My limerick + what it's about.

a world deliberately concealed from public eye

pollution, suffering, corruption, lies

all in name of corporate rapacity,

the system a paradigm of atrocity

our fares are a sign of the time

Right.

It's not much of a stretch to say that I am very unimpressed with the food system right now in America.

There is this food monopoly going on right now in the market. Big names brand are owning a definite sizeable chunk in our market. Our system has made it so one dollar can buy you a hamburger from McDonalds but it can't buy you a fresh cabbage. 

49 million people are hungry and in poverty right now in America. A few miles from where you live right now there are families struggling to feed themselves and their children. But still, I see food being wasted left and right. I see so much meat being tossed away with no notion of the abhorrent life those mash of animals endured to end up in their hands. We're more wasteful and distanced than we ever were with what we eat three times each day.

Those hungry people can't afford to eat what they want, so they turn to McDonalds for daily sustenance. The irony? It's places like McDonalds that are directly perpetuating and making workers that can't afford to feed themselves.

See where this cycle is going? In what world does it make sense that a packaged hamburger (a baked bread bun, processed meat, cabbages, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and ketchup) would end up costing less than a single cucumber? 

CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (factory farming) have gone way out of hand. Animals are fed diseased food that make them sick, so to counter that they are now being fed a great deal of antibiotics. It's too much. They have put in so many antibiotics that some scientists estimate that we might become desensitized to them through the animals we're eating. Animals are being fed an inappropriate diet (example: cows eating corn when they are meant to eat grass). It's like a person living on caloric cardboard. 

In slaughterhouses, USDA have regulations for how animals are being slaughtered, but the USDA have done nothing to uphold those rules. The waste (especially animal waste) that those places create are being dumped into rivers and oceans. It's killing our ecosystem and marine life. 

I can't manage to fit something as complex and diverse as the food industry (especially the CAFOs, which man. I can go on about that.) 

I just wish we could turn back to more sustainable means, but it looks like it's only going to get worse. For those that might listen, please just buy from your local farmers. The food and meat would be so much better for your health. Know where the food your buying come from. The brands you support make all the difference in the world.

(Fare means food and diet, but it also means the price you pay to board a vehicle. I felt it was fitting. )