Without a doubt, one of the most challenging aspects of eating local and buying as much as possible from small businesses and farms within your community is the logistical nightmare of coordinating pickups.
I was emailing back and forth with a doctor just last week about how to get a local farmer’s fresh, completely pastured buffalo milk to market to help the business get off the ground.
The truth is, it’s just not easy to obtain these healthy, local, nutrient dense foods and the inconvenience of having to be at a certain place at a certain time or potentially driving an hour or two round trip one or more times a week to pick up your food is just too daunting for most people today living a modern, stressed out lifestyle.
It’s so much easier to just go to the supermarket and blithely load up your shopping cart with colorful boxes and attractive packages and stay in denial about all the GMOs, chemicals and additives you are consuming and feeding your children on a regular basis.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Eating local and fresh could be much more convenient when technology is harnessed to help out.
I’ve written before about raw milk vending machines popping up all over Europe. The one minute video below shows how one works in France.
Would these machines ever be allowed anywhere in the United States? Probably not because the CDC insists that raw milk is “dangerous”.
Really?
If raw milk was as dangerous as the CDC and conventional medical authorities in the USA claim, wouldn’t these machines that are popping up all over Europe be causing some serious food borne illness outbreaks by now?
The same confounding mindset exists for farm fresh eggs where astoundingly, caged battery produced eggs are considered “safer” by the USDA than eggs from chickens living outside because birds that are kept indoors won’t have any contact with (gasp!) wild birds.
The picture at the top was sent to me my Lauren S., which shows her brother-in-law buying farm fresh eggs out of a vending machine in Japan. He is living there with his family as part of a stint with the Air Force. Her sister said that the local farmers deliver eggs fresh daily to these machines and the surrounding community has the convenience of obtaining fresh eggs anytime of the day or night.
Wouldn’t you love to see this at a local convenience store in America right next to the soda machine? If someone has the right to purchase and fill their gut full of that GMO sugar junk, shouldn’t I be able to opt out and conveniently purchase farm fresh eggs from a machine too?
Keeping it inconvenient is all part of Big Ag’s plan via the ever tightening noose around the neck of sustainable farming in North America. Case in point: the King Amendment currently being debated at the Federal level as part of the 1 trillion dollar Farm Bill which would take the situation from bad to worse as it would prevent states from enforcing their own laws regarding the production of “agricultural products”. State laws against cruel gestation crates, battery cages for hens, and even bans on horse slaughter and eating dogs and cats for food could be in jeopardy. Not only would existing laws be in danger if the King Amendment passes, but it would also prevent states from passing new laws to protect farm animals which in turn protects the food supply from nutrient erosion (source).
What these types of measures do is gradually hand over complete control of the food supply to Big Food corporations and the Biotech industry – bit by bit served up on a silver platter by the USDA and FDA which overwhelmingly favor industrialized, sterilized, nutritionless food production to small scale, locally produced, nutrient rich, sustainable whole foods.
As long as bureaucrats who push paper and have never lifted a pitchfork are calling the shots regarding the regulation and distribution of our food supply, harnessing technology as is being done in other parts of the world to make nutrient dense, local food conveniently available to all will be impossible.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Our government is out to kill us!
Answer to your question: Healthy slaves is the last thing they want!
Oops! Sarah, my bad. I was just reading Kelly the kitchen kop, thought I was still there.
Michelle, our so-called leaders are tied up with big ag. That’s where the money is.
Kelly, have you heard about the TPP? This concerns me even more than the farm bill. In fact, it scares the crap out of me! Big business (Monsanto is one) is involved in writing this agreement. I have written to my senators over & over about this, asking them to oppose it. Unfortunately, they think it is a good thing for the country. It is only good for the huge corporations involved. If this passes Monsanto & Co will be able to sue any governments who interfere with their investment & profitability. Where do you think that will leave those of us wanting real, local, non-gmo foods?
Hmmm…..I thought our government and politicians were all about “diversity”. I am of European decent, why can’t we celebrate food diversity and embrace raw milk and farm fresh eggs like the Europeans????
There are many ways that the federal government has usurped state and legislated to protect big business and not the people. I’ve been really thinking some days that is seems hopeless (GMO Salmon? There are people that think this might somehow be okay????? GMO apples? like we don’t already have enough bees dying???) Yesterday I stumbled upon this, and I felt like maybe it’s an answer…or more precisely, maybe it’s our only hope…. http://www.conventionofstates.com
That our rights are being stripped away one by one, and that our local, real food producing farmers are continually harassed and plagued by ridiculous regulations to the point of hardly being able to do a reasonable business, is of great concern to me. However, on the face of it (and this is the first I’ve heard of it), I would not be in favor of getting my real food from a vending machine. I want to know my local farmer, have visited his or her farm, have built a relationship of trust and even sometimes friendship, and be able to be confident about the food I consume. I can’t see any way to accomplish that by vending real food from a machine.
I believe that after the nutritional aspects of real food, which is of course paramount, the next most important tenet of the real food movement is a return to a properly ordered relationship with food and between those who produce it and those who consume it (and everything that entails). Introducing the very same aspects of technology (i.e.: the anonymous and ubiquitous vending machine, driven by a large scale corporate operational system (which it would have to be), and 24/7 convenience) that have helped veer us off into such a deep and perilous ditch nutritionally (the standard American diet), can’t do us any good.
We only live as “modern and stressed out a lifestyle” as we choose to live. If real food is a priority, one can find a way to make it happen. If real food isn’t a priority, then just hit the vending machine.
People should take 2 minutes to call their Senators and House Reps about the Farm Bill.
Do you have a link to an alert from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund that talks about the King Amendment and other talking points of things in the bill to support or vote against?
I looked for it when I was writing this post but couldn’t find anything. If you find it … please do post!
Here’s what I found. People can quickly and easily pick up the phone and make 4 points to their Senator and House Representatives.
(Find out who represents you by going to http://www.House.gov and http://www.Senate.gov or by calling the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.)
Call and ask to speak to the staffer who handles agricultural issues. Explain that you’re a constituent and that protecting family farms is very important to you. Ask your Congressmember to speak to the Farm Bill conferees to urge them to:
1. Preserve Country of Origin Labeling & oppose any changes;
2. Preserve the GIPSA rules for fair livestock markets & oppose any changes;
3. Support the Benishek provision to require FDA to do an analysis of both the science and the costs before implementing regulations under the Food Safety Modernization Act.
4. Reject the King Amendment
For more background, click here:
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=wm5dahcab&v=0015cPBtOwYvcUJbsjIYUkKY0q7txrMTx6jlMD0YMtwnLU5Cb4fNdDXaRxOzHSWObirsrkiO0DAJahSypab6jMnz_dR3n9Z29Ce_cZt_nLxb24DETOZntFKsHXXApBmmG0wjNvqqiGmX8MAiFCxcrvqPuY3wcKK10Mm4Xok3f2O5r3xvEQ7Mv5f4cPmTzYXQqmC6l_hJEHG24oPK0phF-CRlCxSI4-yMp1nN3GkRe6aSRCpMIyIfOU5rROmp4YgWlL7pcXHmXHcwpsKf45PbvWEu3yfkhZBvoP0-2FNM6cVoBx_aJiljnV8r4vAD2mjusGAWfciflOBDcSQovvulWVyjjT5SP6apzV7ypECQorRMh-T5uDcH192rTP-EGGLjC2uC2UkKzH_VNPxAzbqrkL6mTTT35dlQGd4Ki3zUi4dVqvGXI45BncwHw%3D%3D
or here: http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/
If anyone from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund has any updates, please chime in!
There are days when I get so fed up with the crap in our country that living abroad looks more like freedom than the USA… It makes me so sad because I never imagined I could EVER feel like that. =(