Food Labeling News: Whole Foods says it will label GM food

In Week 3, we covered GMOs, and so we know that U.S. regulatory bodies treat genetically modified food as "substantially equivalent" to non-GM food.  Therefore, unlike Europe, there is no requirement in the U.S. for GM labels.

According to Nation of Change,

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is being praised in the media for announcing that it will become the first U.S. grocery chain to require that genetically engineered (GE) foods in its stores be labeled, by 2018.

The whole story from Nation of Change is here.  And you should read it yourself and decide if the story has any biases to it.  Spoiler alert:  They think Whole Foods should adopt thiss policy soon than 2018.  You can also read Whole Foods' announcement direction from their web site here.

Another good reason to read it:  Next week -- Week 10, we will be talking about food labeling in class!

Week 7: The Role of Agribusiness in Food Systems

Agribusiness

Agribusiness is a field that integrates the business and economic sectors with food systems, food processing and farming. This overarching term encapsulates the corporations or businesses that impact the farming, machinery used in farming, agrichemicals, food processing, seed distribution ect. 

The practice of acquiring processed food products and distributing them is a large undertaking and involves interactions between many organizations. The United States government regulates large and small Agribusinesses and they are subject to EPA, OSHA, FDA and USDA regulations. These Agribusinesses also work hand in hand with farmers and larger distributors to transport and supply food all across the United States. 

                                      AGRIBUSINESS

http://www.secomsf.org/subpage.php?page=45

Corporations

Large agribusinesses impact the food systems in the U.S. greatly and provide the U.S. with many food staples. A large issue that some people have with large agribusinesses is that they dominate the market and control too much of the U.S. Ag sector. This is often an issue for these companies and result in court cases between farmers and the large corporation. These large corporations are often competing with smaller ones or small family run farmers who cannot keep up. 

Are small family farms and home gown products something of the past?

http://www.vintaga.com/Posters/World-War-I-United-States/19800947_NgfDBW/1556184700_VkzPsV2#!i=1556184700&k=VkzPsV2&lb=1&s=A

Dow AgroSciences
This corporation produce insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fumigants, nitrogen stabilizers, seeds, traits and oils. Pest management on an individual farm basis is important in order to ensure that crops can stay viable for food processing. They use biotechnology and genetics to increase meal quality, drought tolerance and herbicide tolerance. Dow AgroSciences largest competitors are DuPont, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience AG and it has an annual sales figure of 758.9 million dollars. This competition is important when viewing the relationship between large agribusinesses. 

DuPont
Another large Ag company which competes with the aforementioned Dow AgroSciences is DuPont. They also manufacture genetically modified seeds and research crop management. They control the Pioneer company which distributes a large variety of grains such as corn, alfalfa, soybeans, rice and cotton. This company is very large and is involved in many industries including agriculture. 

Monsanto
Another large agribusiness, which has been in the media lately because of court cases, is Monsanto. These court cases involve the company and small farming productions which inadvertently used Monsanto genetically modified seeds to grow crops. This company has annual sales of 13,504 million dollars and is a company that focuses on genetically modified crops such as corn, cotton and oilseed. Most famously this company is known for creating roundup ready corn and soybeans which are resistant to the herbicide Roundup. 

ADM
Archer Daniels Midland company is a food processing company which processes corn, soybeans, wheat, cocoa and animal feed to name a few. ADM's largest competitors is Cargill and Ingredion which also process these agricultural products. ADM has a yearly annual sale of 89 billion dollars and is one of the world's largest producer of agricultural commodities. 

John Deere 
Another large Agribusiness which deals with the machinery part of agriculture  This business impacts the world of Food Processing because the amount of time and money extracting crops from the field changes how much the farmers are being paid by these large food manufactures. John Deere is one of the largest and most well know agricultural machinery producer. 

http://www.hutchpost.com/2012/10/30/adm-releases-earnings-report/

http://mascusblog.com/2012/02/07/more-used-john-deere-equipment-coming-to-mascus/http://abid-hussain.blogspot.com/2010/10/at-its-low-at-last-agrochemical-major.html

http://the.jhu.edu/hccn/2011/09/03/dupont-early-career-engineer-2/

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/logo-download.aspx

Are these companies beneficial or detrimental to the U.S. Food System?

Large agribusiness are needed to create a large volume of product at a fast pace but they can force smaller producers out of the marketplace as well as hurt small family farm operations. These large corporations supply smaller food manufactures and take a lot of the control away from consumers in regards to genetically modified crops. These businesses can be seen as the antithesis of traditional farming and food production and are often called corporate farming. Since a few companies control a large percentage of the market it is seen as monopolizing the market and creating price fixation for certain agricultural products. Some other arguments against these companies are that they focus heavily on the use of chemicals and artificially changing crops to increase yield. Smaller family farms or home gardens may be too difficult for the U.S. to sustain our growing need so large scale agribusiness is American's solution. 

http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/fact-sheets/how-corporate-control-squeezes-out-small-farms-8589942044