re: Many food and agricultural varieties going "extinct"?

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It's not broken.

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Stand downwind of a feedlot or pig-barn effluent pond and tell me it's not broken. 3/4ths of antibiotics used in the US are fed to animals simply to increase their weight.

If your standard of measure is simply cheap calories, then I guess you could say our food system is not broken.

But if you measure overall environmental impact, health of the population, and use of nonrenewable resources to intensively farm cereal crops, then broken doesn't even begin to describe it...the lack of humane animal treatment is just the icing on the big, stinky cake.

I do eat meat, but I quit buying CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) meats several years ago. The tiny bit of extra effort I spend to buy a pasture-raised half-calf on the hoof or to get humanely raised, relatively local meats means I don't have to wonder what's in my meat. It means I support a local small businessman farmer who pays local taxes, not a multinational conglomerate. Bonus--I'm not paying much more per lb and the quality is great.

Who among us couldn't stand to eat a little less? Price helps: you savor what's expensive, don't throw it away so easily, and enjoy it more.