Originally posted on my other blog and titled No Farms No Food: A Bumper Sticker Or An Advertisement?
So, everyone knows this to be true, right? If there are no farms, there will be no food. So, I agree with this statement – and yes, it is a statement (not just a bumper sticker) – and it is put right out there for all the world (driving behind you) to see. In advertising, not everything… is um, true. This statement is true and there is something I believe we can all do to help change it. And if the people who have this on their car didn’t believe it, they wouldn’t be advertising farms.
We live in a great area, in Bucks County, PA. The history and the geography has been long and rich with farming perhaps up until, well up until a large majority of the remaining area farmers threw in the towel and decided to make it “rich” by selling, rather than working, their land. My guess is, (and I didn’t live here and I didn’t do research to support this post, but I watched some of it happen), this all exploded around the 1980s and continued on through the 1990s.
And why shouldn’t they sell off and make millions? Who wanted to be a farmer when they could go to college and work for someone else who would pay them and their healthcare premiums? The land was flat, close to NYC and Philadelphia for a commute to the city. It was perfect for development. Not perfect for our food supply.
Well, flash forward and we have a lot of homes, but the market is not what it was in the 1990s or even up until early 2000s – and now, hmmm farming would not be such a bad idea. Corporate America is not what it was when the company guaranteed you a pension and a huge raise each year. What can we do now?
Thankfully, some people are doing something about it. All around us entrepreneurs are returning to our roots and to locally run businesses, locally run micro (and some not so micro) farms with organic produce, dairy and meat.
Let us continue to support the locally grown movement – by supporting the new restaurants, sandwich shops and other local businesses – who buy and source their raw materials and products to make their oh, so very delicious foods for us to eat.
So, if you see a local restaurant, go in and sit down at a table and order something. Remember to thank them if they buy locally and if they don’t, just ask them where they buy their produce. Not in a threatening or menacing way… just casually suggest they check out some of the local farms. We can all work to support them so they can support us.
Then we can have bumper stickers that say “Farms = Food = Good” and that would make me happy, because, I love to eat – I bet you do too…
~ Dawn aka Hat Girl