Defining Healthy Thriving Communities Through Local FarmingBy Paul A. Philips Nothing could be more important to our health than the food we eat. However, in the current paradigm, our food system under the corporatist ruling thumb is driven by questionable unsustainable policies and practices. Corporate political self-interest agendas involving bribed politicians, mass media biased reporting, bad science and deliberate narrow academic approaches are the essential operatives. So instead of contributing, the corporate-based large-scale food production system is detrimental to health. It gives far more problems than solutions. It gives us illness-causing GMOs from unexpected toxic genes with agricultural chemicals also having adverse effects, like that of Monsantos billion-dollar earner herbicide, Roundup. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, may well be contributing significantly to rising chronic disease. Roundup compromises our foods nutrition value by preventing the crops ability to uptake nutrients essential for crop development. It also destroys beneficial bacteria present in the soil needed for crop health. The crops need beneficial bacteria for an involvement in defense against a variety of pests. Further, animals are confined to small spaces in unnatural surroundings. They are reared and fed on GM food such as a diet of grains. In these unnatural unhygienic surroundings the animals have become a major source of antibiotic resistance to disease. This epidemic as a knock-on effect has killed well over 20,000 Americans in a year. The corporate-controlled food system, in turn, reflects our health. Taking into consideration the systems nutrition-deficient mass-processed foods which makes up around 85% of the food budget for the average Western world person, and the resulting poor health, it shows us unequivocally that it is failing miserably. In effect it puts big profits above a genuine welfare concern for people. but it doesnt have to be that way So many people, some without ever realizing, have strayed from their ancestral dietary roots by choosing to consume unhealthy quantities of acidic unhealthy and unnatural processed junk food, giving rise to mass sickness. There is, however, a way of reconnecting to our ancestral dietary roots and eating real food for good health. The answer lies in small communities and organic local farming. Having woken up to the realization that the current profit-driven corporate controlled industrial monoculture is unsustainable; a growing number of people are choosing a different paradigm. More people are choosing to grow their own food through involvement with the increasing numbers of small community-based local farms. This sustainable and healthy approach could majorly transform the way we feed ourselves. Innovative and skillful family farm owners are spreading their knowledge to others on how to create thriving small communities through local farming. Defining this new quality food system, in their vision, these individuals are involved in local politics, jobs, training and social set-ups acting with solutions to many societal or environmental problems What an amazing achievement! As part of the governments promise to end poverty with the War on Poverty more federal money could be put into these business innovations for promoting self-sufficient food communities. Many more farms could be set up and funded across country, especially in urban areas where poverty is at its highest, but I doubt that such government funding initiative will ever happen. Those controlling the corporate large-scale food production model would perceive these farms collectively as a threat to their profit margins. Big Corporation hasalready influenced Big Government enough to not incentivize working with local farmers. Sadly, another reason why the war on poverty is a farce and an abject failure. In short, an increasing number of people know that there is a fight on for their food freedom against the big corporations who dont want to see small-scale food production, as it is perceived as a threat to their business. Governments, bought off by those corporations also dont want to see small-scale food self-sufficiency as they have anagenda that requires people be more and more dependent on them. However, that freedom can be achieved by courageously standing up to authorities and actively defining self-sufficient healthy thriving communities through local farming. You can read more from Paul A. Philips at his site NewParadigm.ws Please, correct that sentence in this article, since it is wrongly formulated: It gives us illness-causing GMOs Buying locally grown organic food from the farmers is the ideal. The trouble is that most of what we find at farmers markets is just produce that the sellers have bought from a local produce wholesaler. More often than not, it is not locally grown, not organic, and the seller is not a farmer. That really depends on where you live. The produce at the farmers markets in my area is all locally produced, but then I live in a huge farming valley for this reason. All the organic farms have formed an organic growers association and many traditional farms have gone organic and joined the association. This includes livestock, flowers, etc. We grow a number of crops for export, but most of the farms and ranches are small, multi-crop production. Change is happening fast here, for the better. 