Community, food, and the economy

It is all connected. My favorite constructive pessimist, Robert Paterson, on the problem:

Our system has destroyed community. Food is now “made” in industrial settings far away from the consumer — where machines or “slaves” do the work. I use the term “slave” deliberately as people who do crushing hard and boring and often dangerous work for just enough to feed them.

And the solution:

If we grow food . . . locally all the work related to this — the growing, the servicing, the processing, the sales and distribution — all return home. We start to create the habit and the systems for doing things locally.

No place for the young in the economy now — Food is the key.

One Reply to “Community, food, and the economy”

  1. The point about the Roman empire depending on its food supply to exist and to grow points to another unspoken piece of this puzzle: We need *good* food to be a strong society. And good food is not grown on industrial farms in bankrupt soil with chemical inputs.

    And I say “society” carefully. I was about to write a “strong nation,” but I’m not sure we should focus so much on the concept of nation anymore. I’d like to be the member of a healthy population, wherever and however that population lives and identifies.

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