Genetically Modified Foods: Overview: Future Foods or Food Fights?

American food production has traditionally been centered on quantity. The typical goal is to produce as much as possible per acre, regardless of surpluses and low prices to farmers. Surplus food is exported as part of complicated trade agreements with other industrialized nations or is used to aid famine-stricken countries. Most farms in the United States are small and family owned, but they do not always provide a living for their owners. In 1997 approximately 70 percent of farms brought in less than fifty thousand dollars, whereas the average cost of production was approximately seventy thousand dollars. Between 1992 and 1997 total cropland and the number of farms decreased approximately 1.5 percent nationwide, with regional differences (for example, in California the decline was approximately 5 percent). To maintain supply, more food must be grown in less space and by fewer growers. Intensive farming, however, is known to deplete soil. Chemical additives cause pollution at sites of application and of manufacture. Irrigation causes problems such as salinization of soil and water-table depletion.