This video caught my eye. To me, there’s no doubt that FOOD is the great cause that we can all rally around, indeed that we are all beginning to rally around. That we must rally around if we wish to not only survive, but thrive.
Local food. Safe food. Nutritious food. Home grown food. Non-GMO food.
De-industrialize the “food system.” Get to know the farmers at your farmer’s market. Join a CSA. Grow your own. Better yet, start a community garden. Take the Permaculture Design course. Share knowledge, tools, harvests, seeds. Turn lawns into farmsteads. Grow animals, plants, trees, people. People who love the land. People who remember their connection to our Mother Earth.
It’s happening, all across this land, it’s happening. Even journalist and former war correspondent Chris Hedges, who normally has such a bleak view, is tuning in. Here’s from his recent interview with Richard Heinberg, of The Party’s Over fame:
“Survival will be determined by localities. Communities will have to create collectives to grow their own food and provide for their security, education, financial systems and self-governance, efforts that Heinberg suspects will “be discouraged and perhaps criminalized by those in authority.” This process of decentralization will, he said, become “the signal economic and social trend of the 21st century.” It will be, in effect, a repudiation of classic economic models such as free enterprise versus the planned economy or Keynesian stimulus versus austerity. The reconfiguration will arise not through ideologies, but through the necessities of survival forced on the poor and former members of the working and middle class who have joined the poor. This will inevitably create conflicts as decentralization weakens the power of the elites and the corporate state.”
What Chris Hedges did not say was that it could be fun! We could be in for a good time as we get re-acquainted with both our ancestral skills and each other on a level that is not that of competitive and predatory capitalism, but relaxed, open, and engaged. Experimenting. Innovating.
As we invent ways to rebuild the systems on which our lives depend, so do our communities regenerate up from below.
Farmer Mark Baker, while relaxed, open and engaged, also looks like he’s up to the fight of taking on Big Ag and its handmaiden, the Michigan DNA. As he remarks, at the very end of this video, “I’m happy to be where I am. And I would have liked to be at the revolution (the original Revolutionary War).
