What If We Had To Walk Away....

America's young history is peppered with hard work, faith in God, and the promise of hope for the ones coming after us. Things are changing in America and our history will eventually reflect that. Remember when we were the kings of the steel industry, the car industry and food industry. China now owns two of the three and really, we are now known to be the kings of the food manipulation industry. Dropping in genes here and there, altering the DNA of plants and animals, to control every possible scenario. Pests, weeds, disease, shelf life and more....

What if the folks involved with the "clean" food movement just simply stopped producing for the many and only produce for themselves? What if it wasn't by choice? I've had some time to reflect on these things (mainly because it has been to darn cold and rainy to work outside) as I've seen a once proud, independent nation now become an unhappy, dependent nation on other countries for food, fuel, supplies and so on.

Picture Source: http://www.thedailygreen.com/

What are we skilled to do? Could 80% of the population right now produce enough food to support their families if the economy totally collapsed? Or is it less than 10%? I'm guessing less than 10%. The biggest reason for that is we've had the luxury of going to the grocery store and depending on a small amount of farmers to produce the foods we need.

My concern is the folks standing up for a more righteous food system may end up, or already have been, casualties of corporate greed and government lobbying. Forcing "us" to go away I assume would be priority 1a or 1b. Just watch "Food Inc." or "The Future Of Food". We bring too much attention to this destructive, unhealthy, multi-billion dollar food system for them not to be worried. The good news is, the attention is growing. More now than ever before are articles about GMO problems and more real information about the harm pesticides and herbicides are doing to people and the environment.

The bad news is these huge food companies have their own people in high places. Multiple government officials within the FDA and USDA have worked at one time or another for large corporate food companies or vice versa. If these corporate food conglomerates want to impose more restrictions and regulations on small natural/organic farmers and food producers, it doesn't take much to make it happen. For a politician, not being supportive of such restrictions and regulations could be career suicide. I find it sad that "we, the people" hire these politicians to represent "us, the people", but reality is they work for corporate America. So who speaks for us?

Moving forward during troubled times....

Besides learning skills to grow and produce food, do we know how to preserve and store foods properly? Our great grandparents did. Again, the masses would probably say no. Nicole and I, for the first time this last summer, started preserving our excess summer harvest. We had never done it before, only seeing the grandparent’s do a little bit of canning from time to time. It's definitely a learned skill but it's not that hard once you learn the do's and don'ts..

What are we leaving behind for our kids and grandkids? Could we teach them the importance of growing and producing foods themselves or at least getting it from a trusted local source? If we don't respond to the challenges of the present, we will leave future generations a bankrupt nation; monetarily, spiritually and socially.