This article touches on reform of our food industries and even references the farmer in chief piece that we read in class. It opens with the quote stating that if we ever hope to reform out health care system we must first repair our severely damaged and perverse food industry. Because as long as our current system is in place and chronic disease caused by our daily diets remains in tact reform is but a dream. It is essentially a very weak breakdown of farmer in chief but it does bring up a few of the more interesting statistics such as the us health care system spending 147 billion dollars to treat obesity annually and another 116 billion for diabetes.
"America Must Reform Its Food Industry or Go Broke With Health Care Costs: Michael Pollan." Organic Consumers Association. 15 Jan. 2010. Web. 22 Jan. 2010. .

This article entails information on a study done on two feedlots, one of them natural in which no antimicrobials are used, the second being commercial where the antimicrobials are present. Tests are run on the cattle's water for E. Coli and Enterobacteria and figures show that the pathogens were significantly higher in the commercial feedlot's water supply. Though they do have increased resistance to these foreign bodies the use of antimicrobials in farm animals can lead to unusually resilient bacteria, and these cultures could eventually mutate to infect humans. Though these tests are merely preliminary their results are rather chilling and until further researched cannot be dealt with.

The Medical News. 20 Feb. 2008. 22 Jan. 2010 .

The article opens with a reference to "The Jungle" and how our current food situation is a parallel to it, a "Jungle 2.0" if you will. Because of the recent peanut butter salmonella incident our country is neared a record high of food recall for 2009. Food safety also effects trade with over 3000 products recaled and the cost impact of all this came up to near 1 billion dollars. Infact the recall of peanut butter resulted in sales dropping over 25% for the entire industry losing roughly 500 million dollars. It hurts not only the large conglomerates but the small family bussinesses which are unable to bounce back from such losses. The article states that to reform food we must reform agriculture.

Murphy, Dave. "We need to reform Americas food safety system from the farm up | Grist." Grist | Environmental News, Commentary, Advice. 12 Mar. 2009. Web. 22 Jan. 2010. .

Farmer in Chief Seminar

I found that the seminar took a bad turn when we began discussing junk food. Not because it was a dull or uninteresting topic but once we hit junkfood we didn't get anywhere else. Once I believe it was Diana that brought up the idea of banning junkfood we got stuck on the topic, and the seminar seemed to die just then. I found various aspects of the packet interesting like the idea of feedlots and the counterproductivity of feeding the livestock antibiotics that would lead to stronger new strains of bacterium and virus'. The fact that the livstock were in kept such horrible conditions that they no longer had a legitimate functioning immune system struck me profoundly, and disturbed me. The idea that came to mind was rather than attempting to create more effective antibiotics we reform the whole system of livestock. I believe that we should return to the basics and go back to farm-raising and free range animals. Not only does farming need a reform but our whole system of food production needs to be reformed, we're burning through fossil fuels at an alarming rate and at a ratio of one food calorie per ten fossil fuel calories burned we won't be getting anywhere. This is a great task and I believe the best place to begin is educating the public. Before we put new policies into play we must inform the general public of what this destructive cycle of consumption will lead to.

Farming Lineage

To my surprise my uncle is a farmer, he grows a kind of citrus fruit commercially and although the fruits name escapes me I'm quite astonished by this. Even my mother was a farmer, albeit not commercial they did own a plot of land and grew various crops for a multitude of uses.

Natural World Phenomena

Something that I've always found intriguing is the aurora borealis, I understand it is a phenomena that occurs in the natural world but what conditions are necessary for it to exist? I do believe they occur in the earths ionosphere and are often found in the north and south poles but aside from that I know nothing.