A Short History on Food Policy

Before the era of Industrial Farming, during the Great Depression in the 1920's-30's families could not afford food. Farmers were producing plenty of healthy food, but it was just too expensive for families to afford so farmers were going out of business.

The Farm Bill was introduced in 1933 and it stabilized prices by supporting farmers and undergirding costs to control farm production. It worked! families could afford food again and farmers could stay in business. It seemed like a win for everyone and for a while it was, but soon things would change.

After world war two we had a lot of chemicals left over from bomb making that we turned into fertilizer for the farms. Those fertilizers created a massive boom in farm production which created a surge in the market place of all kinds of delicious fruits, veggies and grains that were also turned into food items by local producers. That surge in the market place created a problem for the government because they could no longer keep up with the amount of different products and farm fresh ingredients that were now saturating the market. While it may not have been good for them, it allowed us, the consumers, to choose from a variety of nutrient rich foods to take home and make nutrient dense meals with for our families.

In 1970 the secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts changed food policy forever and that policy was the beginning of the end for local and small farmers and the beginning of the rapid decline in our health as a whole in America. He bankrupted small farms and built an industry around cheap commodity crops produced by massive farms instead. These massive farms produced cheap grain, corn, and soy beans that were used to make a multitude of cheap products which is how we got the center of our grocery stores... highly processed packaged foods and frozen meals.

These products were marketed to us as nutritious, and apart of a healthy diet. They even went as was as to say that children needed midday snacks to keep their energy levels up so TWINKIES were an excellent source of energy and nutrition to help children grow... TWINKIES!!! and what's even worse... WE BELIEVED THEM!

Our food system was designed for Big Business. It was designed to be profitable for the government and Big Tobacco companies that now owned almost our entire food supply chain after acquiring small food companies and growing them to the conglomerates we see today. Think Kelloggs and Post.

This policy changed the course of American health and the medical industry. The first autoimmune diseases discovered here in America was in the 1940's. That correlates perfectly with the timeframe that we started using industrialized fertilizers. I don't believe for a second that this is a coincidence. As Earl Butts focused his energies on bringing to the cost of "food" down by destroying the local family farmers and building a system around cheap commodity crops for corporations to turn into cheap highly processed products, to pedal to us as "food". While he was successful at bringing the cost of food down, the cost of our medical care skyrocketed to keep up with the repercussions of these cheap "foods".