Reflections...

My recent research paper on local seasonal and organic foods was an eye opener for me. I started off with trying to find a certain path or way to truly eat sustainably but I soon found out that this was NOT the case by far and that everything was muddled in a rather large gray area.

I’ve always been a believer in sourcing food products locally but what I didn’t realize is that it’s not always as energy conservative as I believed it to be. With more and more local and organic foods becoming more acceptable and widespread, corporations see this as a big money making potential and buy into the market creating giant agribusinesses. These agribusinesses’ tend to meddle and complicate what we sought out to protect when we started these food movements. I feel that we will get to a time, one day soon, where everyone will feel the need to have their own urban farm (also called “urban homesteads”) in their backyard or share one with neighbors in a community garden. This have already started in a lot of places where people feel the extreme need to take their food out of agribusiness factory farms who claim to be operating in our best interests. This has, of course, been found to not be the case in a lot of situations. Business will always be business no matter what, and the more profit you can get with the least amount of work, the better. This mantra unfortunately is true for organic or local companies as well.

The ‘urban homestead’movement is an encouragement to people to take food matters into their own hands (literally!) by raising and growing most everything consumed. The main purpose of this current movement is to replace the seemingly useless water-hogging lawn for an array of fruit trees, vegetable plants and herbs as well as to raise chickens for meat and eggs (some families will even raise dwarf goats and rabbits for the same purposes). This method is an efficient way to grow everyday necessities in a small amount of space. Even though keeping an urban farm is a lot of work, I have seen more and more families in our neighborhood take baby steps towards self-sufficiency by keeping backyard chickens for eggs and maintaining reasonable vegetable gardens. I’ve also noticed that there are more plots of land offered for communities who want to keep a garden but can’t for one reason or another. These gardens are taken care of and shared by the community ‘farmers’. This is an excellent way for anyone to try their hands at gardening. At the end of the day, I feel like we can and should decide what’s acceptable when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families and stick with it. The only problem is which way is the right way? I hope one day we can find a way for everyone to acquire high quality food and truly eat sustainable. Until then, it’s truly up to you to educate yourself and decide.

Eat and be Happy!
-Missy