Hypocrite's Rant

For everyone that knows me I can only imagine that they are laughing out load and thinking to themselves "whatever!". I have the worst eating habits. Still do. My brother makes jokes about how when we were kids mom would feed me Hostess for dinner while everyone else at "real" food. Get ready for this... I have never once had green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and the list goes on and on. I have only had a tomato 2 maybe 3 times that I can recall and carrots a handful of times. My whole life I have just eaten what I wanted. I never thought about what I was putting in my body. I just didn't. My thought was if it were bad for me the government would not allow it to be on the market. I'm not fat. I have a slender build and a little pot belly but nothing serious. I thought it healthy eating came down to quantity not quality. As long as I did not eat 24/7 and stayed somewhat active I would be fine, right?

Reconciliation

I'm a fighter. When I was younger I was a street fighter. As I got older I started fighting injustices, poverty, and unfair systems. I hate (strong word, but it is true) when something causes a unjust, disadvantage for others. I hate when I or others are lied too. And my wife and I have decided to try to live our lives and give our time to making wrongs right. It is the work of Reconciliation. Reconciliation is defined as; restore friendly relationships between or cause to coexist in harmony.

- Stay with me this will get back to growing food - I explain all this because I am trying to speak to my friends, family, and others that are like me and dismiss the voice of the few yelling out "SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE!' I would dismiss people talking about the importance of organic food and simple systems of living as, well, hippies. "Hippies" for me growing up was a bad label for someone to have. My dad would always say "those damn hippies". It stood for people complaining about something just for the sake of living "earthy". To me they just hatted technology and advancement. But if you know me, if you are like me and say I don't care, need to think about, or believe this whole sustainable living, organic, natural, whatever you want to call it way of living, you need to stop and please listen. The way our food is made, governed and marketed is unjust and harmful. It is not just harmful to you and your family, but to your neighbor, to other countries and to the world. There is real danger here and just going with the flow and letting others govern your life and controlling your knowledge on the topic of food will not make it go away. You will pay in this life time for looking the other way. It is not down the road 3 generations from now, the time has come.

If your faith calls you to care about the poor, over looked and weak in the world, then you should care about food and food systems. If you just care about others because of your morals, you should care about food and food systems. If you hate being used and lied to, you should care about food and food systems.

For me, my Christian faith calls me to the process of reconciliation. Restoring relationships. Putting things in harmony. That is what my garden and my families transition to a sustainable way of life is about. It's not an ideal or a trend. It's about making things right, being a voice for the voiceless, and when I as I learn along the way I am called to teach others. It's just the right thing to do.

Going Beyond Gardening

In the short time my garden has been so much more then just planting food. I mentioned before that the garden in my backyard is a community garden. It is my garden and TJ's garden, and Sam's garden, and Ross and Monica's garden. Any food left will go to all of our neighbors in our community, so it is their garden as well. Every Tuesday I get to work with my neighbors in the garden. We laugh and talk while we get dirty together. My garden is growing community.

For me personally it has helped with my stress level. For all that know me, they know I am always stressed and take everything seriously. I have a hard time unwinding. Working the ground has helped with this. I feel good doing the right thing.

As a community developer I can see how smart gardening can help support my under-resourced community. It can provide ways for families making a low-income to feed their children good food while saving money. The process can be duplicated and connected by neighbors on every street providing the means so no family would have to go hungry. Every child could have a lunch for school and families could lesson their dependency on government programs. Community gardens provide education opportunities for children outside of the school. The list will go on and on.

When we are in right relationship with how we grow food we are at the core of our being. I know that sounds "hippie", but it is true. Every religion I can think of teaches that humans are responsible for taking care of the earth and the plants in it. So if you think growing food is not something that you should be doing or supporting, you would be denying the core of how you were created. When you are right with your food and how it is made there is a inner peace that builds inside you.

Impact

Besides the current food systems impact on your life and besides the impact growing your own food would have on your family, community and your cycle of influence, impacts are felt worldwide. Currently, there are a few companies in America that control how we grow, market, and regulate food here. The have created a system that makes them very rich and others unhealthy here in America. These companies have paid politicians to ensure policy favors them and them making money. The politicians are making money without caring for other Americans. But our system is affecting the most poor in the world. Our policies here have wiped our food industries in third world countries causing them to depend of food from America, which makes the food companies even more money. By ignoring what is going on we harm the most weak in the world. It is partially the consumers fault because we are lazy and prefer to have others think for us. We have better things to do like play with our iPhones and plan vacations. Or is that just me. I know I am the guilty one.

Are You Still Here?

I don't know if anyone reading this will get this far, but if you did I want to thank you. I also want to leave you with ways to further educate yourself on food and food systems. The goal of this blog is to pass on what we learn as we go forward. Here are websites to some movies about food and food systems. Watch them. You will learn and may even become motivated to start a change. These movies did that for us. I am glad I my eyes are open and I am trying to learn. We don't know how this will play out in our lives but we do know something will change.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

http://www.freshthemovie.com/

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

http://www.foodmatters.tv/

~Matt