Fear Mongering and Food Rights

If you want to stay stuck in fear-based reactivity and alarmism, don’t read any further.

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Photo credit Josie Weiss

I’m super annoyed. And I believe we can do better.

Here’s why.

Several people over the past few weeks have sent me links to documentaries about the perilous position of our food and farming rights.

(To be clear, I am not annoyed at the well-intentioned people sending me these.)

I won’t name any titles. That’s not the most important thing. Films like that have been circulating for years now. And people keep sending them to me.

For the most part, they are simply sensationalism and alarmism designed to trigger you. They are not meant to improve the situation. In fact, some of them are clearly part of the “problem, reaction, solution” formula. Or just out to collect your money.

These “documentaries” are titled, stylized and propagandized with an agenda in mind. If you purchase online or step into a cinema to get better informed, be ready for the propaganda. 

I don’t believe in fear-mongering.

Yes, yes, I know it’s powerful, but I don’t believe it is an ethical tactic.

And it’s not because I don’t see what is going on with our farms, our farmers and our food supply. I’ve been on the front lines of food access and food security for 20 years.

I see it better than they do.

The “documentaries” often fail in providing the nuance needed to understand our food systems and our own role in them.

There are two big problems

1. When we see constant images of a doomed food system, we all begin to see that future. We continue to see the problem and expect more of it.

2. Getting bombarded with the problems without having clear actions we can take as an antidote, serves to desensitize and disempower us.

While it remains important to understand that there are people who wish to control our food, control our bodies, and control our minds, continuing to focus on the doom and gloom of the situation will only lead to more of it.

I remain focused on the solution.

• The solution is to get food production into as many individual hands, minds, and communities as possible.

• The solution is to inform our friends, neighbors and loved ones that our food can either harm or heal us and we each have the power to choose the foods that heal us. Every single day.

• The solution is to radically decentralize our food production so that we have hyper local food security in every community.

• The solution is to create food production systems that also capture rainwater, rebuild soil, add organic matter to our soils, strengthen our soil and gut microbiomes, and increase species diversity in our bioregions.

• The solution is to ensure that every American has and fosters an ability to grow their own food. This is not a privilege that should be outsourced to a lucky few. This is a necessity for human survival as it has been for all of human history–basically all humans had some knowledge of how to find and/or produce most of their own food.

Back to the fear mongering.

I’m sick of it.

These pieces of propaganda–even if you want to consider the producers “good guys,” are designed to further disempower YOU.

They are designed to yank you around filled with adrenaline and rage to generate clicks, reactions and funding. Where does that funding go?

These pieces of propaganda often present a few “heroes” who are “fighting the fight” and we must look to them for wisdom and knowledge rather than build our own wisdom and knowledge, locally, with our communities.

STOP BUYING INTO IT!

Literally. Stop buying it. 

Instead, take that time, energy, and money to

• Buy seeds

• Convert part of your yard to a small garden

• Get a fruit tree

• Learn to cook more food

• Research the plants that grow in your bioregion natively and plant some of them

• Have some friends over to  learn about rain gardens or your favorite native plants

• Start a compost pile

• Start a pollinator garden for your area

• Get some backyard chickens

• Learn to cook healthier meals

• Cook at home more often–from scratch

• Eat meals slowly, around a table with loved ones

Start where you are now.

If you focus on what you don’t have, or why you “can’t” do something, those thoughts can paralyze you from taking the first step.

Pick one item on the above list and outline the steps to get started. Doing that for 2 hours rather than watching yet another doom and gloom documentary will be much better for the food supply, for your health, and for your peace of mind.

We all need community. We all need to find people who share our interest and who are working towards some of the same goals as we are.

There are so many of us out here who ARE learning permaculture, starting our own food production, joining communities who are producing food, getting involved in other ways. We are here and we are waiting for you to join us.

Not out of fear, but out of the abundance of joy and opportunity that we can create together when we set our visions on what’s possible for our futures.

So I invite you, step away from the alarmism and envision what is possible. What CAN the future look like as we build it together?

And then, take one small—or tiny—step today.

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About Raw Milk Mama: I believe in the freedom to feed our families how we see fit. I also see the direction that our country is going--no one wants to live in a world where food scarcity is a constant reality. It's time to take back our food systems so they serve us, not monopolistic corporations.