Vote with Your Food Dollars
Vote with your food dollars! Support a small farmer, a farmer whose business plan includes building soil and biodiversity. Mix stockholders and corporations into this, and the earth and biodiversity become secondary to profit. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that how we make a living is to make a living, not a killing!
Never has it been so important to know what you are supporting when you purchase food. Corporations have taken over a good bit of the food industry, including the growing of food. When corporations enter, too often community breaks down in the name of efficiency. Chemicals streamline. The quality and safety of our food suffers. After all, it makes sense to stockholders to make profit the most important element in the growing of food.
California poppy alongside the vineyard.But each of us can change this by being more conscious about what is behind the food we purchase: where was it grown and under what conditions? What system are you supporting in the purchase? The “new” awareness developing includes the social issues about the farm workers, living wages, the impact of agricultural chemicals, and the importance of the farm’s placement in the natural ecology. The wildflowers growing between rows or beside them, the native pollinators that thrive, the woodlands and the hedgerows: all are important elements which speak to the health of the whole.