Illustration by Brenna Quinlan.
The full post is here on FB and it's an excellent read
It's a good point that agribusiness is hierarchical and chain-linked, but the social network of a resilient system is connected around people and community-oriented works. The milk doesn't have to be poured out, the pineapples don't have to rot for want of a buyer. The abattoir workers don't have to go to work when they're sick, and we can find other ways of doing things.
It's just not easy or convenient.
But then, neither is our current system.
There's a joke in a book I read, where a cop says something to the effect of: "When God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden, he made Adam become a farmer. Probably because it's a shitty job, hard work, nobody thanks you for it, and because cops hadn't been invented yet."
Farming is one of those jobs where they have to weather the costs - the costs of production and care, the costs of the corporations who buy their produce who take every opportunity to push back. The costs of the consumer who doesn't care where it's from so long as it's cheap and convenient. So much of the expense of our lives is hidden: buried in the ground, transported out of sight and put out of mind, barred off from the public by the plastic curtains into the loading zone, over the dusty, drought-ridden hills and far, far away...
I think this is earth care (so a patch of earth sustains more people resiliently), people care (allowing us to care for the lives and livelihoods of others in our local communities), and fair share (everyone has the chance to benefit).
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