By Laura Garber, Hamilton
Why is most of the regular grocery store and restaurant food in the United States doused in chemicals, lacking nutritional value, and transported from an average of 1500 miles away? Why has most of the food we are feeding our kids been sprayed, modified, processed, and turned into hyper-palatable poison? Why has most of the food we are feeding our kids come from a factory, not our Montana farmer-neighbors? Why have we allowed industrial agriculture’s corporate machine to control our diets to the extent that we are a sick people; suffering from diabetes, gluten intolerance, obesity, autism, pharmaceutical addiction, fear, and lethargy?
We cannot be great if we are not healthy. We cannot be healthy until we stop, acknowledge the vital importance of, and take action to ensure the most basic of needs, food!
Our food is poisoned. We should be scared, and we should be taking action now. Our country’s potential greatness has been traded for cheap, tasty, convenient things to eat. Our country is killing itself and the planet through the food and agriculture policies of our own United States Department of Agriculture, in cahoots with major seed conglomerates, chemical and drug companies, advertisers, and food processors. The greed and wanton lack of respect for life and health that are perpetrated on us by our national agriculture policies are disgraceful at best, and altogether deadly to every last bit of the ‘American Dream’. There is simply no way to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you are too fat and unhealthy to reach them!
We need to take our food back! Most of the foods we eat ourselves and feed to our kids can be grown in Montana, using agricultural methods that support the health of the soil, the farmer, and our small communities. Most of the food we eat can be healthy, delicious, and affordable. We can revive our state, revive our nation, and create a new food and agriculture policy that is based on shared knowledge, truth and honesty in labeling and production methods, and healthy, fertile soils. We must redirect the Montana Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture to put healthy food, healthy soil, and healthy people first. We must demand that they sever their ties with big corporate chemical, seed, and processing interests and to stop the billions of dollars of farm subsidies paid to these huge corporations. Through this divestment in ‘Big Ag’, they will liberate our farmers from the farm reps, dealers, and bankers that hold them and all our food captive. Instead, the Department of Agriculture can apply those monies to providing financial support, resources, and education for our nation’s farmers in transitioning to regenerative agricultural practices immediately.
As individuals, we need to shop for and buy Montana grown foods. We get to experiment with and learn to appreciate eating Montana grown foods such as lentils, garbanzo beans, grains, vegetables, and apples! Montana has a thriving local brewery scene across the state. This is a great example of how unseen corporate and ag policies have poisoned what we assume to be good. This is also a good place to start to understand how our current national agricultural policies have huge effects that we cannot see. Though almost all the barley used in making all your favorite local and commercial beers across the US is grown in Montana, unfortunately it is being made part of the problem. Routinely, barley is sprayed with glyphosate (commonly known as RoundUp herbicide). Barley is sprayed as few as 11 days before harvest to dry down the crop for easier harvest! This use of the toxin means that the deadly chemical compounds are carried into the malting room, straight into the fermentation tank, and flow out the tap. Yum.
Applied on plants, glyphosate kills the weeds. It shuts down the plants’ shikimate pathway (the plant process for making three aromatic amino acids), essential for us humans to consume for health. Taken internally, through our beer, for example, glyphosate kills the gut bacteria our body depends on for healthy digestion, healthy enzyme synthesis, and healthy immune function.
Enjoy local beer for sure, and beg and plead with your favorite brewery to source unsprayed barley. Encourage them to contract with local farmers to grow them unsprayed barley in growing season 2021! And, drink certified organic beer (certified organic always means no chemicals and no genetic modification. GMO-free means just that, not genetically modified, but there is no guarantee chemicals were not sprayed, which they likely were. Also, there is a certified organic brewery in Montana!)
Changing our beer and shopping list, changing our agricultural policies, changing our current path away from any inkling of greatness – all of this depends on each of us to stand up and enact change now.
Please, make different choices at the grocery store. Find unsprayed, organic, and most importantly, Montana grown foods. Buy that, not any of the other stuff! Make sure your store and your brewery know you want Montana grown and unsprayed.
Please, call and write the Montana and the US Departments of Agriculture. Please call and write your elected officials. Please get involved in local food initiatives. Please, get to know the farmers around us and support them to embrace a transition to regenerative agriculture. (Regenerative agriculture focuses on the health of the soil, which always means no chemicals and growing practices that protect and enrich soil and food, by using, and going far beyond, certified organic standards.)
This is not a topic to toss around lightly. This is seriously very serious stuff. We must enact change, all of us, no matter the perceived economic cost. Not only does our ability to maybe be great again, but also our survival as humans depends on this moment. Please, take this seriously. Thank you for your participation in being the change! Thank you for making America healthy.