Sometimes I Doubt What We Are Doing... Is Mass Scale Organic Farming Our Only Future?
G'Day Folks,
Sometimes I doubt what we are doing, I watch footage online of some very large mechanised farms producing organic veggies in a way that just doesn’t inspire me. Which makes me feel very confused, why should I condemn the mass scale industrialisation of organic farming, when I strongly believe the removal of chemicals from our food system is undoubtedly better for the environment and human health.
I can see a future where the ‘Get Big or Get Out’ mentality that destroyed and continues to destroy untold numbers of smaller family farms, will inevitably pervade the organic farming community (It has already begun). Where too then for my family when the price of organic food only allows large industrialised farms to participate. Do we step onto that treadmill of aggressive and unrelenting competition? Do we chain ourselves to the wheel of efficiency and lowest cost?
It seems to me this mentality began at the same moment we invented agriculture (some 14,000 yrs ago). Once agriculture began, humans were now responsible for population control alongside nature. Before agriculture it was nature that decided how many people could live within an area. But now humans decided this as well. This enslaved man to the wheat fields. The harder they worked the better they thought things would be, but they didn’t realise it would only create more mouths to feed. So they worked harder and harder, longer and longer, until technology allowed us to grow more than enough food to feed everyone. But still the farmer had to work harder and longer, because now the food earns to little money for the farmer to live on, so he then had to work harder and longer to grow enough cheap food that he could live himself, even though most of the food he grew was thrown out.
Food is not the only ‘thing’ that enslaved man, everything we produce enslaves us, for regardless of the product the same rules apply, make it cheap and watch them leap. Not knowing that what makes it cheap is the enslavement of ourselves to work forever longer and harder in the hope things will eventually get easier. We’ve held this collective belief from the moment our fear of starvation was overtaken by our insatiable desire for things to become cheap. And yes, life in many aspects is easier. But for most of us, we still work more hours than our ancestors did, we require other people to raise our kids because now both parents must go to work and we spend our entire life working a job that gives us no meaning so we can pay off a mortgage before we die.
What will set us free is valuing each other for the things we value in our own lives. Going to the extra effort for someone else is going to the extra effort for yourself. What you gain from focusing on what you value will be far greater than what you lose from focusing on what is cheap.
Comments
Oh James, that was a heart bursting read. Thank you for sharing your pain, your passion and your insight. Love to you and your family🌻🌀💞