Just When We Thought We Were Winning
As an avid gardener, as a senior citizen on limited income, as a survivor of "the Great Depression", what we are dealing with today with our crumbling economy gives me a great deal to think about.
As a gardener, a supporter of local farmers markets, roadside stands and an advocate of bring back the Victory garden I find it really hard to control my anger at the immoral idiots in Congress who "feed" at the trough of the big corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM and others. These corporate giants are trying very hard to stop us from winning against inflation and the current economic crisis with our organic gardens, local farmers markets and roadside stands.
The current bills in Congress are basically all opposed to food safety and are all written by these giant corporations and supported by them because their bottom line is really important to them. There are two sides to each story as we are all aware of and many of these giant corporations support many local economies in this country. However, just s many of them have taken their businesses to countries where they can hire people at a lot less per hour than Americans will now work for and these are the companies that need looking at and looking at hard for many other reasons such as cleanliness and human rights. But that is another article at another time.
Anyone who looks at TV today will see that more and more of our food is prepared by large corporations and are deemed fast food. The latest is a whole meal of meat and veggies in a frozen packet and just put it in your microwave and "zap" it quickly to have a healthy, nutritious steamed dinner. Oh yeah? Forgetaboutit! It shows two people dining, so to me it indicates it feeds two. What about a family of four? Then I guess you need two packets. At what price? $4.95 a packet in our area and you do the math.
How about buying 1 chicken breast, some fresh veggies and slow cooking it yourself in a steamer? For $10.00 I can do that with 1 chicken breast, perhaps 2 or more if I hit the meat counter at the right time and find a sale with a use by or freeze date expiring the same day I am shopping, a bag of carrots, a head of cauliflower and broccoli and make that meal in less than 30 minutes and have enough veggies left over for 3 other meals and still serve 4 people! I have the pleasure of picking out what I want, washing it clean, the pleasure of creating the meal while enjoying a glass of wine, the joy of serving it and savoring it with my dining partner or guests or family.
If the veggies are in season I might be getting them from my own garden and I know they are organic, or from my neighbors at the local farmer's market where I know they are also organic and I am now supporting the local economy. While there I may pick up some fresh eggs, again organic and I get a chance to visit with my neighbors.
Isn't it time we slowed down? Slowing down can be very good. When I slowed down in 1992 my health returned, I had more time for my family, I had more time to find out about what was good for me and my family and what was not. I found out I needed a lot less things and slowing down meant changing my lifestyle and getting my life back.
In the 60's and 70's we heard a lot about giant agribusinesses such as the ones mentioned above. We do not hear too much about agribusinesses nowadays because we have become immune to it. Or perhaps we have became lazy, brain dead, ignorant or just too busy trying to put "beans on the table" to really know what the heck is going on.
Just think about what happens locally when you take time to plant a garden. You buy seed from your local seed store, tools from your local garden shop or even from a local flea market, local stores and more. Your family will probably get involved and when you have a bumper crop you and hopefully your family will help with the harvesting, freezing, canning and preserving that harvest, thus teaching your children some good lessons in being thrifty, self sufficient, self reliable and keeps our democratic values intact. If we don't have a garden, but do buy locally at our farmer's market or local roadside stands then these people have probably bought their seed, tools etc locally.
When we allow these bills to pass many things are going to happen and one of them is that our local farmers are going to be crushed to death with reams of paperwork and exorbitant daily fines each and every time the farmer makes a mistake and if we want to not see this happen then we need to write to our congress about killing these bills. These bills not only hamper our local farmers, they make it easier for other third world countries with no farming restrictions on certain pesticides to sell their products for less to the giant food preparers and increase our chances for food sickness, cancers and other health harming conditions.
There are all different ways of fighting these guys and one can become a crusader and spend all your time writing and demonstrating or one can just sit back and do nothing, watch your food budget decrease in getting good value and wonder why diabetes has increased 90% in the last 10 years in this country or you can stand still, think a minute and say I am going to make a change and it is going to start here and now in my little world by not buying fast foods packets, by not supporting the companies that advertise these types of things on TV, by buying locally and if that means buying a little less then do so because we Americans eat too much anyway.
We can make a difference and we can go back to winning simply by slowing down, doing more with less and taking a moral firm stand about this important issue.