When I started to read more about the outsourcing the port issues and the security breaches, the difficult shipping time deadlines (In America it takes a full 24 hours to inspect one, that’s right ONE container.) and more recently the fact that the majority of the fresh food we consume comes from outside the United States through many of the ports in question. I had missed the transition from being the breadbasket of the world to being the stomach of the world. Our survival from oil, to cars, to food etc. all depends upon the goods being shipped to us on our very efficient networks of distribution.
The Destruction of our farmland seems at the very least symbolic of what is happening to our America these days. Thanks Mr. Bush.
I read today about a project in California that could help stem the blight of urbanization in many places is here.
The population in Beaumont has nearly doubled to about 23,000 during the past five years. Fruit trees, once ubiquitous on the local landscape, have been in decline the last several decades.
Cherry grower John Guldseth said at least 40 orchards were around when he started farming in 1973. Today, he estimated, only about 10 functioning cherry groves remain.
The fruit’s decline reflects that of many commodities in California, said Joe Elizondo, director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship’s small farm program.
The business wasn’t lucrative and the children of many farmers chose not to continue. Most of those who did worked small plots that didn’t produce enough to supply increasingly larger, centralized markets, and they couldn’t compete with cheaper, imported crops..
Well, this is a real problem that concerns us all and many communities in the country have become more active. See the below for links to more articles on this subject:
Farmland Preservation
American Farmland Trust
This diary is or will be soon cross posted at:
The Fringe Element