Closing the Farm to Plate Knowledge Gap: Farming and the "black box" of industrial food

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via CommonDreams:



Published on Friday, June 19, 2009 by Civil Eats

Closing the Farm to Plate Knowledge Gap
by Rob Smart


In the battle for the hearts and minds (and pocket books) of everyday Americans, the large corporate players in today's industrial food system must be pleased.

Consumer advocates for sustainable, healthy food are fighting with farmers, not because either picked a fight with the other, but because the knowledge gap between them has grown so expansive that misunderstandings rule the day. Credit the gap to industrial specialization and consumer marketing, which I will return to in a moment. Often times, these misunderstandings turn personal, further driving apart two groups that have much to gain by working together.

How this benefits the industrial food players may not be obvious, but by fighting amongst ourselves, we are paying less attention to the mechanized system generating massive amounts of unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly food and unprecedented concentrations of profits.

For the average consumer, and likely many farmers, the "black box" of industrial food is a mystery. There is little to no transparency, except through increasingly common investigative journalism and documentaries, which industrialists and their associations quickly line up to discredit. Keeping us in the dark allows industrial food processors and large food retailers to paint an idyllic picture of grassy fields and red barns backed annually by an estimated $33 billion1 spent on advertising to reinforce a desired, yet highly inaccurate image of where our food comes from. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/19-4