Saturday, January 03, 2009

Food Numbers in 2008

Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore has gathered all the food related numbers for 2008 into one post. Some interesting facts and some real depressing ones.

The numbers on hunger in America in 2007:
Hunger (as of Dec 2007):
Food Insecurity: 11.1% of all U.S. Households
Hunger: 4.1% of all U.S. Households
Hungry Children: 691,000
*These numbers are expected to get worse in 2008, as unemployment went up and so did food prices. The numbers here are the most recent ones released by the USDA.

Another trend I find really depressing is the growth of "Franken food" 92% of all soybeans and 80% of all corn is GMO. That's horrible.
GMOs
Percent of All U.S. Soybeans Planted that were GMO (herbicide tolerant):
2000: 54
2001: 68
2002: 75
2003: 81
2004: 85
2005: 87
2006: 89
2007: 91
2008: 92
Percent of All U.S. Corn Planted That is GMO:
2000: 25
2001: 26
2002: 34
2003: 40
2004: 45
2005: 52
2006: 61
2007: 73
2008: 80

There are a lot of other bits of information in the post and like I said some of it is good but most of it is bad.

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