FACT SHEET: FOOD

FOOD

by Betty Robinson

I cannot tell you when food first appeared on Earth. First came water, land and air. These were followed several years latter by live things. Live things had to have food and several years after that we found fire. Food really took off. We had hunters and gatherers. These live things gradually became people and they moved all over the world. However all these nice things were not the same everywhere and it became as it is today. Not enough land in some places, not enough water in others and in some parts of the land the sun disappeared for months at a time. These problems have not changed in all these years and we don’t seem to be able to figure it out.

We seem to be in about the best place in the world but look at what we have done about food.

Our country used to be covered with family farms. These farms raised food for their own family with some left over to sell or barter to other families. They raised small animals for food and milk and raised the foods for the animals.

Now the small farms are being sold to conglomerates who now raise corn to make fuel so we can drive our cars. We are having to import food now from all over the world and we have no control over what is in the food. For instance – we ahip a lot of our garbage to China!!!So it may be our garbage they are raising fish in and sending the fish back to us. (among other things)

There are so many things about food that I really don’t know which way to start or what good it does to start.

· There are farmers markets and we should know where their produce comes from.

· Grocery stores – are they clean? – does the food come from China?

· Restaurants – where does their food come from? – is it a clean place to be? – has it been inspected recently?

· Then we could talk about raising our own food organic – do we compost or fertilize?

Food alone would take hundreds of people to look into it and I am sure that there would be many who would fit right in.