The top 10 reasons why you should get involved with the food supply
It’s time to decentralize the food supply
Decentralization means to spread out control. Over the past one hundred years, small farmers have slowly been forced out and farmland has been consolidated into fewer and fewer massive farms. We have become dangerously close to having our entire food supply controlled by a handful of politicians and billionaires.
90% of farmland in Canada is own by the federal or a provincial government and billionaires are quickly grabbing up the rest. Yes, billionaires. You might not think of farming as a highly profitable business that would be of any interest to billionaires, but Bill Gates has already purchased over half of the private farmland in the United States, while a billionaire named Robert Andjelic owns 75% of the farmland in Saskatchewan.
So how do we decentralize? We simply get as many people involved in food production as possible. That’s the goal of this site. To show you WHY you should and HOW you can contribute.
First up: The top 10 reasons why you should get involved with the food supply.
#10 Create beautiful landscapes
Imagine if everywhere in your city that is currently growing grass, was instead, growing fruit and nut trees and berry bushes. Imagine the vines of grapes and beans climbing up these trees. Imagine the surrounding space covered in strawberry patches and chives. Food forests are just like any other forest. Once grown and established they are self-maintaining.
And we don’t have to stop at our own lawns. Many public spaces sit there growing nothing but grass. I don’t mean getting rid of sports fields of course, but all that decorative grass and even much of the concrete spaces around town could be food forest. Our sidewalks could be forest paths instead of pavement and streams could trickle by instead of concrete fountains.
Yes, it is all possible with a concept called “Permaculture” if many of us get involved.
#9 Eliminate tons of single use plastic
According to Statistics Canada, 1/3 of household plastic waste comes from food packaging, but how much single use plastic would you use if you were growing your own food? Probably none. You’d eat it fresh or can it in glass jars or freeze it in a reusable container for later use. Even if you can’t produce a lot of food on your own property, you won’t see a lot of plastic packaging at the farmers market either.
Most packaging is used for processed food or food that has to be shipped long distances. These things would disappear if we produced all of our food locally and stored it ourselves for the winter.
#8 Make sure food is accessible
Rember all the supply chain issues that we experience back in 2020/2021? That is the result of relying on supply chains to transport your products over long distances. Something as important as food should never be put at risk like this. By producing enough food locally for everyone, we don’t ever have to worry about supply chain issues affecting our food availability.
#7 Eliminate transportation costs and reduce air pollution
6% of global emissions are attributed to transporting food. Regardless of how you feel about the climate, the pollution emitted from vehicles is toxic to our health and we would be better off without it. In addition, transporting food costs money and increases the prices we pay for our food. Then you add carbon taxes on top of that. It’s no surprise that so many are struggling with their grocery bill. How much cheaper and healthier would our food be if all or even most of it was produced in our own city? Neighborhood? Backyard?
#6 Save money
Due to the laws of supply and demand, if we produce more food without increasing the demand, it should cost less and if we eliminate transportation costs, food should cost less, and if we eliminate the plastic packaging, we don’t have to pay for that either, and if we buy it all from local suppliers, the big grocery stores can’t choose to just gouge us anyway.
But it gets better. If you buy seeds which are super cheap, or better yet, save your own seeds from the food you grew last year, or the BEST, grow perennial plants (ie. Raspberry bushes) that only need to be planted once and will continue to grow and produce food year after year, you don’t need to pay anything for your food. Raise some chickens for eggs, or trade some mushrooms you grew in a shady spot or some compost you made in your kitchen for a carton of eggs from a friend. Eliminate food costs all together.
As a result of inflation of prices for animal feed and carbon taxes many farmers have already downsized, and we will not be seeing their products on the shelves next season. In addition, governments, not just in Canada, but around the world are enacting environmental policies that are forcing farmers to produce significantly less or shut down. These new laws put serious nitrogen restrictions in place that can’t be met without massive cutbacks in fertilizer.
The good news is that it only takes about 1000 square feet to feed a person for a year, and you don’t need fertilizer to do it. Pesticides and fertilizer kill the microbes that pull nutrients from the soil and make them accessible to plants, so our farmland is dead and dependent on fertilizer, but we can grow a ton of food locally with no pesticides or fertilizers simply by composting our food waste which supplies tons of microbes to the soil.
By growing food instead of lawns, we can ensure there is lots of fresh healthy food available. Growing food forests in public spaces is actually a great way to make sure people who have fallen on hard times have access to food.
As mentioned in reason #5, most of our food is grown with fertilizer. Fertilizer contains a specific combination of nutrients and that’s all the plant can get because the soil is dead. It is then picked before it is fully ripe so it can finish ripening on its long journey from wherever it was grown to your local grocery store where it arrives void of flavour and with limited nutrients.
Plants control which nutrients they take in by sending out different types of sugars into the soil which attract different types of microbes which will pull a different type of nutrient from the soil and make it available to the plant. By growing your plants in microbe rich soil via adding compost and avoiding pesticides and fertilizers, your plants will take in a wider variety of nutrients and because they are not travelling long distances, they can be picked when they are ripe and have had time to take in more nutrients. The result is plants that have far more vitamins and minerals than what you are getting in the grocery store.
#3 Get chemical-free food
Another major drawback to traditional farming is all the toxic pesticides that are used. Even certified organic foods are usually sprayed with “organic” pesticides. For example, most corn has been genetically modified to incorporate the gene of a bacteria that produces a toxin that kills insects that try to eat it, essentially turning your corn into a pesticide. Certified organic corn can not be modified like this, so instead, the toxin produced by the bacteria is extracted so it can be sprayed on the corn. As it is a naturally occurring substance, this is allowed under the “Certified Organic” label.
The best way to ensure your food does not come with a dose of poison is to grow it yourself. Other alternatives are to buy from someone you know or go to a local market and ask the farmers about how they grow their food. Many farmers will put signs up saying “never sprayed” to indicate that they don’t want to pay for the meaningless organic label, but do not use any pesticides.
Imagine how many health problems we could solve, how many people we could keep out of the hospital if all our food was locally produced, unprocessed, nutrient rich and toxin-free.
#2 Prevent the inhumane treatment of farm animals
Up to this point we have mainly discussed plant based food. If you feel good on a plant-based diet go for it, but many people do not. Studies show that most vegans eventually quit, so if you find that even with more nutrient dense foods and far less toxins going into your body, you do not feel healthy on a vegan diet, you can raise your own animals, whether for meat or just for milk and eggs. You can also choose to buy your animal products from local suppliers who are raising their animals in open spaces, on healthy diets instead of in factory farms; or go hunting for wild game.
Animals are being raised in inhumane conditions, on unnatural diets and stuffed full of things like antibiotics to fatten them up which ends up making the animals and the products they produce, much less healthy for the humans who consume them. This is happening because most of our food, including animal products, is coming from mega farms on government or billionaire owned land. No small farmer who is actually going out on their property and farming everyday would ever treat their animals this way.
Taking responsibility for raising our own animals or at least making sure the animal products we consume came from ethically raised animals is a huge step towards ending this.
#1 Guarantee your freedom
So, what do the politicians and billionaires want with our farmland anyway?
Is it because they are invested in the pesticide companies and want to ensure all farms are using their products? Is it because they are invested in pharmaceutical companies and our health is largely dependent on what we eat? Or maybe, it’s just about control. Humans are dependent on food for survival, if you control the food supply, you can control the people.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The answer is NO. No I am not willing to risk the potential consequences of letting a handful of notoriously dishonest and greedy people take full control of the food supply.
Being able to produce your own food whether completely independently or as a small community of locals helping each other out and trading is how we become self-sufficient so that we can never be controlled.
Right now, most of the population is knowingly choosing foods drowned in toxic chemicals and eating meat from factory farms that make their skin crawl if forced to think about it, not because they want to, but because they feel like they can’t afford to eat any other way. We are already seeing how this consolidation of farmland and control of the food supply is pressuring many people into decisions they do not want to make.
The solution is for everyone to get involved. I know it seems like a daunting task but there is already a movement happening. I assure you that this is possible. We really can solve all these problems.
Many people have already sat down and done the research and many hours of critical thinking to find ways for everyone to get involved. So even if you feel like there is no way you could help. You don’t have land. You don’t have time. You don’t have money. I strongly encourage you to have a look at our how to help section. There are so many ways to get involved.
What can we do?
You do not need to have acres of farmland or live on a giant homestead. Your backyard is enough. Even if you live in an apartment with no land at all, there are ways that you can help.
Help the people of Canada take back control of our food supply.
How to help if you have no land at all
There are several ways you can help with the food supply even if you have no land to grow on and multiple ways that give you the opportunity to connect with people who are growing food.
We’ve been taught that growing food is difficult, but edible plants grew all on their own with zero human interference for thousands of years before we started traditional farming practices. The secret to growing an abundance of food with little, space, effort and artificial chemicals and fertilizers is to mimic nature.
