Nourishment or Enrichment

Marc Bittman makes a salient point in his column in the NYT this morning.   Is the purpose of agriculture to nourish the population and make a living for farmers, or to denude the country's topsoil, poison the water and workers and enrich corporations?  Most of us, if we think about it would like to say it is the former, but agree for the most part it is the latter.  How did this happen and what can we do to reverse the process?   The logical step would be to make agriculture more local and smaller scale.  If most people knew where their food came from and how it was produced, they would be horrified.  Even the winter vegetables we take for granted are for the most part produced unsustainably in the desert west.  As Bittman points out, it is one thing to rail at the practices of corporate agriculture and quite another to actually do something about it.   Supporting local producers and eating a sustainably are the easy fixes.  Prodding our representatives in Congress to look at our rapidly breaking agricultural system is another.  The Cargils and Tysons are not going away without a fight and they have not felt any pressure from consumers to change their business models.  From salmonella laced chicken to pesticide loaded fruits and veggies, we are slowly being poisoned.  The only way this changes is for us to demand the kind of agriculture which promotes health and well being on the production and consumption sides of the equation.