It is not just greed-focused agriculture designed to grow only export quality food that damages environment, importing food also damages environment!
Urge for exotic food is not only havoc for your GUT but also outside environment. In Ayurveda, it is always suggested that one should rely on local resources for food, medicines and any life-routine habits. Ayurveda is a section of Veda and Veda always talks about, not only physical plane but also mental and adhyatmik plane. So when Ayurveda prescribes local resources, it is not just about our food! It is also about external environment and its direct impact on our mind and prana!
Thanks to India’s surrender to WTO and global food mafia companies, we now not only import as a compulsion but just for the sake of trade! We waste our agriculture land and water resources for the food that is being exported. Meanwhile, we import cheap food from Africa!
Food shouldn’t be treated like commodity. It is life-line, has to be decentralized and locally-focused.
Global agricultural trade is dubious setup.
Research
Importing food damages domestic environment
http://csis.msu.edu/news/importing-food-damages-domestic-environment
Soybean trade offers but one example of the unexpected environmental impacts of global food trade – and a heads up that negotiations of trade agreements need complete information, the paper notes. For example, once-upon-a-time cornfields in Mexico and South America now grow vegetables, and demand more nitrogen inputs, thanks to influxes of cheap American corn. And nitrogen isn’t the only change. Crop decisions driven by global markets also can place increased demands on water supplies.
“This study underscores the need to pay attention to both sides of international trade not rely on conventional wisdom,” Liu said. “The framework of telecoupling – a new integrated way to study human and natural interactions over distances – shows us unexpected outcomes that can stand in the way of sustain
“This research demonstrates a surprising environmental impact of global agricultural trade,” says Betsy Von Holle, a director of the National Science Foundation’s Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems program, which funded the study. “If the importing country switches from a more sustainable crop, such as soybeans, to one that needs more water and nutrients, such as corn, the nitrogen pollution that results can harm the environment of the importing country.”
