Garden/State

A few posts ago, we wrote about Occupy Our Food Supply, a protest against the corporate food system, which tried to encourage people to get off the grid, food-wise. The irony is that under the progressive, hyper-regulatory Obama Administration, it’s getting harder and harder to grow your own food.

(cutandfill.blogspot.com)

The news has been filled with stories of local and federal agencies coming after farmers and gardeners in the last few years. The FDA has been cracking down on raw milk sellers: they recently raided an Amish dairy farm which has since shut down, and last summer joined forces with the LAPD to raid a raw foods store in Southern California.

It's not just businesses; local officials have also gone after private citizens. In Nevada, a Farm to Fork dinner was raided by the Southern Nevada Health District, who declared the food unfit for consumption and had the farm owners destroy the food with bleach.

In Michigan and Oakland, CA, officials have threatened citizens for growing food on their own property. The gardener in Michigan, Julie Bass, was actually threatened with jail time for growing tomatoes and cucumbers in her front yard (the charges were eventually dropped).

Aspiring urban farmers in various cities have had to push through layers of regulation like a root trying to break through concrete.

And these are only a few examples.

 

If you have a hunger for homegrown food and you lean left politically, you should stop and think about who you’re voting for. When the government centralizes everything, it eventually withers all of our freedoms, including the freedom to develop valid alternatives to Big Food. The Obamas may have planted a garden at the White House, but it can’t feed everyone.

(Hat tips to commenter Radel and Food Freedom)