I want to repost these thoughts I had on a post by Dairy Carrie from her blog.
It’s interesting that in the United States when the vast majority of us have access to food pretty readily that we seem to complain about it a lot. Many parts of the world have a hard time getting by on a daily basis and are probably just happy to eat something whenever they can.
I believe freedom and prosperity is what allows us to worry about whether we care if food is certified organic or not, if are there GMO ingredients in it, is the food locally sourced, and if you think it was produced sustainably or not. Or maybe you don’t even care about any of that stuff. Maybe you just like to eat food that tastes good. A lot of people around the world are just hoping they get to eat today, and I would venture to guess that they have bigger problems than wondering if there are trans fats in their food or not. Trust me, I’d much rather live here and listen to someone rail against modern agriculture than to go somewhere else and be hoping I get some food and water today. I just think it’s an interesting circumstance that when we find ourselves in an abundance of food that we are able to find so many things wrong with it.
Head over to Carrie’s site and read the post and let her know what you think about “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” It’s actually a guest post by singer/songwriter Matt King who proclaims he’s no expert, but I think he has some really solid common sense ideas.
Right on!
There’s a lot of talk on these kinds of issues with neither side understanding the other. Both sides have at times been what Bob Dylan called “pawn(s) in their game,” not understanding that they were advocating against their own values and intentions, under the influence of mega-corporate mainstream/Farm-Press media views, “their brains on mega-agribusiness.” To me, it’s a weak and misguided argument for farmers to reject calls for high quality food and high standards of sustainability, as both are strongly in the self interests of farmers. Farmers then shoot themselves in the foot. The Food Movement, on the other hand, often doesn’t understand how to achieve their own goals, and ends up also siding with agribusiness against what they say they want and what farmers need, including fair farm prices and sustainable farms. Both are manipulated against their own interests, and neither knows it. Both share huge common interests, but have fallen for divide and conquer strategies, and oppose each other, even on these issues. Each side needs to police it’s own to fix this, which is why I criticize some of those speaking out in the name of farmers, (but really against the interests of farmers). Farmers grow the food, and people may take it for granted, so they clearly shouldn’t “talk with their mouths full,” but at the same time, farmers are foolish to squander their value to society by supporting bad food and a bad environment, both of which come, in large part, from the exploitation of farmers.
A lot of farmers do need to listen more often if for no other reason than it makes us all look bad when you say, “I grow the food so be quiet.”