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They should, and they will. Watch for it. Someone will figure out a way to cash in on the bee scare - "bee friendly honey" or something, under the "Happy Bees" label, actually owned by a holding company controlled by General Foods - although that will be hidden from consumers - with bastardized imported honey from China, blended from corn syrup with honey flavoring (already happening on a massive scale), brought through Australia or Canada to disguise its origins - that will be hidden from consumers, as well. Have you read about what is happening to honey?
These are not "my topics" by the way. Farming issues are a vital concern to all of those who eat, or hope to. Also, I reject the sales and marketing - "winning friends and influencing people" - approach to politics and social issues. So I am not trying to "win people over" to "my cause." What would be a positive for me would be food security for all. It is not anything of personal benefit to me.
I have been giving this a lot of thought, so I appreciate your comments and interest. I think that we need a new approach to all of these issues.
Let's stretch our imaginations a little on this. Let's say that we are going to re-organize national food policy to seriously address the various concerns and fears people have - save the bees, solve the so-called "illegal immigrant" issue, reduce or eliminate dependence upon oil and "pesticides" - a buzz word that is more or less meaningless - for food production, eliminate the various threats associated with the "Monsanto" ideas - another buzz word that is more or less meaningless - improve the quality of food, protect and save crop genetic diversity, while feeding the population adequately. I wholeheartedly support those goals, I am ready to discuss how we get there and ready to work toward those goals. But let's get serious about what that would take.
Here is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about - suburbia. It is suburbia that is causing the problems, the suburban lifestyle, the suburban development model, suburban attitudes. The sprawl, the pesticide use for gardens and lawns - a much bigger problem than on farms according to the USDA; your veggies are more likely to be contaminated by airborne toxins sitting on a table in suburbia than they are to come contaminated from the farm - the consumerism, the arrogance and competitiveness, the racism, the wasteful use of energy and on and on.
Notice how everyone wants to remake the urban centers - lots of yap lately about converting Detroit to farms - suburban hobby boutique garden farms for the upscale. Has there ever been a more absurd idea? In other words, extend suburbia into the city - for fun and profit for the few. Then people are talking about organic and CSA and home gardens and "eat local" as "solutions" to something - extending suburbia into rural farming country.
It would take a massive overhaul of the country's priorities to solve the food issues, and what would have to change would be suburbia, everything about suburbia - not farming and not urban centers.
Back 40 years ago, practically everyone on the left, and most liberals and progressives saw this - they knew that suburbia represented everything that was wrong with American culture, was the root cause of the social, economic and political problems. Today, people get outraged and offended should you dare to suggest that suburbia needs to change. That tells us that those who want to overhaul and remake urban areas and farming are themselves suburbanites, does it not, and that they are first and foremost defending suburbia?
All of the various activist causes about farming are severely biased to support a suburban American point of view about the world. That is the problem and can never be a source of any solutions.
Let's take one example - oil. Before tractors a farmer could feed 12 people and since tractors a farmer can feed 1200 (according to a famous foodie activist I argued with on the radio recently.) The activist's conclusion was that farming is all bad and wrong and must change, or else we will all starve. I called in and said that nothing would change in farming if oil disappeared, we would just need a lot more labor and that would mean that all of those people who left the farm to do whatever it is they do in suburbia would need to go back to work on the farm if they wanted to eat. Farming is not dependent upon oil - modern suburbia is. I said that people jetting around the country peddling their latest book on the radio lecturing everyone about what is wrong with farming are the ones whose lifestyles would need to change.
All of the problems in agriculture can be traced back to suburbia. Farmers are obligated to feed the people - whatever they want and wherever they are and whatever it takes to get it to them. Farming is forced to adjust to and respond to the pressures from the suburban phenomenon, and it impacts everything in farming - land costs, energy requirements, more and more control over food by the hustlers and marketers and brokers and speculators in the form of Wall Street and corporations, environmental degradation, forced specialization and outcropping, and on and on.
Until and unless people are willing to consider a radical overhaul of suburbia, it is futile and absurd to talk about radically overhauling urban centers and farming country. It is the gentrification, the suburbanization, the rampant consumerism, the brokers, dealers, marketers, hustlers, the strivers, the controllers, the bosses and managers and owners that are the cause of the problems - and that is all happening in suburbia. It is the sprawl, the waste, the misuse of land, the energy inefficiency, the speculation in real estate, the destruction of community, the toxic waste and chemical soup that comes from modern American lifestyles that are the problem - and that is all coming from, driven by suburbia, and all of that stuff is the foundation of the "success" that suburbanites are pursuing.
I can tell you that there is all sorts of abundant wildlife here in farm country, thriving eco-systems, abundant wildflowers, song birds, massive insect populations of tens of thousands of species, clean water, healthy soil. None of that is true in suburbia - suburbia is the "dead zone" and it is the dead zone spiritually, environmentally, socially and politically.
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