Meet Your Farmer: Considering local food choices? Think of farming

It’s about ethics — food ethics and communities.

Wendell Berry said: “Eating is an agricultural act.” Savor that idea every time you eat. The impact is far and wide and goes beyond organic labels — it’s better for us all.

Back to the farm we must go. Get involved. Eat local. Spend a little more on fresh, local food. Your body will thank you and you will feel better, too.

Farm-fresh food will change all of our lives — and those you love — simply because what you choose to feed yourself and your family every single day. It matters beyond taste, beyond money, or nutrition — it’s about origin, too.

Our conscious food choices keep farmers farming and pay it forward in immeasurable ways beyond the supermarket agenda — like convenience for money.

Rebuilding local economies with jobs, restoring wellness with good health and combating food insecurity with nutrition are just a few issues we begin to tackle by spending our food dollars directly at the farm. If 300 million people bought just one ingredient for any one meal from any small local or family farm every day, imagine what would happen?!

Magic, pure magic! And I say, yes we can! Let’s funnel our food dollars by spending in local economies on bounty from our land. Let’s pack our bodies with nutrition that prevents illness instead of treating symptoms with medicine from lifeless food!

I have some questions to ponder:

Why aren’t we taught food is medicine and, in fact, our best prevention against illness?

Why is it the Food & Drug Administrations are linked — why isn’t it the Food & Water Administration?

Why is it we don’t get discounts on health insurance when we eat good, healthy, locally sourced chemical-free food and aren’t often sick opting out of a doctor-appointment-a-day lifestyle?

Who is responsible for these poison-for-profits agendas with big business of corporate food and commercial agriculture?

And moreover, why don’t we the people, by the people, for the people, demand honestly made, nutrient-dense, high-quality fresh, good food that’s responsibly produced and sold chemical-free? Isn’t that better for us all? Isn’t that the foundation of food? And isn’t it our birthright?

Good food is not a privilege. This cannot be all about time and money! But since it is… we must vote with our food dollars everyday, every one of us, with a collective consciousness that is impactful and rewarding.

This is a call to action and I’m a mouthpiece for our agricultural community feeding us; we must pay our farmers a fair living wage for growing the very thing we need to survive with such attention to detail and care!

We must support their efforts bringing it directly to market through farmers markets, retailers, CSA farm share programs and farm stands to offer us all equal opportunity to eat — just by buying seasonal food from them at fair prices to help them pay the bills needed to do their jobs well while keeping us healthy, too.

How has this natural pathway gotten so complicated?

Somehow, the big business of food with their processed agendas and greedy distribution monopolies seized our access to the farm and placed a control on pricing to render us sick, fat and programmed by the science of taste with a salt, sugar, crunchy, fatty, financial agenda instead of rewarding the farmer who provides our food that’s key to preservation, health, wellness and rural prosperity. Shame on them!

Get up, dress up, show up is our farmers Get-’er-done mentality. It aligns well with their responsible practices and is how, together with integrity and hard work, we realize everything you need to know to become successful and healthy, you learn on a sustainable farm.

Opt out of processed food today for our health and the health of our children tomorrow.

Honest eating revitalizes a respect for farming as a noble profession! We are obligated to sustain this farm to table (or farm to fable?) trend by taking the bull by the horns — get back into our communities and reconnect with our farmers that work hard to feed us well.

There is no barrier. No packaging convincing you of food claims or false promises — just a pathway to relearn how to eat.

Meet your farmer and focus the spend of your food dollars in the coming weeks direct to family farms and local producers just by asking — where does my food come from?

And if you need answers, call me — I’ll show you the way and simplify your chore. Let’s lift up our agricultural community once again to the noble status it deserves by investing in our regional food producers today. It will engage the next generation to feed us and promise them a viable livelihood for succession on the family farm, too.

Invest in the future of food with one local ingredient at your table everyday. Don’t forget to thank your farmer too! FarmOn!

Tessa@farmonfoundation.org