Cyclospora infections linked to shredded iceberg lettuce grown and processed in central Mexico and used by Taco Bell have led to 1,947 people getting sick in nine states, 98 hospitalizations, and zero deaths.

This has cued up the usual cry and hue that modern farming and food processing techniques are making people sick, big farms are bad, modern sourcing of food needs to be local, and organic food is the answer.

Aside from arguments about empty calories and nutritional deficient items that grace store shelves, sit in cupboards, and obtained from a drive-up window or delivered to your door, a solid case can be made that modern farming techniques led by American ingenuity save lives.

There is no doubt we can do better whether it comes to sustainability and how food is handled from the growing stages all the way to final preparation for consumption.

But due to the trend that United States farmers started in the late 19th century and continue to improve on today we keep growing more and more food on less and less land with less and less people and even less and less water that feeds more and more people at safer and safer levels per capita.

Given the push for data centers and the need to turn agriculture into a bogeyman to divert water so we can all maximize our devices to post videos, consider almond growing.

Almond farmers have cut water use per pound by 33% from the 1990s to the 2010s. Since 2020, reduction nearing 20 percent is taking place. The bottom line yield pr acre has soared since the 1990s.

It’s been done through advanced micro-irrigation, soil monitoring, and bio stimulant technologies.

The neighborhood organic farm doesn’t feed the world. Nor can it feed much of the USA.

And keep in mind organic fruits, vegetables and meats are significantly more expensive.

Because the Taco Bell lettuce was supplied by a big food company’s Mexico division — in this case Taylor Farms — those that are boosters of — or grow — organic products point to it as another reason to eschew big farming as defined as anything that is beyond being a “truck farm.”

Yet there was no trashing or the raw milk industry this spring when nearly 60 people got sick from raw milk, most of them from Campylobacter.

Health experts note ounce for ounce, raw dairy causes about 840 times more illness than pasteurized.

Many that drink raw milk have called for the federal government to step up regulations to make it safer. There is an obvious answer to making the milk they drink safer — pasteurize it.

Unsafe food causes 1.5 million deaths globally each year based on World Health Organizations.

Closer to home, the Centers for Disease Control place annual deaths from food borne diseases at 3,000.

The lack of food as defended by malnutrition and starvation kills 9 million worldwide according to WHO and 20,500 in the United States based on CDC data.

Dig a bit deeper, and almost every malnutrition and starvation death in the USA is among those 85 and older while worldwide its infants and children that represent the largest block of victims.

People get sick and die from food — or the lack thereof.

It’s been happening since the beginning of time.

One of the underlying reasons why we have 8.3 billion people today living on the Earth today including 349 million in the United States is because food — and the processes to ship, and prepare it as well as to make sure there is more of it — has improved significantly and continues to do so.

Today we often eat fresh vegetables and fruit that is not only grown hundreds of miles from where we live but also thousands.

Closer to home is indeed fresher and better.

And no where is that as true as here in the San Joaquin Valley that is the main reason why California produces roughly half of all fruits and vegetables in the United States and almost all of the nuts.

Rest assured, it is not organic farmers doing the heavy lifting.

To be clear, this not a slam on organic farms or smaller farmers whose business model is based on exclusively selling directly to restaurants and at farmers markets.

It’s just that they can’t feed 349 million Americans or help feed 8.3 billion people worldwide.

Taylor Farms is based in Salinas with one of its 22 major processing, preparation and distribution facilities located nearby in Tracy on MacArthur Boulevard.

Rest assured Taylor Farms doesn’t want to sicken people as it opens them to lawsuits as is already happening with the current foodborne disease outbreak.

The truth is the “cyclosporiasis debacle” being blamed on our centralized, monopoly-based food system that Taylor Farms is part of the most effective way to combat foodborne illness as well as to fight off starvation and malnutrition when it comes to the masses.