Way back, I started farming so I could have food that I wanted to eat clean, healthy, nutritious food that I had control of from start to finish. Now I find the way I farm and how I market my food is also becoming an act of social justice.

Urban sprawl, eroding infrastructure, and industrial food systems have for many decades made it almost impossible to find, much less encourage, local food production. The food industry has become a modern, mechanized, global behemoth like all the other modern businesses with their attitude that as long as it is cheap enough, the consumer doesn’t care where it comes from or how it is made.

Growing food for one’s community has been the hallmark and survival of any human civilization. Now we are faced with little choice and no knowledge or information about where our food comes from. The government continually drags its feet on implementing the COOL (country of origin labeling) law, even though other industries must label the origin of their products. I suspect the main reason is that they are afraid of scaring the consumer.

One-third of our beef can come from other countries, and the feed for that cattle can come from anywhere. After all, grain is a worldwide commodity.

We no longer can claim that we feed the world. Instead, the world is now feeding us. We have reached the point where we import more food than we export. That chicken you purchase in the store may come to you at the expense of the rain forest. That’s right. Brazil has been cutting down the rain forest at an alarming rate and planting soybean fields in its place, so much so that Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of soybeans.

You may ask “What is the alternative? People need to eat, don’t they?” That would be a valid argument if Brazil were feeding itself, but it isn’t. Brazil still has a large, starving peasant population. In truth, it is about corporate rule and money. Heck, in this country, we still have farmers growing wheat and then buying bread with food stamps.

It would seem that farmers and consumers have little choice. The same company that farmers buy their seed from will also purchase their harvest. Farmers have been told to “get big or get out” for about fifty years now, and the result is a modern-day serfdom. Pig and poultry farms have become models of old-style trusts. The company supplies the livestock and the feed, and the farmer is a kind of employee (or serf) with no benefits and all the risk. The farmer takes a mortgage to build the confinement building and in return usually receives a one-year contract which the company can cancel at any time for any reason. As the environmental regulations continue to get tougher on these kinds of farms, I predict that these large confinement operations will eventually be driven overseas to “more friendly” developing countries with “more friendly” regulations.

Let’s face it. Modern agriculture was the last to enter the industrial age and it will be the last to leave. Food has been reduced to the same kind of industrial manufacturing which has left this country in search of cheap labor. As a consequence, in the future we can all enjoy chicken made in China, that was fed Brazilian rainforest soybeans, and shipped thousands of miles, and sold at the low, low price that Americans have come to expect. Yum!

I am so glad this is happening. Every time corporations act in some Orwellian manner, my business increases and more farms like mine spring up. The food industry seems to take the attitude that consumers should just shut up and believe them when they say this food is good for you. Customers are starting to ask questions important questions. How do you raise your animals? What are they fed? Are they outside on grass? These questions (and I am asked these questions all the time) demonstrate an ever-increasing knowledge about our nation’s food supply. These questions show me, the farmer, that some consumers are doing a little homework and have concerns about the food they eat.

The demographic of those new customers I see: mostly young people with children under five years of age. I am very encouraged by this. Not only will we see healthier children, but these future adults will know what real food tastes like, and, I hope, will bring their children to this farm.

Small farms like mine will survive. I have customers now and will have in the future who demand a better, healthier food system and more sustainable communities. So I would like to thank Cargill, Tyson, ADM all the big boys. Because of their farming practices, I can now proudly add this to my product description: “My chickens don’t eat the rain forest.”