The Future of Food

On:
Belasco, W. (2008). "The Future of Food," pp.105-123 in Food: The Key Concepts. New York Berg Publishers.
Schlosser et al. (2006) "One thing to do about food: a forum." The Nation. http://thenation.com/doc/20060911/forum.

Today, food is taken for granted by the millions of people who have the privilege of picking up dinner at the grocery store, with no thought about how it got there or the process that is went through to be made so readily available to them. Food is available to most people at one flat cost- the price they pay at the register. But for the people responsible for producing the components of that food, there is much greater consideration of the true costs associated with the production of that food. The environmental deficit is one that can not be ignored and will have the greatest impact on the future of our food supply.
In "The Future of Food" by Warren Belasco, the practicality of our food system is examined, and to no surprise, turns out to not be very practical at all. When it takes "57 calories of fossil fuel per calorie of lettuce" (Belasco, 109) to be produced and transported across the country, is that a very reliable efficient system? The environmental impacts of growing and transporting the food we do in the way we do are greatly ignored (or otherwise unrecognized) by far too many consumers.
Grains are the backbone of our food supply, both directly and indirectly as they are used as feed for most of the livestock that provides us with meat and other animal source foods such as eggs and milk. While biologists and other scientists have been working to increase efficiency on the given area of land that is available for farming, the toll on the health of the land continues to increase with increased yields. Over the years, we have been faced with producing on more and more marginal land which has called for the use of more and more chemicals and synthetics to make up for what the land lacks. What people do not take into consideration is that there will come a time when there is no more space for expansion of arable farmland. And that time is not far in the future.
There are innumerable ways that people could have a positive impact on the situation at hand (and who wouldn't want to considering we all need to eat?) In the essays on "One thing to do about food," there seems to be a commonality among most authors: education and public awareness. This includes everything from knowing where food comes from, to how to make the best food choices for your dollar, to understanding the gigantic impact of government involvement in agriculture (through things like the Farm Bill). I agree that public knowledge would greatly effect the health of our population and our remaining land, but we can not depend on people to teach themselves. People are too busy with their day to day lives to care about researching everything there is to know about food. There are always minor groups working to increase awareness of a certain product or diet, but it seems as though there could be more effort put towards helping people fully understand and appreciate the importance of agriculture in their lives. What can be done to help educate people effectively and who would be the best group to get this knowledge spread? Would it be more effective on a regional level or more national/global level?