Food is Making People Sick- Professor John Ikerd

Episode #8 - Professor John Ikerd from The University of Missouri tells us why he has made it his life’s work to reconnect people with each other and the earth.

Summary

On this episode of Agrihood Radio, John Ikerd tells us how he wants to improve the process of industrial agriculture, so he’s been educating people based on his years of research and study.

John went from a farm in southwest Missouri to the University of Missouri and eventually ended up with his doctorate degree in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri.

He then went out and worked in the University of Missouri extension system and promoted his ideas of industrial agriculture. This was a time when the country was setting out to make agriculture more efficient and make good food affordable for everyone.

John believed in that philosophy for about the first half of his thirty-year academic career and then during the financial farm crisis of the 1980’s his views began to change for a variety of reasons. The farmer following the advice of so-called experts, ended up with a lot of debt at high interest rates and they were losing their farms.

This had a negative impact on family farms in rural communities. We also began seeing what that was doing to the land in terms pollution and erosion.

John had an eye opening experience when he came to the realization that not only were we sacrificing the land but we were sacrificing it with no good results. We weren't feeding people that were hungry, John explains.

Today we have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes and high blood pressure heart disease and various cancers that are associated with the American diet. And all of those have increased as we've industrialized the agricultural system he says.

In this episode of Agrihood Radio, you’ll learn:

• How in the process of trying to make food cheap, we ended up with foods high in calories, lacking in essential nutrients and that's what's making people sick.
• There’s an epidemic of major health issues such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which have all increased as we’ve industrialized the entire agricultural food system.
• John explains his ideas of how we can make healthier food more affordable by reducing production costs.
• He also expresses his thoughts and ideas on how there’s many new opportunities today for young people to make enough money as farmers that doesn’t require as much intensive labor as it once did.

Enjoy today’s episode with John Ikerd