Planted your garden yet?

The garden I helped get in the ground in Bermuda a month ago is already providing all the salad greens the household needs. The one I've helped put in here in North Carolina in the last month is already yielding fresh organic lettuce and swiss chard. The corn, onions and beans are 4 inches high, the turnips, carrots, and and cukes are well on their way. The blueberry bushes are several inches bigger. Have you planted your garden yet?

Our continued reliance on non local industrial agriculture is fraught with problems, from over reliance on climate destroying fossil fuels, destruction of carbon sequestering soil ecology, the extreme dependence on mining of fossil water to irrigate crops, the contamination of our ecosystem with genetically modified organisms, and the pollution of drinking water with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. This is all not to mention the health degrading effects of our diets so heavy with processed food substitutes, high fructose corn syrup, and the unknown (though getting less so) dangers of consuming genetically engineered organisms.

But our problems are as nothing compared to the damage our export of this pernicious form of agribusiness has had on the developing world. People are literally starving to death because they were convinced to give up their traditional sustainable modes of sustenance in favor of lining the pockets of corporate shareholders by growing cash crops for export. Their water sources are drying up, their farm workers are dying due to exposure to deadly chemicals, or committing suicide due to the burden of debt the have been pressured into by their governments in cahoots with the agribusiness giants. This situation represents a threat to civilization itself. If you doubt that, just look at Darfur and Somalia. Read more at Climate Progress;

"It’s not news that Lester Brown is warning about our unsustainable approach to feeding the planet. But it is news that Scientific American has run a major article by him on how “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.”