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February 4, 2013 by Karen Jensen, MLS

On the 8th day God made farmers, on the 9th day the devil sent big business to ruin it all

February 4, 2013 by Karen Jensen, MLS   Leave a Comment

Yes, the God Made a Farmer ad during last night’s Superbowl was beautiful and touching and inspiring.  It touched on the heart of what did and can make America great.  But I want to encourage you to visit your library and spend some time researching what farming is like today and what big agribusiness, people like Monsanto and others, are doing and how it impacts not only these very farmers highlighted in the ad, but our environment, our food supply, our food prices and more.  This commercial, to me, was such a huge reminder about the importance of being armed with good information and really exploring the impact of emotion versus facts.  Farmers are indeed an important part and backbone of the American culture, and many of them are being harmed by large corporations and their ability to influence farming legislation and current farming practices.  If we care about these farmers, we need to help them keep more of their profits so that they can have a good quality of life and continue farming in ways that are healthy for our bodies, our nation and our environment.  So while everyone is talking about this ad, I want to use it as a springboard to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE]

It is important that we investigate how our current food supply is affecting our children and teens.  There is ample evidence to suggest that there are some important and harmful health affects occurring, including the rise of food allergies among our young and just the overall increase in unhealthiness among our young people.  Current figures estimate that about 1 out of 3 children has some kind of autoimmune, neurological or other health condition that is impacting their quality of life and ability to learn.  I learned about this first hand when my second child, now 4, developed life threatening complications that now impact her daily quality of life.  Children everywhere are struggling as their bodies try and digest a chemical soup of processed foods that are low on the nutritional content that they need and high on additives that we don’t fully understand the ramifications of.  When we look at how our children are doing in schools and considering what the future of this country will look like, we can’t ignore much of the research that is coming down the pike about our children’s health and food supply.  We must also examine what type of a world we will be leaving for our children and discuss the environmental impacts of our current food supply and agriculture practices.

I encourage you to support your local farmers, learn more about farming and the agriculture business, and to spend some time investigating eating healthy and in ways that are sustainable to our environment and food supply.  Here are some good starting points:

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How Factory Farms Affect You
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/problems/
8 Ways Monsanto Fails at Sustainable Agriculture:
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/eight-ways-monsanto-fails.html
10 Things Monsanto Doesn’t Want You to Know:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/ten-things-monsanto.pdf
The Severe Toxic Effects of Monsanto:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/new-study-finds-severe-toxic-effects-of-pervasively-used-monsanto-herbicide-roundup-and-roundup-ready-gmo-corn.html
The Independent Report: The Decline of Farming in the US
http://independentreport.blogspot.com/2011/03/as-farming-declines-in-us-food-prices.html
Factoring Farming in the US:
http://www.isfoundation.com/campaign/creatures/factory-farming-america-part-3-environmental-impact-factory-farming

Ways You Can Be Active
http://www.localharvest.org/

NYT article about local/small farming
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/us/small-scale-farmers-creating-a-new-profit-model.html?_r=0

10 Reasons to Buy Local Food
http://www.vineyardfarmersmarket.com/10_reasons_to_buy_local_food.htm
 

This post is brought to you because I care about our youth, our farmers, and our environment.  As always, we encourage you to examine all sides of the issues and decide for yourself.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Filed under: Agribusiness, Farming, God Made a Farmer, Health Issues, Monsanto, Nutrition

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About Karen Jensen, MLS

Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).

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