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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Talking about food security
  • Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:57:10 -0600


excerpt from Starting the Conversation on Our Survival
by Jan Lundberg
06 July 2009
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=476&I
temid=1

Talking about food security

We would not know it from the corporate media or our politicians, but we
should be worrying big time that food supply will fail untold millions of
people. All one has to do is look at energy, topsoil, pressures of the
market (such as rising demand for food), and mix in some catastrophic
weather that is assured, and we have a huge disaster ahead. It is just a
matter of time.

There is a movement to appreciate local food, slow food, organic food. But
it has not reduced the average number of miles a piece of food travels via
petroleum in the U.S.: 1,500. To produce industrial food -- probably 95% of
what is eaten in the U.S. -- ten caloric units of fossil-fuels produce one
caloric unit of food. Farm workers are among the lowest paid in the nation,
which is strange when everyone wants to eat. Time in the hot sun, subjected
to pesticides and possible immigration raids, make the profession all the
less attractive. There is no longer a designation for farmer in the U.S.
census when so few people live on their own farms anymore. It was no wonder
that when Max Yasgur, who hosted the Woodstock Festival in 1969, began his
welcome with "Now I'm a farmer..." at that he was drowned out by cheers and
applause. That was The Movement expressing itself for nature. Get the
record album and hear it.

Today I picked three pint-sized baskets of three kinds of berries. It took
me about an hour, even when the season is just right. I still had to pay
eight dollars for the fruit. It is not designated as organic, which would
allow for a higher price, but it was unsprayed. If the value of my time is
$20 an hour, my overall cost was $28. I spent no money on transportation
because I bicycled. There's a problem we don't have a name for: a labor
problem? We are not producing our own food locally because we "cannot
afford to." Rather, we subsidize the food in unsustainable ways while upper
classes of consumers can afford to pay others to grow, gather, process,
truck and prepare the food. This system only works for a few people in a
division-of-labor society geared toward surpluses for the elite: i.e.,
Western Civilization.

In the berry patch a father said bitterly to his daughter, "You guys
dragged me here and I don't have time for all this work." She replied "It's
fun!" I'm glad to report that he had no further retort. Perhaps he should
have a conversation with his family and friends about what he thinks he can
do with his time, what he is allowed to do, and how he may provide for his
family as well as raise a child directly.





  • [Livingontheland] Talking about food security, Tradingpost, 07/06/2009

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