Farm Thoughts 2 - Distant

The global economy is frustrating, violent, unjust and just plain weird. Unfortunately most farms participate fully in the global economy. They grow corn and soy for animal feed so some can eat meat while others go hungry. They also grow corn for ethanol and rely on massive chemical inputs to do so. And in the end, they hope to sell their farms so they can pass something on to their children.

The weirdest part for me is how far most food travels including our locally grown food. Canada can grow almost anything apart from rice and coconuts. Yet still we grow food and send it around the world to be sold instead of being consumed locally. For instance, Canada grows apples and sends them to Australia and New Zealand for instance. At the same time those countries grow apples and send them back to us.

Surely you've seen a New Zealand apple in a grocery store?

A more local example that I saw firsthand the other day were ginseng farms. Southern Ontario grows massive amounts of ginseng to be sold to China. How can it possibly be profitable for China to buy ginseng from us? Wouldn't it make more sense for China to grow its own ginseng to save on all kinds of cost? Then fields used here for ginseng could grow food to be consumed locally instead of buying say apples or wheat from China.

It's almost as if the fuel used to transport the food around the world doesn't exist, much like the associated greenhouse gas emissions. And the funniest part is that no one finds this weird in any way. It's normal. I thought capitalism was all about efficiency but in the end it seems waste is the lifeblood of the global economy.

New Law

Just read a story on Al-Jazeera regarding the legal proceedings arising from a protest against Guantanamo Bay that happened back in January. Naturally we don't hear about such things on the news which is run by the corporations that get rich off war and fear. But Al-Jazeera will sometimes cover it (rich Middle Eastern kings apparently will still get rich even if they annoy the American state).

Anyway the point is what these protesters (totally nonviolent and therefore largely ineffective) are being charged with. All they did was walk up and sit on the steps of the Supreme Court. That's it. Al-Jazeera reports that they are to be charged with "unlawful free speech". In case you didn't get that I'll write it again more clearly:

UNLAWFUL FREE SPEECH

Yes there's a law against that despite the fact that it's a total oxymoron. Free speech by definition can't be unlawful.

Good luck to all of us as laws like these spread like so many sweatshops around the world. I guess it makes sense to have such laws in a time of endless, growing scarcity. People have been used to so much and now will have to do with less, forever. But thankfully everyone will still obey the law, even though it has nothing to do with justice.

Waking Up

So this evening, I was putting together our order for bulk food from the Ontario Natural Food Coop. We had an old catalogue from November 2007 and put together our order based on it. Tonight I had to check the prices from then against the April 2008 catalogue.

What a difference six months makes!

The cost of a large bag of flour had gone up from $25 to $35 (still a steal really). Everything in fact was significantly more from rice to beans to cereal to tempeh. Usually food prices go up due to inflation but these increases are something else and should most definitely give us pause.

In addition few weeks ago, a friend informed me that he had visited the local supermarket and found the rice aisle totally empty. No rice. The story becomes even more scary.

Food comes from the grocery store doesn't it? If we can't rely on a large corporation what will we do? Do any of us remember how to grow food or to slaughter an animal?

This is serious. We have been eating oil for so long but now that is over. The world is changing. Are you ready?

Farm Thoughts 1 - Order and Chaos

There is something of a generation gap in farming as exemplified by concepts of order and chaos. As a farmhand on an organic farm, I, and my fellow farmers, are constantly told that our farm is not proper enough, that it is cluttered and disorderly. A true farm, therefore, must contain no clutter, all straight lines, perfectly cut grass and branches and monocultures.

For instance, we are told that branches trimmed from apple trees must be burned immediately so that the clutter is removed from sight; heaven forbid they become home to insects or small mammals, thereby improving the farm ecosystem (if there is such a thing anymore).

The most common complaint is that the grass is too high and unruly. Farmers in our area spend ridiculous amounts of time mowing their lawns in order to conform to this norm. Not just a small lawn either, sometimes upwards of two acres or more. What harm is there in tall grass? And the drudgery of the mowing; it's not for nothing that teenagers hate mowing the grass. And good luck if you have dandelions or clover interspersed with your Kentucky bluegrass.

In addition, all trees must be planted in perfectly straight lines (in violation of all natural laws) and mixed crops are discouraged (why not a ten acres of only corn or soy). Chemical inputs are necessary to maintain these unnatural systems regardless of the cost as is heavy, oil dependent machinery.

These ideas of order also cross into personal appearance. The farmer of the older generation must never show dirt or dust on his or her clothes. They must be pristine at all times, especially if one is traveling into "town". I can understand the desire to be clean but surely this is a denial of our lives in the dirt. Also likely this desire for personal cleanliness is tied into concepts of class, whereby farmers were once (and likely still are) treated as menial professions, not the foundation of our communities that they should be.

Having said all that, the new generation of farmer, I've come to understand, is also concerned with order and chaos. Chaos is paramount, especially in appearance. The farmer must look the part: dirt under nails, dusty, torn, patched clothes, rough and tanned skin. If you don't present a number of these attributes you are not "farmer enough". Admittedly, these thoughts arise only in consideration of organic farming but it definitely presents a marked contrast with the ideas of the older generation.

My Life is Cancer

"You have cancer."

Today 1 in 2 people are diagnosed with cancer; how soon before it's 1 in 1? What will happen when you get told those words by a man in a white overcoat? Will you shudder a little bit inside, the way that no one sees? Will you scream at him, curse him? Will you burst into tears? Will you accept it immediately? Will you demand a cure?

You'll probably do all these things and more. Cancer is scary surely. An almost death sentence that seems to come out of nowhere. Why me, you might ask? What did I do to deserve this? Our culture teaches us that we do nothing wrong, that nature hates us that that's why cancers afflict us unexpectedly. We did nothing to bring this on.

But of course we do plenty to provide cancer with fertile soil. Our lives are cancer. From all the chemicals that should never have existed to the microwaves flying through the air, from polluted air and water to all the plastic floating on the sea; cancer covers our food and we apply it to our skin. For the civilized, cancer is our birthright.

A little boy has cancer. For some time he's undergone "treatment" which involves pumping chemicals (yes ironically the same ones that cause cancer) into his veins. This makes him terribly sick, worse than you can imagine, unless you've gone through it yourself. He doesn't want it to go on, he and his parents want to stop, try a new nonviolent treatment and enjoy their remaining time together.

Doctors, those priests of humanity, say without their "treatment" he has six months to live. To decline "treatment" would challenge the sacrosanctness of human life and this is unacceptable. Human life must go on at all costs, regardless of quality of life. No one says this overtly but this is the message in all such cases. How can you ignore it?

So the state says he has to undergo treatment.

The child is removed from his family. His parents are arrested for their protests. The child lays alone on a bright white bed under fluorescent lights and a tray of half-eaten, nutritionally void food rests on his table. Experts in clean white who know better than him, ignore him, avoid his gaze and plug him into machines designed to squeeze out every last breath of life, however hollow it might be. He is more scared of them and their "treatment" as the cancer. He wants to go home.

Sometimes people have to die. It's their time. What's the use of hanging on? If we fail to accept this, we reject life. Then all we have left is the cancer our civilization breeds.

Wright or Wrong?

I met with my dad the other morning and like usual fell to talking of American politics and specifically the presidential election. My dad supports Barack Obama. He thinks that he's the only candidate able to actually change the country's destructive course.

I, of course, beg to differ. One person isn't going to change over 500 years of violent history, power and domination. Obama isn't the messiah people think he is. If he was president he would approve air strikes around the world, he would deny climate change (though not to the degree of his predecessor) and he would maintain the marginalization and everyday violence visited on the poor and visible minorities in his country. The United States would cease to exist without these core truths.

If he was revolutionary and tried to actually change this system he would be dead on his second day in office. That's a fact.

My dad knows all this but he still recognizes that Obama would be the best of the three choices offered Americans (remember voters don't choose, they just confirm). The biggest threat to Obama is that white voters will be scared away by his skin colour. This seems to be happening today with the media scandal around Obama's reverend's "fiery" sermons.

Reverend Wright has lambasted American foreign policy and injustice at home. He has spoken out against the deliberate systematic destruction of black Americans' communities. He has challenged the religion of capitalism. He has recognized that 9/11 was just blowback from American crimes abroad.

In short, Wright tells the truth.

My dad thinks he'll ruin Barack Obama's chance to be president. He knows he's speaking the truth but doesn't want to hear it and wants Wright to shut up. Are those of us that agree with him in this belief merely deluding ourselves? Are we ready to challenge the hidden, rotten foundations of our lives? Or do we have faith that the same system that sows death and injustice will somehow transform through the election of one man?

Either way if Fox News (and the rest of the gang) is calling you un-American you know you're doing something right!