Ideas Are Bulletproof

With an industrial food system in slow-motion collapse, we have a moment of hope in front of us...

Welcome to Raw Milk Mama, a newsletter about food freedom, our food systems, and how to create local food security in our communities. Sign up here for weekly posts, or keep reading…
If you value this content, please consider a paid subscription.

---

In the climactic scene of the movie V for Vendetta, our protagonist, V, is trapped in a tunnel with his enemy, Mr. Creedy.

The movie, ultimately, is about the clutch of an authoritarian government over the minds of the people–people who want to live in relative peace and freedom with and among each other–without a screeching authoritarian controlling their lives.

And that mere idea scares the screeching authoritarian.

As the movie climaxes, Mr. Creedy - the enforcer for the authoritarian - confronts a masked V and demands he takes his mask off. 

“No.” V replies, simply, right before Creedy’s goons fill him with bullets.

But at the end of the shooting, V is still standing.

“Why won’t you die?” Creedy gasps…

And V replies:

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”

There’s been an unholy grip of a prevailing ideology in agriculture for the past 80+ years–indeed, since the “dawn” of industrial agriculture, but in this article I am focusing on the beliefs that have shaped American policies since post WWII.

The crux of the issue is the marriage of ideas germinated by Norman “Green revolution” Borlaug and Earl “get big or get out” Butz and then cultivated by years of policy-making from industrial chemical and ag giants such as Monsanto, Dupont, Tyson, Perdue, and Cargill.

Who were these men who designed the centralized control of American agriculture?

Dr. Borlaug was a microbiologist for DuPont and often credited with saving millions from starvation due to his mission to improve wheat yields.

The “Green revolution” they called it.

A clever use of propaganda that erased the vile and extractive chemical-dependent, forced “agriculture” that he perpetuated.

Although wheat is not native to Mexico, in the 1940s, Dr. Borlaug “participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next sixteen years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists.” (About Norman Borlaug)

The mindset was clear: focus only on higher yields, not on the ecosystem, and not on the overall costs of those higher yields. Control and exploit nature for the sake of profits.

Less than 2 generations later, in the 1970s, Earl Butz served as the Secretary of Agriculture under the Nixon and Ford administrations. He was “blustering, boisterous, and often vulgar,” and he “lorded over the U.S. farm scene…” He worked hard to subvert the “policies that sought to protect farmers from the big agribusiness companies whose interests he openly pushed.

He envisioned a hyper-efficient, centralized food system, one that could profitably and cheaply “feed the world” by manipulating (or “adding value to”) mountains of Midwestern corn and soy.” (emphasis added, Grist.org)

The ideologies propped up by these two men prevailed.

The consequences are too numerous to list here, but include the destruction of our ecosystems and loss of topsoil that will take millennia to repair, the annihilation of our farming communities, and chronic illness that grips our loved ones trapping us like a hall of mirrors we can’t see our way out of.

The centralized, industrial food system thrives upon your unawareness of what the heck is going into your food and soil. The architects and benefactors of this system keep you politically and socially handicapped from doing anything about it through ignorance, apathy, and overwhelm.

It’s the system of distorted control that we’ve lived under since Norman Borlaug and Dupont partnered up.

With an industrial food system in slow-motion collapse, those of us involved in regenerative agriculture, restoring our communities, and empowering Americans to feed themselves have a moment of hope in front of us.

(What is “regenerative agriculture?” In a nutshell, it is systems of food, fuel, and fiber production that work WITH nature rather than against it; it’s working to restore or regenerate life-sustaining topsoil and ecosystems. That’s an oversimplification for sure, so run down your own rabbit hole of exploration.)

The recent election was many things for many people.

For us, it perhaps symbolizes an effect – and cause – of a cultural shift. It presents an opportunity to put the concepts of regenerative agriculture on full display for the American people to see and evaluate.

“Why won’t you die?” Industrial/chemical agriculture is asking us.

“Because,” we say as we stand our ground, “ideas are bulletproof.”

To be clear, regenerative farming notions are not limited to a few popular, modern American farmers, extracting portions of these ideas to prop up their own, vast businesses.

Thankfully, no.

Regenerative farming principles and practices are part of the fabric and foundation of all human cultures. These ideas have survived the bullets of time, colonization, greed, extractive capitalism, and corruption.

Perhaps in the coming months and years, we can have a national discussion about our farming and food future.

We can talk about what kinds of policies we want in place to protect us from the plethora of corrupt individuals and entities that want to take advantage of Americans’ vast agricultural ignorance. But even better, we can discuss how our land is used, who has access to land, what chemical inputs get added to our soils, and how we can continue to re-localize our food security.

When Earl Butz told farmers to “get big or get out,” sadly, many of them did. When the small farmers got out, unhealthy, “big ag” just got bigger.

But we didn’t just lose farms. We lost communities, topsoil, health, and freedom. We lost our generational knowledge of how to feed ourselves within our communities.

Butz’ radical ideas destroyed the spirit of millions of American farmers.

As one extreme position often creates a counter force against it, certain fringe groups have risen in prominence, in theory pushing against the industrial agriculture ideology.

We mustn't allow the allure of a different flavor of authoritarianism or corruption under “fresh” hopes to capture us and cajole us into complacency that “they” will fix what is wrong with our food, our ecosystems, and our bodies.

Just as importantly, we mustn’t be duped by wealthy businessmen hiding their greed under plain farmer costumes or humble and simple culture.

These groups, too, depend upon your blind trust. They count on you to be unaware of what the heck is going into your food, or how it is produced, and, just like the industrial giants, they don’t want you asking questions.

Especially uncomfortable questions.

They all profit off your ignorance, apathy, and overwhelm.

Our success is in our integrity. 

It is our responsibility to root out corruption wherever we see it, whether done by those espousing industrial agriculture policies, or those pretending to be small sustainable farmers, or even those standing on a mountain of regenerative agriculture memes.

The right way isn’t to do it the wrong way.

The secret that they all don’t want you to fully grasp is that you can indeed be responsible – at least partially – for your food production and processing. Just as every animal on earth is.

The failed philosophies and policies of Earl Butz, Norman Borlaug and chemical agriculture are destroying America.

But, paradoxically, in the restorative conversation America needs, there is no “us” vs “them.” There is simply an invitation to explore the ecosystems of ideas that have outlived every bullet, bomb, and chemical cocktail created by man.

It’s bigger than any one person.

In the final scene of the movie, Finch (Minister of Investigations for the corrupt government's police, seemingly a good man) asks Evey (V’s protege) “Who was he?”

And she says, “….he was my father and my mother, my brother, my friend… he was you, and me, he was all of us.”

True regenerative agriculture is like that too:

It’s the lived biology of our ecosystems that gives us life, it is the help we give each other, it is every bite of energy that goes into our bodies, it is the microbiome, and the resilient grassroots spreading invisibly beneath the soil.

Small, interdependent communities are the creators of true food security, soil restoration, and health. We are the safe keepers of traditional wisdom, as we have been since the dawn of humanity. These ideas are bulletproof and those who profit on your ignorance will do everything in their power to keep you from learning these secrets.

---

---

I am grateful for all the recent influx of new subscribers. Thank you to all who have upgraded to paid subscriptions recently. Your messages and notes are encouraging and uplifting. You are the reason this work can continue.

Some have asked about making a one-time gift. Yes, you can contribute here. My family thanks you for investing in my writing.

For more content, sign up for daily emails about our food systems or listen to the Nourishing Liberty Podcast.