(NaturalHealth365) Destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel… there are as many adjective to describe modern industrial farming as there are “dead zones” where pollutants from farms create toxic algae blooms that kill off marine life. But beyond polluting water and air, degrading soils and forests, killing biodiversity and hastening climate change, degenerative “modern” food and farming systems pose a mortal threat, contributing to all forms of malnutrition.

According to a recent study released by the Lancet Commission on Obesity, nearly a billion people are hungry and another 2 billion are eating too much of the wrong food, causing epidemics of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

The study, which is the result of three years of work by commissioners from 26 countries, suggests that ALL forms of malnutrition – including obesity and under-nutrition – are driven by the same unhealthy, inequitable food systems.

“Modern” farming is slowly killing us and the media remains silent about the danger

The degenerative industrial agriculture system is best described as an “umbrella” organization that includes corporate agribusiness, Big Food Companies, fast food chains, and chemical and seed giants like Bayer/Monsanto and Syngenta. It’s the leading force behind the widespread use of genetically modified seeds, pesticides, antibiotics, and the production of GMO foods.

Degeneration Nation is all about output: fast, cheap, accessible food. The overproduction of grain, which is partly the fault of government-issued agriculture subsides -and food tainted by highly toxic industrial practices has created a perfectly engineered storm of malnutrition.

The truth is we ARE what we eat

The degenerative (modern) farming system is slowly poisoning consumers with unhealthy, nutrient-depleted food … food riddled with dangerous pesticides and antibiotic residues, or processed and supersized with so much salt, sugar and fat that it’s created a mortal threat.

How much poison is getting into the food? Ninety-three percent of consumers have traces of Roundup, Monsanto’s top selling herbicide, in their urine. Moreover, factory farming, with its overuse of antibiotics, crowded and unsanitary livestock conditions, and unnatural feed diets, creates the perfect conditions for superbugs and diseases such as E. coli, MRSA, salmonella, and mad cow.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in 2017-2018, up from 30.5% in 1999-2000. If that statistic wasn’t bad enough, an alarming prediction published in 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that if America doesn’t change its eating habits, over half the nation will be obese within 10 years.

Going beyond organic to save lives

More and more consumers are realizing that highly processed food is bad for their health, but it’s going to take more than shopping at organic food stores and farmers’ markets, reducing food miles, and opting for home-cooked meals over take-out to revolutionize the current farming system.

Many critics believe that the answer to the food crisis, health crisis, and climate crisis can be found with regenerative agriculture. It’s a term that involves farming practices that revitalize the soil, improve forest health and animal welfare, increase biodiversity, and fight climate change by returning atmospheric carbon to the soil.

By the way, a shinning example of great farming techniques can be viewed here at Polyface Farms, America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis.  And, no, we do not get paid to share the ideas of this wonderful farm.

Sources used for this article include:

Worldobesity.org
Organicconsumer.org
CNN.com