Sustainable farming, its safety, and freedom of trade is a fundamental pillar of a robust and peaceful society. Of all the things we should want to be open and transparent, how we get our food should be at the top of our concern.
Food resiliency is likely the most effective way to increase personal freedom and local stability. For far too long, we (as a society) have taken the easy way out. Corporate factory producers have had their way with those freedoms as well as our personal and environmental health.
Buying from trusted local farmers decentralizes food production and secures food availability. It almost guarantees a more humane and higher quality product, but at the cost of convenience and usually even price. But I ask you, what is more important than humanely farmed high-quality food that is produced by someone you trust?
At this time, governments (lobbied by corporations) are in control of most aspects of our food and the trade thereof. There are a few large companies controlling production and distribution. This has the effect of turning the art and science of caring for the farming of food and land into a manufacturing commodity.
Buying local, or at least from a reputable farmer has huge impacts on these companies by reducing their revenues and tax payout and therefore also their ability to control trade through regulatory capture and the enforcement thereof. Our business is with farmers is going to create a much greater competition among those farmers also, which will increase the quality of service and the food they produce.
We are currently seeing a significant market shift from the inhumane practices and unhealthy products of corporate factory production to local humane and clean farming.
Backyard or artisan farming is a growing trend around the country. By all indicators, permaculture is experiencing huge growth in numbers of people taking courses and the quality of those courses and the communities that are necessary for them to exist. All of the indicators I can see show that we may be entering a new age of restorative agriculture, but we still have a big problem in the way.
There are plenty of stories of corporate legislation retaliating against local and backyard farmers.
Interestingly, we see most of this retaliation in states that house large corporate producers. For example, we see Wisconsin attacking farmers for trading in dairy products and Michigan is aggressively pushing against small pig farmers.
That shift is further decentralizing food production through the boon of urban farming and the popularity of restorative agriculture and Permaculture practices. This boom and the powerful tools we have available now are creating the structures that will allow farmers and communities to out-compete the regulatory capture problems and also to create competing self-governing solutions.
