Sustaining Our Farmers

[nosmokes]

sustaining our farmers is the same thing as sustaining ourselves, sustaining our planet don't you think? and i don'r mean the corporate agribusiness growing GE food and poisoning us with chemicals and synthetic fertilizers and hormones and lord knows what in the meat they pass off to us, i'm speaking of the organic family farmers that are still raising real food and still being stewards of the earth. seek them out. patronise them, give them your custom, bypass the multi-nat corporations that wanna killl us. because they really do, but not until they use us up first.
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RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

Sustaining Our Farmers

A couple of years ago, sustainability was all about bike lanes and carpooling. When sustainable farmers suggested that food was part of the issue, the response was something like, "Well, yeah, even the little things ..." Now, consumers have figured it out. Food is not a little thing. Food production has an impact on everything from water to air to sprawl to the end of cheap oil.

Consumers know a lot more than a couple of years ago. Maybe we can thank the Bush administration for bringing back scarce oil, or maybe 9/11 when the ports shut down and stopped the flow of fresh foods from South America; but let's not thank the Clintons for jogging to McDonald's rather than the farmers' market. Think about it -- we elect a president from Arkansas and the two companies that do the best in his administrations are Tyson and Wal-Mart.

The problem of food sustainability is a bipartisan blind spot. Or a bipartisan hog trough. Politicians listen to the Farm Bureau, the Pork Producers' Council and other commodity groups; Monsanto, Cargill and all the other players who say prosperity will come through export and import. The major beneficiaries have been the oil industry and the major losers have been consumers and the planet.

Pop quiz question #1: The average mileage traveled by a grocery store item from field to store is (pick one): a) 14 miles; b) 140 miles; c) 1,400 miles; d) none of the above. (The answer is c, according to the Leopold Center.)
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[pstans]

1. As oil prices increase our industrial ag business will be hurt

We use oil to transport the products and oil to make pesticides. We need to be stressing local food production.

[MuseRider]

3. It hurts us little guys far worse.

We have a plan. Since losing our coop years and years ago we are all supporting one another. Whatever you are good at or capable of you provide for your neighbor. Still, the prices are getting out of hand.

[pstans]

5. I think the small guys are smart enough to start selling locally

instead of trying to keep the 3,000 mile salad moving across the nation.

[NJCher]

2. excellent

I sent this around.




Cher

[Greyhound]

4. K & R

This is so much more important than we realize. Keep it up.