My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
March 2nd, 2008It’s an opportunity for small operators.
See Path to Freedom:
Via: New York Times:
IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.
But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.
Research Credit: Scott
Everything is about balance.
Although it is important to know the bad things that are going on, the number of sites dedicated to the “bad” outnumber the websites that provide real positive answers 100 to 1. This is information we need to counter the bad things with positive change.
Balance.
Thanks
@jburke6000 “Everything is about balance” ?? hahahaha. Why, that little sentence itself is a prime example of PR-variety nonspeak. You’d make a stellar politician or public school teacher. (How’s *that* for “positive” feedback?)
My “real positive answer” was to get my ass outta the US. The rest of you are welcome to think positive thoughts and stand for hours in food lines, “balancing” first on one foot, then the other, until the line starts to move forward again. Balance.
That’s what I like about sites like Path to Freedom and Farmlet etc., just plain and simple show and tell.
Pookie,
You crack me up in a good way these days.
Shit, got anywhere I can take a 91 year old with major and multiple health problems out of the US with me?
Seriously.
I won’t leave US without her.
Not in my DNA.
Otherwise, I will continue to post my thoughts from the dark side as long as able to.
I only hope I can be amusing.
Sob.
I gave away two dozen eggs today thinking wow, I’ve got these girls who are laying to beat the band.
one egg today.
go figure.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are not as profitable as chemotherapy at treating cancer, but 10 times more effective.
Amazing Google Video:
G. Edward Griffin – A World Without Cancer – The Story Of Vitamin B17
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4312930190281243507
You know, jburke, what people really need is the TRUTH, which would be the most effective way to balance the LIES.
That corporate farming and factory farming is driving the small farmer and family farmer out of business is an old story. What has not been said nearly enough is that the small farmer has been LEGISLATED out of business.
Back in the 1950s, my aunt had an “egg route.” She delivered eggs raised on her farm to all the local grocery stores. Some time around the end of the 50s or the beginning of the 60s, it became illegal for farmers to sell their eggs to local grocers. I believe the pretext was that farm produce could only be efficiently FDA inspected at large, centralized facilities.
On a visit to the Missouri Ozarks a number of years ago, I learned that, while the region is eminently well suited to growing tomatoes, it was made illegal for people to sell them. I don’t know the details on this one.
I live in the middle of a farming region where you can’t buy beef, milk, eggs–or probably anything else that is grown locally–at the grocery store. My guess is that the stores are prohibited from buying anything for resale that hasn’t passed through the FDA system. So all our meat, milk, eggs, and vegetables come from long distances–even though all our local food needs could easily bet met by local farms.
This system is not an accident. It’s designed to favor corporate and factory farms, and make small-scale and local production uneconomic.