back to the garden

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

--Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"




It doesn't matter who wins the election this fall, because neither candidate and neither party is willing to seriously address the fundamental problems this society faces: economic collapse, poverty, war, and environmental degradation.

A government committed to reversing the outsourcing of production could alleviate the first two of these, but that's not possible in the near future. We're going to have to bootstrap our own solutions.

Keeping in mind that any economically and culturally viable society is founded on combining labor and resources to produce value, that is, producing things that have value, it's easy to see how American society has been sabotaged. Sending production overseas means higher profits for a few, but the overall effect is the same as pulling the foundation out from under a house, and expecting it to stand up.

Those who own the big capital in this country are not about to help us. The only valuable product I can think of available to small-timers like you and me is food, and it's time for gardening to take the next indicated step and become farming.

Taking that pleasurable hobby to the next level will require land. But keep in mind, land does not necessarily have to be owned to be farmed. Anyone can grow food and raise chickens on rented land, and many will in the near future.

In the last couple of years, organic backyard gardening and farmers' markets have gone from being a summer weekend lark to a billion-dollar business. We've reached that point all productive and profitable enterprises come to, where we need to identify the competition (or enemy) with a view to taking it out. So with our sights trained on Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Tyson, et. al., let's plant more potatoes next year, and maybe try some genetically unmodified sweet corn.

All things in time, but the trouble with that is, there isn't much.