Unit 2 Ethical Issues Essay

American I think often forget to think about where their food comes from. I was pleased to see that some attention would be given to that in this section of the course. I chose three different viewpoints; they are all in the same vain but talk about different aspects of agriculture. The first talked about Community supported agriculture, the third about the importance of seed preservation, and third the some of the unknowns and history about organic farming.

The first article I took a look at was From Farm to Front Door by Mark Hawthorne found at http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/73788. In this article Hawthorn talk about CSA’s or Community Supported Agriculture, which is an organized way for people to get food from local farmers. Normally how they work is you sign up and pay a fee for the season, then once or sometimes twice a week you get food from local farmers. The variety and quantity vary depending on the time of year, but it is great because it guarantees the farmer money and you food. Most farmers who belong to CSA’s also use organic farming methods. According to the article CSA’s come out of Europe. My family and me were a member of a CSA for several seasons and we liked it a lot. It’s an up front cost so, even when you’re broke you know you’ll have food. We really did like it.

The next was actually a website about protecting seeds and heirloom varieties of plants. It is: http://www.savingourseed.org/. The website talks about the importance of farmers saving their seed to protect the varieties of plants they’re growing and to protect the cultivation of those plants that have been done over seasons. It is also very economical practice for farmers. When farmers save their seeds they don’t have to re-purchase seeds in the future. This is one of the reasons that GM crops have become a debate, because they contain the terminator gene which makes the seeds of the GM plant not reproduce so the farmers have to re-purchase seed for every new crop. I am always surprised that no one has brought up the possibility for terrorism when crops have to me more or less bought, what if all the seed producing factories where destroyed and that was out only access to seeds anymore. I admire this website for their work to bring this back to the basics with food production.

The third source was an article called Organic Crop Production Overview: Fundamentals of Sustainable Agriculture by George Kuepper and Lance Gegner found at http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/organiccrop.html#notions. One of the most interesting things this article talks about is how organic growing wasn’t always a good thing. In the early days of organic agriculture they didn’t use pesticides but they also didn’t rotate crops to keep the soil rich and healthy, and conversely the food, this of course meant that what did grow wasn’t very big or nutritious. So this made some people believe that organic growing wasn’t effective. However in the last couple of decades these conditions have gotten much better. This is a wonderful article that gives a great overview of organic agriculture.

I did try to find articles with different viewpoint but I was unsuccessful; several of the links I tried didn’t work. So I really can’t show a difference of viewpoints because they deal with different topics.

I think that untimely Americans will have to get back to the basics with food. We will eventually start growing more of our own food and supporting local farmers and CSA’s. With all of the salmonella outbreaks, and other food hazards due to mass, and irresponsible production we will have not other choice.