"The Omnivore's Dilemma" - 1

A few years ago, my dad told me about The Omnivore's Dilemma and how important of a read it was for him.  I took it into consideration, but I never got around to reading it.  Now that I chose it for my Issues class semester book project, I'm required to read it, although it feels more like an obsession rather than a requirement.  The Omnivore's Dilemma is a sickly revealing book on the food industry of today, and I cannot stop turning the pages.  It's one of those things where if you read something disgusting, you close your eyes for a second, but you can't help but continue.  This informative book is so revolting yet so engrossing that I can't stop reading it.  It is essentially a rude awakening.

The first chapter of this book talks about how corn is the essence of our food industry today.  I know, you think, "Corn?  I only have corn during cookouts!"  But you never would have thought that corn is in virtually every processed food on the market, just in different forms.  There is high fructose corn syrup, a seemingly cheap alternative to cane sugar, there is corn starch, there is corn oil, there is lechitin, there is citric acid (derived from corn), and there are several others.  The question to ask here is: So what?  So what if corn is used for virtually everything?  The answer lies on the farms where the corn is mass-produced.  Corn farmers compete for the higher yields of corn; the more bushels per acre, the better.  This method of growing corn very close together, however, sucks the soil of its important nutrients.  To replenish the nutrients, farmers use synthetically produced nitrogen fertilizer derived from petroleum.  So essentially, 50 gallons of oil is required per bushel of corn.  When the soil needs a break, farmers resort to soybeans, which are used interchangeably with corn.  There is such a surplus of this stuff that the government subsidizes it and there are some state laws that require gasoline to contain ethanol (derived from corn), which requires more oil to produce than gasoline itself.  And apparently, the farmers barely make profits from it, but they're stuck in the business.  The fertilizer runoff from the farms seeps into bodies of water and water tables, affecting the ecosystem and our water system as well. 

This system needs to stop to prevent us from reaching our doom, and in order to stop it, the government needs to stop subsidizing.  If the government gets any more involved than it is already, freedom will be encroached upon.  So if the government would just stop subsidizing these industries, the farmers would be at a loss.  They produce so much corn, such a huge surplus, that it costs so little.  They eventually would not be able to run their business anymore, and then they would have to revert to other agricultural products.  This corn industry defies the agricultural cycle, creating waste rather than cycling it.  It needs to stop, and the government needs to stay out of it.