By the 1960’s, American agriculture was entering a major new era. Small farmers, including in Mississippi, were taking off-farm jobs to support their families, and their homemaker wives were adding more field work to that of garden and home.
In the 1970’s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began adopting a new mantra - ‘get big or get out’. As large-scale farming grew, chemical companies became major players in the planet’s most impactful industry.
Fast forward four decades to USDA’s annual ‘Agricultural Outlook Forum’, a century-old gathering of experts discussing the future of American agriculture. In 2023, the topics were global trade, biotechnology, climate, prices, costs, supply chains, food security, food safety, equity, inclusion, and commodities. “Specialty crops” (fruits and vegetables) were covered as a luncheon topic alongside cotton, grain, livestock, and sugar.
If medicine's new frontier is reversing chronic disease, and if that reversing requires highest-quality real food, especially phyto-rich fruits and vegetables, then the outlook for American agriculture will need a re-look. Or at least an additional topic - something like “agriculture’s role in real food as good medicine” or “agriculture’s first question: what do humans need to be well?”
Farmers and farming practices are becoming critical players in solving America’s chronic disease crisis. Which means that good support from the USDA will be critical to how rapidly our country can pivot from corporate farming for exporting commodities to fresh and local foods for healing. This need - to replace highly refined foods with fresh and local - becomes more urgent and obvious with every patient who reverses a chronic disease.
Too many of America’s children, and too much of our country’s future, have already been damaged by sugary, artificial, ultra-processed fare, and now we seem on the track of even more ‘factory foods’. Because food can harm and food can heal, a worthy new mantra might be “get fresh and be local”.
To be fair, agriculture is recognizing that its mission of ‘feeding the world’ needs to expand, that nutrient security must be addressed along with food security. With political and consumer pressure building against USDA’s huge subsidies to corporate farming, nutrient-rich foods grown with regenerative practices on small and moderate-size farms hopefully stand a better chance for support.
Early adopters of regenerative practices are already restoring biological diversity to their soils and farm landscapes. They are raising healthy, antibiotic-free animals with strong nutrient profiles and growing produce that is nutrient-dense and pesticide-free.
Grazing and growing practices that focus on ecological diversity also add more to the healing process than high-quality food. By avoiding chemical inputs, regenerative practices clean the air and water that we breath and drink, making agriculture now capable of reversing itself as the planet’s largest nonpoint source of pollution.
We are also learning that method matters in all aspects of food production. How food is grown, harvested, stored, processed, purchased, prepared, and eaten matters to human health. All along the food chain there is immense opportunity for harm, but also for healing.
If food is a healer, then so too are all the humans who help elevate food to healing quality: educators and executives, processors and distributors, and, not at all least, farmers, cooks, and buyers of healing foods.
As integrative nutritionists and health coaches work with lifestyle-focused clinicians, the demand for more nutrient-dense, whole food grows. As variety on our plates two-steps with diversification in the field, farm size moderates. As consumers ask for fresh, farmers can sell more locally and directly. This allows community and regional food webs to be rebuilt, food security to be strengthen, and nutrient security to become a more locally met need.
Healing chronic disease has become more urgent for crowded life on a small planet, meaning that food quality counts and farming methods matter now more than ever. What researchers are discovering, and clinicians and farmers are proving, is changing the two disciplines most crucial to human health.
The siloed walls of agriculture and medicine are coming down.
To explore the intersection between food, farming, and health, The Doctor's Farmacy and Weston A. Price Foundation are two resources worth a look.
Food does not merely abate hunger or give pleasure. It nourishes human life in many ways. Food and farming connect humans to the land, to nature, and to the web of life. And now they can offer medicine for healing.
Agriculture’s first question is becoming clearer: What do humans need to be well?
See also: Clinic, Home, and Field and Community Food Webs