Notes on factory farming

If relevant, inquire further into the causal relationship the following has to factory farming and industrial ag:

the obesity epidemic among Americans consuming large amounts of processed foods;

and billions of dollars of lost property values in rural areas.

This is still an incomplete list of the problems factory farming and industrial agriculture cause. But these multiple problems with our food system lead to multiple approaches at addressing them, leading to the local, the organic, and the animal rights movements as well as the permaculture and fair trade movements.

It's not about every person growing 100 percent of the food she or he consumes. The issue is that the decisions that affect our food system should be made with more input from the public.

Here is a far-from-complete list of the corporate bullying going in the food sector:

factory farming companies intimidating locals who might complain about the stink and other pollution, with the threat of costly lawsuits (SLAPP);

Monsanto suing hundreds of farmers in North America for 'copyright infringement';

Monsanto charging farmers in India royalties for crops they've been cultivating there for hundreds of years;

federal subsidies for commodity crops used for making food materials such as high fructose corn syrup which negatively impacts public health;

federal subsidies for factory farms, whose owners already are in DC and state capitals dumping millions of dollars to buy our government, while externalizing the costs of factory farming in terms of air and water pollution;

state governments, including Ohio, taking away local control, so that state and federal regulatory bodies--ie departments of agriculture---easily overrule county boards of health and other local officials who tend to represent citizens fighting against the pollution of their air and water from factory farms;

As for Occupy, the message---for those willing to hear it---is that big corporations have bought our government, undermining the will of the people concerning just about every issue---healthcare, finance, food, water, prisons, war, communications, transportation, and energy.

You name it. Any issue that affects people's lives, big money in politics has caused our government--especially at the state and federal levels---to promote the interests of giant corporations and the uber-rich at the expense of everybody else.

Like that TV reporter who said "There seems to be no message here" while in view of the camera was a protestor holding a sign that read "get the money out of politics," your point was that Occupy has no message.