By Larry Klein
Originally published by the Weston A. Price Foundation

The present system of food and agriculture in America is based on three premises:

• Food should be cheap

• Farming is something that people do not want to do.

• We should not have to spend our time deciding what foods are good for us and for the land.

These premises have led to a system of agriculture characterized by extensive and highly mechanized monoculture of corn and soybeans, cheap because of overproduction, but dear in the toll on the land and human health.

Overproduction dates from the years when government-funded irrigation projects created large surpluses of grain. Fertilizers and hybrid seed contributed to this trend. Monocropping required toxic pesticides and herbicides but farmers now worked in offices or air conditioned tractor