While many friends and acquaintances understand the JAZ Farm mission, many have asked, “Why do you bother to do this?” The biggest reason is that it is a labor of love. I think growing things is a connection to ultimate reality in a much more profound way than going to any “church”.
I grow because I am one with all living things. The second reason I grow comes from a realization that our current society is not sustainable. Notice that I didn’t say “unsustainable”. Most folks have become so desensitized to the term that it simply has become a sound bite like anything else on the 24 hour news cycle. I agree with the scientists when they say that over 30% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture. Localizing the food system, just like decentralizing the energy grid, has the potential to save our children from the doom that we have bestowed upon them. For those of you who deny that climate change is man made…. you are idiots.
There is no food shortage. There is a food accessibility crisis. The globe produces enough calories to feed everyone! Instead though we ship it to the wealthy and let the least of us starve. The majority of farmers don’t even eat what they grow! It is grown and shipped off to places largely “north”. In the US we waste and throw away over 40% of all food produced and it ends up in landfills. Anyone wonder why so many more people are using the social safety net since 2008? It isn’t because of “welfare queens” it is because they have no other choice.
Currently, if you drive across the mid-west (which I do at least once a year), you will notice a sea of corn and soy. Of this “food” which is largely genetically modified, 40% goes to produce FUEL. A crop that requires diesel fuel to produce and petro-chemical fertilizer to feed, being used to fuel our GAS TANKS! 50% of the corn (virtually all genetically modified) doesn’t go to feed people, it goes to feed beef, pork and poultry! For those of you who don’t know, cows are Ruminants; they are designed to eat GRASS not corn – not to mention dead cow matter (which causes mad cow disease). This is also the reason for all of the ecoli outbreaks in our lettuce and spinach crops! ONLY 10% of the corn we produce actually feeds we bipeds.
I agree with the MIT study “Limits To Growth” and the Post Carbon Institute’s assertion that we have reached “Peak Everything”. We will not be able to sustain our 12,000 mile supply lines. The economy based on diesel and big-boxes is doomed and as a result, so are we.
Lastly, the big Ag corporations are trying to control the seed supply on a global basis. As Henry Kissinger said, “Those who control the food supply, controls the population”. We have created a nation of domestic indoor cats (Lazy, arrogant, self-entitled, and privileged). We are a nation of baby birds who wait with expectation that the mother bird will come and puke a bunch of food down our necks with no efforts on our part. EVERY city has less than a two day supply of food and if the diesel fleet is disrupted by any issue, we are, by any sense of the imagination… doomed.
Now comes this report pasted below. It may come to the enlightened as a giant “duh” but it should be a wake up call to the vast majority of this nation. If there is any more proof of the corporate fascistic state I haven’t seen it. Below is the article that I ran across AND the report it references.
Our society, especially those who watch Fox So Called News, think that the poor, the labor force, Unions, brown people and gay folks are responsible for all of our ills. Its a massive rope-a-dope. If you believe that “big-government” is the problem then try this on for size:
Corporate welfare is the reason for big government. The evil little people described above are the VICTIMS! – and if you aren’t in the top 5% you are the victim! What will YOU do if Kroger, Safeway, Meijers, Piggly Wiggly, can’t supply the shelves? I have seen blizzards here in Colorado empty the shelves of meat and vegetables inside of a week.
Subsidies to Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Defense, Privatized Prisons, Bailouts to Big Banks and no prosecutions for the economic collapse are your big government. The enemy flies in private jets and buys off politicians and lives in gated communities. They don’t give a damn about you. They don’t CARE about YOU!
Corporations have figured out how to suck all the wealth out of your sorry butts and by allowing the likes of Monsanto to have control of the seed supply is the final nail in the neo-feudalist coffin society they want to create. We are being held hostage by a two party dictatorship and their masters live in gated communities. Quit demonizing yourselves. YES yourself. It isn’t some Brown non-Christian “other” it is the 1% vs the rest of us. The article below shows just how much your BIG government gives a tinkers damn about you.
We need to Occupy The Food System! Buy locally grown or grow your own.
In spite of all of the rant here, this all feels like meaningful work. I work in the field, I build my chicken coop, I weed, lift and carry, and I am happily exhausted at the end of the day and sit down to a meal of food I grew. As far as I am concerned there is very little else as fulfilling as that. I have lost all faith in our urbanized society. Suburbia epitomizes the quote, “The best way to keep people in prison is to keep them from realizing that they are there in the first place.”
We are faced with climate change, peak resources, runaway population, and the corporate takeover of a basic need of all human beings simply because we live on this rock in space…. healthy unadulterated food.
http://foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/biotech-ambassadors/
We are so screwed and the only answer that I can see is to grow your own food, simplify your lifestyle, and learn to reconnect to your local community. Occupy the Food System!
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