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Are we farmers, producers, or growers?

I was glancing at an analysis of a livestock market report recently. The author wrote that livestock markets were improving because demand for product was increasing. Now we’ve all been weaned on the milk of capitalist eonomics so in less than a heart beat I knew that increased demand for beef product units by consumers translated into better prices for beef producers. I was reading a piece of proposed legislation this morning that referred to the people who grow food as producers. Producers presumably grow products or product units, also known as food. There is a trade magazine called the Vegetable Grower. Please note; it is not called the Vegetable Farmer or the Vegetable Gardener. Recently a restaurant in Singapore had a couple of items on its menu with food names and food appearance but the material on the plate was a protein created in a laboratory. If these lab proteins catch on their production will be scaled up and industrialized and mass produced. So many hundreds of thousands of product units will be manufactured and the people who make them in sanitized and inspected factories will be producers or perhaps growers because this lifeless protein must be grown to make measurable economic units. This industrial model lacking blood and shit and sunshine and roots and the wind on your face is a very masculine model. I am a farmer. I am a gardener. I am not in nature. I am of nature. I am natural. I do not produce units or product. I am not a grower. I am not a producer. I put seed in ground. I nurture the plant. I eat it or give it to my neighbor. We eat it together while it rains outside. It nourishes and passes through us and we plant a seed in what was the seed and will be us again and again. We are in the circle and of the circle that is called nature. This, I believe, is feminine. This, I believe, is farming and gardening and ranching. And it is this web of relationships which we must grow to fully be of if we are to regenerate agriculture and ourselves. But, I’m an old white man and am ready to be corrected.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 21, 2021 at 10:59 AM

    This blog reminds of "The Feeling of Power", a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, which describes a future where humans live in a computer-aided society and have forgotten the fundamentals of mathematics, including even the rudimentary skill of counting. A good and relevant short read for these days. https://urbigenous.net/library/power.html Learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jami GaitherMarch 21, 2021 at 11:02 AM

      That was from me... not sure why the system is not seeing me as me... hmmm.

      Delete

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