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.