Farm Issues

You might be familiar with the fact that in the U.S., an estimated 40% of food goes uneaten. That’s an alarming statistic on its own. This amount of wasted food correlates with waste in other areas: Around 21% of all water used in the U.S. and 18% of cropland is dedicated to food that will never get eaten, exercising a significant strain on already stressed resources.

Many Americans have rightfully been outraged at the inhumane conditions of migrant families detained at the border. Refugees have been packed tight into cages that don’t leave them room to lie down, denied basic amenities like showers and toothbrushes, and separated from their children.

For the third straight year, U.N. agencies have documented rising levels of severe hunger in the world, affecting 820 million people. More than 2 billion suffer “moderate or severe” food insecurity. During the same period, the world is experiencing what Reuters called a “global grains glut,” with surplus agricultural commodities piled up outside grain silos rotting for want of buyers.

Carlton Sanders started a job he truly loved—raising chickens—in 1991 in Forest, Mississippi. In 2001, the small company he sold his chickens to was bought by agribusiness giant Koch Foods, and everything changed. “They treated me like a slave,” he said. Sanders, who is Black, says Koch Foods drove him out of business with discriminatory practices, many of which are documented in a recent ProPublica investigation.