A Sustainable Future

My wife and I buy beef, lamb, poultry, pork and eggs from local farms at the Farmer’s market as often as possible. The farm I buy my beef from raises the animals on pasture and does the butchering and packaging. We recently found a local farm that sells raw milk, cheese and yogurt. The food is slightly more expensive than what you find at the grocery store, but it is fresher and higher quality. That is the pleasure of seeking out local farms. They are not running factories. They are raising high quality products in a sustainable manner to do right by the land, the people they feed, and generations to come. You can support them and your health by purchasing their fresh products and building a trusting relationship. Think of it as trading your healthcare expenses for higher quality nourishment and a future for your grandchildren.

This is how America operated not long ago. Farmers practiced traditional methods and knew the people they sold to. We transitioned to a system of maximal cost efficiency by industrializing the food supply system. We traded away labor force and sustainability for automation, standardization, and centralization. Now we know the price of this trade; less healthy livestock and crops, an unhealthy population with high health risks and costs, and a vulnerable food distribution system. We can have a healthier and more sustainable food chain by supporting local and regional farms practicing traditional and regenerative agriculture. We can still benefit from technology and broader distribution to save on labor and reach more people. In the long run, a reinvestment of labor will support and provide income for a growing population.

We can make this work by coming together. We must recognize that we all depend on each other to survive and keep this planet and our species moving forward through time. That means every one of us must be strong to support the whole. Just like the cells of the human body. A symbiotic organism. We can expand this lesson beyond the food supply to other areas of our life where quality has been traded away for convenience at the cost of our health and future.

Even if you believe we have to leave this planet, we need to know how to grow and provide food at the local level to be sustainable and not disruptable. That is the only way we can effectively seed, colonise and move to another planet while searching for multiple suitable homes.

Realistically, we would have to discover thousands if not millions of planets up close via robots; which is technology we do not have yet, and we have no understanding of how we could communicate that information to earth soon enough to take action. We have this planet. One planet. We will not find another in time if we destroy this one. That is certain. We do not deserve another one until we learn to take care of this one.