Today's Food System
Food production is interconnected with the environment and health. Over the last 150 years, industrialization has slowly transformed American agriculture from small-scale local farms to massive specialized enterprises reliant on fossil fuel energy, pesticides and fertilizers.
The health and sustainability of our agro-eco food system is indeed a human health issue. Industrialization and monocrop farming with its reliance on non-renewable or hard-to-renew resources have brought a myriad of problems: fresh water consumption for crops, groundwater contamination from animal waste and fertilizer runoff, soil nutrient depletion, fossil fuel consumption, increased carbon dioxide and methane gas emissions, and increased use of antibiotics in animal feed.
The last 80 years of agricultural policies have supported and encouraged the industrialization of agriculture and expanded food production capacity. Yet, looking at the food system as an entire system, it fails to provide well for either farmers or consumers. The existing food system offers too much cheap food to consumers who opt for foods high in calories, fats, sweeteners and carbohydrates over more expensive fresh produce. Current production policies and market distortions need to be corrected. Future policies should integrate health and sustainability concerns.
Special Supplement of the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition
- 1. Aligning Food Systems Policies to Advance Public Health
- 2. Principles for Framing a Healthy Food System
- 3. Today's Food System
- 4. Food Systems and Public Health Disparities
- 5. Reshaping the Food System for Ecological Public Health
- 6. Identifying Innovative Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Using Consumption-Oriented Food Supply Chain Analysis
- 7. US-Based Food and Agricultural Value Chains and Their Relevance to Healthy Diets
- 8. Economies of Size in Production Agriculture
- 9. Agriculture Policy is Health Policy
- 10. Recipe for a Better Tomorrow
- 11. Affordability and Obesity
- 12. Places to Intervene to Make Complex Food Systems More Healthy, Green, Fair, and Affordable
- 13. Research and Action Priorities for Linking Public Health, Food Systems, and Sustainable Agriculture