Food and the Environment

Question 1

Ecology

Answer 1

• Cows and other ruminants can do things we just can’t do. They have the most highly evolved digestive organ on the planet, called the rumen. And the rumen can digest grass. It takes grass, cellulose in grass, and turns it into protein, very nutritious protein.
• Land that is not good enough for agriculture grows grass and nothing else. For 10,000 years, the buffalo and now cows keep the rolling plains from becoming “the great American desert.” Turn low grade forage and convert it to a desirable product.
• The industrial values of specialization, economies of scale, and mechanization crowd out ecological values such as diversity, complexity, and symbiosis.

Question 2

Pesticides

Answer 2

• Environmental Problems: To get a successful crop, growers pump the sand full of chemical fertilizers and can blast the plants with more than 100 different herbicides and pesticides, including some of the most toxic in agribusiness’s arsenal. In 2006, Florida growers sprayed nearly 8 million pounds of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides on their tomato crops, nearly eight times as much as California growers used for a similar-size crop.
• According to the Farmworker Association of Florida, 92% of the agricultural workers in the region had been exposed to pesticides through a combination of aerial spraying, wind drifting from applications on adjacent fields, touching plants still wet with pesticides, and inhaling pesticides. Pesticide drifts enter churches, schools and recreation parks.
• Effects of pesticides on wildlife and the air

Question 3

Natural/Unnatural disasters

Question 4

CIW Coalition of Immokolee Workers and campaigns

Answer 4

• Formed in 1993, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, CIW, is an organization of farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida to fight for better wages and working conditions. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a membership-led farmworker organization of mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian immigrants.