We have been working fifteen-hour days, six days a week around here. We are finally catching up on the weeding, now that we are drying up. I cannot complain. The cool spring and summer so far have caused many summer crops to develop slowly. Everyone is having this problem. There are many vendors at the farmer's market in Beloit, but few have more than greens, peas, strawberries, radishes, and few other spring crops. Usually, one can find summer squashes and beans by now. There was one vendor with tomatoes and melons, but he was not even bothering to remove the stickers from his produce. I also saw someone  selling full heads of cabbage, a late summer vegetable for sure, but short of that, most local farmers are dealing with the same issues. We are all hoping that some of our crops mature soon.

Speaking of farmers dealing with issues, many of the organic farmers on the western portion of the state are in dire straits. Not only did some suffer major crop damage from the floods last fall, but many of those same farms suffered another crop failure from the floods this spring. I heard of at least one farm that has lost over $1.5 million in crops and assets. Now the obvious question is: “Do they have crop insurance?” After all, that would seem reasonable, right? That's the problem. There is nothing reasonable about organic farming. The government offers crop insurance for some organic crops, but the organic farmer has to pay more in insurance premiums than the conventional farmer. However, the catch is that the organic farmer is reimbursed less than the conventional farmer for the same crops on these policies.

Also, vegetable crops are not insurable because the government claims that the prices are too hard to figure out. CSAs make the majority of their income on vegetables as do other market farmers. However, they are not growing Monsanto products and selling them on the commodities market to be resold to ADM or ethanol plants. So if they go out of business, it is not the government's concern.

Also, to add insult to injury, these farmer's, if they survive this catastrophe they may lose their organic certification because of run-off from fields that are sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. Could there be some kind of insurance for this? Don't count on it any time soon. Like I said, there is little that is reasonable in this profession.

So while I may sound angry, let me say that I am not. However I do not want to stick my head in the sand either. Food security is going to be the number one priority for our nation in the next five years.  We need to protect our food supply and as consumers we need to demand healthy food. Here's a number to think about. The United States is 42^nd in the world for longevity behind some third world countries. Jordon has a longer life expectancy than us. Let's all chant,  “We are number 42.” Doesn't that make you feel proud to be number 42?  Why are we number 42? Well, I suspect that food has something do do with it. Nutrition and health cannot be separated. Many countries expect more from their food than we do.

We are what we eat, literally. When we eat nutrient- sparse foods and products designed to resemble real food and then ingest all of the poisons associated with standard food production, how do we expect  to be well? Why are diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer continuing to plague us while disorders like bipolar, ADD and hyper-activity run rampant through our children? When do we stand up and say, “Enough is enough?” Our bodies have a tremendous capacity to heal themselves, but they need the right building blocks. You would not buy a house that was made of low quality construction material because it was cheap, and one should not eat cheap, low quality food either. You and your family are worth it.

We need to take back our food.  We should all grow “victory gardens” like they did during WWII. We should buy our food from the grower, and we should hold those growers responsible for their product. We should get to know our growers and demand the best for ourselves and our children. We can learn to cook again, and take time to enjoy our meals. We can choose to eat food that is not made of corn (check the ingredients of the last thing you ate or drank today). If you ate a burger with ketchup, you ate corn. The cow that the burger was made of was probably fed heavily with corn. Candy bars, soda, nutri-grain bars, and many ,many others are corn products. We are not designed to digest that much corn. There are other foods out there, and we can choose to eat them. It's all about choices. In a future blog, we will explore the problem with corn, nutrition, and our health as well as the reason that we are fed so much corn, but for now, that is all there is from the farm today.