OBSERVATIONS - April 21, 2009

Achieving a Healthier Food System: A Wicked Problem

A "Wicked Problem" is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.  I heard the term used to describe our nation’s food system at the Food Systems and Public Health conference* (April 1-3, Warrenton, Virginia)—where eminent thinkers at the forefront of health, nutrition, obesity and health policy domains joined with leaders from the sustainable agriculture, economics, and agriculture policy sectors.

This particularly wicked problem has several dimensions that impact health across the country, some of which are highlighted below in some revealing statistics and participant observations from the conference:

High fat and sugary foods are pervasive in the food supply in part because of significant government subsidies for commodity crops.

• Federal government subsidy programs favor five crops—corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice—and account for two-thirds of all subsidies.
• A Tufts University study has found that, since 1996, US agricultural policy has driven the market price of commodities such as corn and soybeans well below the cost of production. This has resulted in large discounts for feed stock to industrial meat production operations.    
• On an annual basis, 1.2 percent of corn is consumed as a vegetable, 8.0 percent as a sweetener, 50.1 percent as an animal feed, 2.6 percent as starch, 5 percent as alcohol (ethanol), 22.6 percent as exports, 10.3 percent as reserve stocks, 0.2 percent as seed.

 “We’re putting a lot of money into these payments to farmers and one question we ought to be asking is: What is the healthfulness that we’re buying with these payments?  We eat what we grow—and as a nation, we are over-eating what we are over-producing.  We’re over-producing certain food categories relative to guidelines for healthy eating—like added sugars, fats, and refined grains.”
—David Wallinga, MD, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

“There’s no doubt about it, agricultural policy has influenced anything that involves grain to oilseeds.  It hastened the concentration of livestock feeding operations because you could buy the feed at 60% of what it would cost you to produce it.  If we hadn’t had this change, we would still have cattle primarily raised on pasture.”
—Daryll Ray, Director, Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, The University of Tennessee

 “The recent publication of the longitudinal study at the NIH of people between the ages of 50 and 70 showed some alarming compromise of life expectancy for people who are eating a lot of red meat.”
—Robert Lawrence, MD, Center for a Livable Future

A highly consolidated and industrialized agriculture system is not sustainable.

• Since 1960, the number of farms has declined from about 3.2 million to 1.9 million, but their average size has increased 40%.  Five companies now control 75% of the global vegetable seed market. Two firms control 75% of the world market for cereals, and in the United States, four companies now control 80% of the beef packing.  If these trends continue, smaller farms, together with the social and environmental benefits they provide, will likely disappear in the next decade or two.
• To make artificial fertilizers (and also pesticides) is very energy intensive—fertilizers have been estimated to account for approximately 37% of US agriculture’s energy use. 

“Here’s the no brainer of the day:  we need agriculture policies to incentivize health promoting systems, instead of rewarding degradation and externalized costs.”
—Mary Jo Forbord, Executive Director, Sustainable Farming of Minnesota

The way we produce and distribute food raises potential health risks, including obesity, microbial and chemical food contamination, climate change, and antibiotic resistant bacteria. 

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), approximately 70 percent of the 8.7 billion broiler chickens produced annually are fed arsenic.  In a recent study, 55% of raw, supermarket chicken tested contained detectable arsenic, and nearly 75% of breasts, thighs and livers from conventional producers carried detectable arsenic.  Arsenic causes cancer and contributes to other diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and decreased intellectual function.  While the FDA has set a tolerance level for arsenic in chicken, many experts say no level should be considered safe.
• It is estimated that over 70 percent of all antibiotics consumed in the US are used as feed additives for poultry, swine, and beef cattle for non-therapeutic purposes.  They are used to promote growth and to compensate for diseases caused by poor animal husbandry.  There is a strong consensus that agricultural usage contributes to antibiotic resistance in humans.
• The distance from farm to market has increased about 20 percent in the last two decades, with food traveling between 2,500 and 4,000 miles before it reaches the plate. It has been calculated that the use of imported ingredients for a basic diet can increase energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 400 percent.

 “The pesticide residues that enter our bodies through food, water and air contribute to the problem of endocrine disruption that is beginning to be highlighted more and more.  Concentrated high-speed meat production does increase the risk from food- borne pathogens.  We all have observed over the last decade the extraordinary number of recalls of contaminated hamburger—the lack of source tracking, and so forth.  And there are increasing concerns about the problem of antibiotic resistance”.
—Robert Lawrence, MD, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

 “There are more things that we should expect from the food system besides yield.  We want to see other ecological services supported as well—a stable climate, effective antibiotics, abundant clean water. These are common goods that haven’t been incorporated into the economic models for the kind of production that we’ve had.”
—David Wallinga, MD, Director, Food and Health Program,   Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

- Brian Raymond, MPH, Senior Policy Consultant, KP IHP

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