economic Costs of Soil Erosion and Conservation Benefits," Science, New Series, Vol. 267, No. 5201, February 24, 1995: 1117.
16. According to the FDA, 28.8 million pounds of antibiotics were sold and distributed for food use in animals in 2009. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "2009 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food Producing Animals," Table 1. To put this figure in perceptive, this is about 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States. Ralph Loglisci, "New FDA Numbers Reveal Food Animals Consume Lion's Share of Antibiotics." Center for a Livable Future blog, December 23, 2010.
17. In the 2000 National Water Quality Inventory conducted by the EPA, agricultural activity was identified as a source of pollution for 48 percent of stream and river water, and for 41 percent of lake water. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "2000 National Water Quality Inventory." (Chapter 2, 3). According to a study by Environmental Working Group, agricultural runoff plays a critical role in the doubling of drinking water violations in the U.S. because of nitrate contamin 1998-2008. This same runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus is carried into the ocean, creating aquatic "dead zones." In 2010, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico grew to the size of the state of New Jersey. Craig Cox, Andrew Hug, and Nils Bruzelius, "Losing Ground." Environmental Working Group, 2011.
18. Kristin S. Schafer et al., "Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability," Pesticide Action Network North America, May 2004. Data is based on the January 2003 CDC National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.
19. Farming communities have higher rates of leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma, as well as cancers of the skin, lip, stomach, brain, and prostate. National Cancer Institute, "Agricultural Health Study" National Institutes of Health, 2011.
20. There are lots of great studies on the resiliency of sustainable farms, especially during weather extremes like droughts. The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute found that during a ten-year period comparing organic and non-organic corn growing systems, the organic corn fields yielded on average 30 percent higher during dry years. Rodale Institute, "The Farming Systems Trial: Celebrating 30 Years." Kutztown, PA: 2011. For an example of a study from sub-Saharan Africa, see Amede Tilahun, "Yield Gain and Risk Minimization in Maize (Zea Mays) through Cultivar Mixtures in Semi-arid Zones of the Rift Valley in Ethiopia." Experimental Agriculture 31, no. 02 (1995). Researchers found that fields in this drought-prone region of Ethiopia planted with biodiverse fields yielded about 30 percent more than monocultures during normal rainfall years, and yielded 60 percent more during dry years.
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