test 2

The main ideas discussed in the transcription include the debate on whether food should be a basic human right, the issue of food insecurity and its causes, the problems of distribution, quantity, and quality of food, the role of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food production, and the actions taken by the United States domestically and internationally to address food insecurity. One speaker argues that food should be a basic human right due to the increasing cost of living and the difficulty for many to afford food. The other speaker opposes this view, citing the financial burden and the unsustainable nature of providing food for everyone. Food insecurity is described as the lack of consistent access to food, which is exacerbated by rising prices, low wages, and limited availability of healthy food options in certain neighborhoods. The impact of climate change on food production and the rising cost of food are also discussed. The speakers present differing views on GMOs, with Live from Washington, D.C., we are here doing a project for Texas Tech University for Professor Charlie Hoyt. My name is Alexandra Winkleman. I'm Emily Contreras. And we're here to talk about some great issues. Go ahead, Emily. Our two main subjects of debate today are going to be should food be a basic human right with the subplots of discussing food insecurity, the issue between distribution, quantity, and quality of food, how to increase food security, and ways that the U.S. is fighting hunger domestically and abroad, as well as the other main point of why we support or oppose genetically modified organisms, both plant and animal. I am here with my major of being a political science and international studies. And your major is natural resources management with a concentration in conservation science. All these topics are just crazy, and we have a barrage between these two topics. No matter what we do, and no matter what the world does to help provide or stop world hunger or dis-hunger in the United States alone, there's so much stuff that we need to do and be able to change in ourselves. I'll go ahead and let why food should be a basic human right by the opposition. So I, Emily Concheres, think that food should be a human right because with the contributions that we as humans make to the earth and our government, we slave away in office jobs, at blue collar jobs, at elitist jobs, so we can keep the world spinning. But with the increased cost of living and the fact that wages for the working doesn't follow that spike, people are finding it harder and harder to feed themselves and their families, and this is without the worry of paying for transportation, education, or housing. So with all the work that we humans do, it should only be fair that the government has to feed the people it governs at the bare minimum. Okay, I, an opposition opposing, believe that food should not be a basic human right, just in the fact that humanity of any civilization, food has not been a basic human right. Food also is very expensive to be able to provide for everyone. We have tons and tons of food that gets thrown away, and we could be able to use that. However, being as in the government and being able to provide, if we were able to provide food for everyone else, the taxes would rise by 10 to 20%, which is a major amount of taxes, which no one, even the underclass that are having a hard time paying for food, would be able to afford that. So an aspect of being able to provide food for everyone, it's just financially not the right thing to do for the country or for the world. Go ahead, what is your, about food insecurity? So food insecurity is the lack of a consistent access to food for every person in a household to live a healthy life. And because of this price and everything rising, and the wages that people are being paid staying low, food insecurity is becoming a more prevalent problem for people in everyday life. On my side, food insecurity is a major and it is a catastrophic thing that is going on with the inflation and with the current minimum wage staying down and not seeming to rise in any time in the future. Food insecurity is constantly growing with the lack of people being able to pay for food and with the inflation. Also with food just being expensive with all the genetically modified and all the just things going on in the environment, food is just becoming more scarce in the aspect of people being able to afford it. Right. And with food insecurity, it's a blend of the problems of distribution, quantity, and quality in food. Observations made have shown that the distribution of food is varying depending on neighborhoods and how rural or urban an area is. More urban and wealthy neighborhoods have a plethora of grocery stores, some generic and some specialty, that focus on diet fads and organic products. But in rural and poorer neighborhoods, grocery stores are limited to a sparse number of generic stores that tend to carry more unhealthy options than healthy. Quantity is a problem because with the growing population of humans in the world, more dense and urban cities are being built that consume more and more land that could be used for farming. The climate change from these massive cities cause hotter temperatures with less rainfall and farmers are finding it to be a massive challenge to keep food production at a sustainable level that can feed Earth's rapidly growing population. And lastly, for quality, food is becoming increasingly unhealthy for lower class families. From personal experience, a basket of vegetables, meat, and other standard ingredients needed for a well-rounded and healthy meal, it would have cost $30 to $40 when I was in elementary or middle school. But now it's costing nearly triple that amount for half the food. And because of an increase in price for standard foods, poor families are having to turn to the alternatives of eating cheaper, unhealthier fast food, or having to buy cheaper groceries that are full of GMOs and other unhealthy substitutes that make food bad for human consumption. Well, based on quantity, the quality of the food, with the environment changing, with the rainfall, with the drought, with the pesticides going on, all of those affect the quantity of products that are produced. If it's not in the right environment for those products to be made or produced, they will not be produced and they will die. What we're doing with distribution, distribution is a big, well-booming business. However, with the margin for error when it comes to slaughtering animals, to harvesting product, there is that percentage that is error that costs thousands and thousands of dollars and pounds of food and meat to go to waste. And we could be able to use the waste to help provide and help with the hungry. Also, with the rise of inflation and the rise of cost of living, these distributions are forced to have to charge more money to the farmers to be able to get their products to the shelf just due to the fact that they have to be able to provide money and resources for their own employees. And piggybacking off what you said earlier, with finding harder, for it being impossible to provide that much food, we can find ways to help and up the number of food that farmers produces by training farmers nationally and domestically, no, nationally and internationally about plant and animal health systems and risk analysis. By doing this, we can hope to minimize post-harvest loss and hopefully see a decrease in livestock mortality. Along with that, deep analysis of climate change's effect in a specific region can be used to plan around when farmers are planting for the next harvest so we can maximize the harvest that farmers gain so we can put clothes on people's back and food in their bellies. Okay, talking about what the United States is doing domestically and internationally for this food insecurity, the United States, about 10.3% of the families are having food insecurities. The United States is, according, one of the things that President Biden is doing is he's going ahead out there and doing, providing food stamps and wanting to be able to help the hungry by 2030. Also, the United States is spending $10 billion internationally to provide food and resources for those other countries that need food, basically. And along with that, USAID, which is the United States Agency for International Development, has utilized their Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance by being the world's largest donor of international food assistance by helping more than 60 million people in almost 60 countries each year. And another way that the U.S. has been helping with the fight on hunger is by starting more government programs to help with struggling families like SNAP benefits, food stamps, and WIC. Okay, and last but not least, we're talking about GMOs. I support GMOs because I feel that GMOs are very helpful to the people in production in the environment because there are areas in the world, and even in our country, that the environment is hostile to growing anything or having anything grow. So, we're not going to limit ourselves to growing anything or having any animals live off of it. But, if we are doing genetically modifying, we're able to put genes in these animals and these plants to help them thrive in that environment by, therefore, producing more product and more food for a cheaper cost because we have more quantity of the food and we'd be able to use that food to help feed the hungry. What about your opinion? I oppose genetically modified organisms because GMOs are foods that have changes in them and in their genes to make them resistant to antibiotics. And while the tension behind them might have been good at the start, GMOs have been shown to have side effects such as allergies, environmental issues, and even cancer in humans. GMOs are incorporated into many foods sold in generic grocery stores and are especially bad in cheaper foods so that the companies producing them can create an item that is more filling but cheaper to make. The problem with this is that poor families are being forced to buy these more unhealthy foods, thus increasing the risk of health problems later down the road. People who are well off are able to afford more organic products that contain little to no GMOs. And in my opinion, this is a poor and disgusting way for a sort of cleansing in the world to make the poor people sick so the wealthy people can flourish. Well, on that, let's go ahead and wrap up, Emily. This project has taught us a lot of information about the world and what our country is doing for food insecurities and GMO products. And wrapping up, in my personal opinion, I think the United States and other countries should come up with just one organization that is there to help and regulate food and hunger for all of the countries. That way, we can do better at providing food for a more reasonable price and they'll be able to lower the percentage of food insecurity definitely in the United States, but also worldwide. What about your opinion, Emily? In my opinion, and in addition to that, ways that we could help ourselves as citizens to make ourselves less hungry and less reliant on the government and farmers is by growing our own sources of food. And I know in more rural areas where there's tons of land, it's easier to do that. But in more urban settings, there have been examples of rooftop gardens, of community gardens that span for blocks and blocks, and just personal things like growing your own bell pepper tree in the comforts of your living room. If we educate our youth and adults as a whole to start caring more for our own well-being rather than relying on farmers and the government to feed us, we could hope to eliminate world hunger by just taking it upon ourselves and being more educated. Well, that is amazing and a great understanding of this current global outrage that is going on within the world. But as I say, I've learned a lot from your opinions, Emily. And no matter what your opinions are, I will still stick with my opinions just due to the fact that everyone needs to be able to take their side and the other side and merge them into providing a more concurrent and global scale. And even though we may not agree on our points, it is still insightful to learn about other people's stances on certain topics so that way we can see from other perspectives and fully understand the issue and ways to solve it as a community. I'm Emily Contreras. And I'm Alexander Winkleman. And this is our Exam 2 podcast. Podcast.