Have you seen this video of Indian scholar and sustainable-agriculture advocate Vandana Shiva talking about the true cost of cheap food and three keys to ending what she calls “the final stages of a very deceitful system”?
(By the way, Shiva is on our list of 50 Global Changemakers, here.)
She makes some excellent points, and I thought you might enjoy the video as much as I did.
Some of my favorite quotes from the video:
- “We are living the final stages of a very deceitful system that has made everything that is very costly for the planet, costly for the producer, look cheap for the consumer. So very high-cost production with GMOs and patents and royalties and fossil fuel is made to look like cheap food.”
- “Every young person should recognize that working with their hands and their hearts and their minds—and they’re interconnected—is the highest evolution of our species. Working with our hands is not a degradation. It’s our real humanity.”
- “We are not atomized producers and community. We are part of the earth family. We are part of the human family. We are part of a food community. Food connects us—everything is food.”
I also love the way she defines “true freedom” in the video: “Never be afraid of deceitful, dishonest, brutal power. That is true freedom.”
And hey, let me know what you think about her solutions to the problem of high-cost “cheap” food! What others would you add? Leave me a comment below. 🙂
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(This article was originally published on January 20, 2018.)
Marjory Wildcraft is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people focused on modern self-sufficient living. She has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. Marjory was the focus of an article that won Reuter’s Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
COMMENTS(19)
No audio?
I had the same problem, but in clicking around, I discovered that if you right click on the video, a little menu will come up with the option to click “unmute”
Thank you, that worked!
Thank you, I found it in the upper right corner. Good video.
Thanks for the hint.
NO AUDIO
I have no audio either!
no audio–what’s up?
I first grew a garden when I was 4 or 5 years old. Now I try to grow as much of my food as I can. Unfortunately, I am disabled with MS now and can’t do much, but I have gotten a helper who is living in my house with her sister, and they are both enthusiastic and experienced at gardening and raising animals, so we are hoping to make a lot of progress in that direction pretty quickly. I have thought since I was still in school that there will come a time when if you don’t grow something to eat, you won’t HAVE anything to eat, and, I think that time is coming pretty close, to judge by the interest in growing food that has showed up in recent years. People can feel it coming.
Terron Dodd
I agree 100% Terron Dodd! It just amazes me the number of people out there that feel this crazy. I was raised growing, canning and freezing my own food and at 67 continue to do so. With the wake of GMOs and poisons in commercial food I just can not wrap my head around anyone thinking we are wrong. I truly scares me to think what my grandchildren and great grandchildren will be facing if this issue is continued to be ignored.
Terron and Marge,
Yes. The catalyzing statement for The Grow Netowrk is ‘Home gorwn food on every table”. Some people have told me I am crazy, but you know what? One way or another, that is what it will be.
Very wise woman! We should all be listening closely to people like her.
I agree with everything she said.
I have heard this woman before. Love her speaking! She speaks truth and knowledge! I hope to listen to her knowledge again.
Great, absolutely, so well said:)!
Marjory Wildrcraft you are very sane and people should really listen. I just talked to my oldest son about gmo and the destruction on corn and how our family should always have our own heirloom seeds. I then gathered a good half gallon of free blackberries and this was a dry year that I intend on turning into jelly later today:)! That was after we all ate our fill and now have purple teeth, gotta love mother nature and her little jokes:)!
Great, absolutely, so well said:)! Terron Dodd I also have ms and it is a challenge to garden! I mostly try in the mornings and any good moment and I ask for help from my husband and whoever I can grab -lol:)! But, pulling out the sweet potatoes was really all on him this year, I was having a flare, but ms comes and goes and is full of nasty surprises, but my doctor told me a secret, just adapt! Man, that just freed me up! I had been trying to do everything just like always and it wasn’t working. Sometimes I plant okra and then it is dry and I am down and can’t water and so I replant, three is a charm this year! But my garden grew tons of squash, so squash it is!!! I will can all I can along with blackberries and elderberries, free everywhere here, put away as many greens as I can get in as many green beans as possible, replant, plant black eye Pease again and again. Hope for some late tomatoes and sweet potatoes and maybe experiment with kudzu tips! We seem to have loads of that! Lol started an orchard with a pear, peach, apple, and a few experiments I grew from seed, I cannot help myself I just love to try. The first year my peach had around twelve peaches!!! Oh and a plum:) I planted in a few blackberries over along the creek bank, so I no longer have to fight through fields, a couple of blue berries and figs and tons of roses. I cannot wait to try the rose recipe for my cousin’s skin and for my pain and put those sweet sachets everywhere! I have enjoyed this site so much and I barely have started! I go to a Dr. Christopher LaGanke at North Central Neurology in Cullman, Al his mother had it and he has dedicated his life to the cause. I have not had one new lesion in thirteen years of seeing him! That is amazing. And he totally works with healing beliefs, remedies, very brilliant, first doctor to do the Lemtrada study in America that has been in Europe for fifteen years! I was one of his first! I am still walking, gardening, praying daily for blessing and healing, same to you! Isn’t Marjory Wildcraft the best for putting all this information in one p l ace:)! Best of luck my friend:)!
So happy to hear about your positive experience and your desire to spread the word, Belle!! The Grow Network sincerely appreciates your support. 🙂
Would love to watch this video, but it is not displaying anywhere. Great quotes, though! Dr. Shiva is one of the great heroines of our time! She is right! Put our hands to the Earth for the purpose of nourishing ourselves and our loved ones connects us to our the greatest cycles of Life. Not just to each other and to our planet, but to every element that enfolds this great cycle, including our Sun and all the celestial bodies that dance with the Earth to bring us rain, mutually supportive nutrients, flora micro and and macro and even the seasons that reveal and restore that cycle. I have had my biggest thoughts in the garden, and have learned to see the tiniest allies and shifts that result n burgeoning abundance. A flotilla of machines could never equal the power of a pair of nurturing hands!