Reply #7: Dead agriculture versus living agriculture [View All]

[Karmadillo]

I don't have time to search more, but here's a link where Korten discusses agriculture. I posted an article on GD this morning that talks about Cuba's success in creating an organic, self-sustaining, small scale form of agriculture.

http://www.davidkorten.org/Talks/talks_amerag.htm

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The issues go well beyond food security. We are constantly told that there is no alternative to industrial agriculture, to the corporate global economy, or to using U.S. military power to impose order on the world. Your work contributes to demonstrating that we do have choices:
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*Between dead food and living food.
*Between dead agriculture and living agriculture.
*Between a suicide economy and a planetary system of living economies.
*Between American empire and Earth democracy.

I will speak briefly of each of these choices, as they relate to your work.

Corporations have created a system of dead agriculture subsidized by our tax dollars that kills the planet, destroys families and communities and alienates us from the earth to produce dead food that poisons our bodies. Dead agriculture poisons and depletes our soil and water; reduces the nutritional value of our food; destroys families, family farms, and communities; and alienates us from the earth. It provides an abundance of top of the food chain delicacies to the rich. It offers nothing to the poor. It leads to houses without dining tables or even kitchens. Grab a TV dinner or take out and sit down in front of the TV. Dead agriculture. Dead earth. Dead families. Dead communities. And dead democracy. Economists on corporate payrolls tell us it’s the most efficient system of agriculture ever known. We ask, “Efficient at what?”

Food and the soils that grow it are the foundation of life and community. Food nurtures our souls, as well as our bodies. The bonding of family, friends, and community has long centered on sitting together at a table to share food. Food and agricultural practices distinctive to place are a foundation of the sense of identity and social bonding that make a community more than a place where we go after work to watch TV and sleep.

This is why your work on local food security is so important. It is about restoring the healthfulness of our foods, bodies, communities, cultures, and ecosystems. Now that is a deal you won’t find at Wal-Mart or McDonalds.

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