Why the Politics of Food

I grew up on a farm in Kansas. We didn't have much money, but we always had food. We had a couple of milk cows and a small herd of beef cattle. There were vegetables from my grandmothers' gardens which we ate fresh in the summer and preserved for the winter. Most people who live in cities no longer have their own vegetable gardens and are dependent on food that is shipped, sometimes over a thousand miles, from farms. That makes the food supply precarious due to all the hazards involved in the production and shipping of the food.

Food is one of the basic necessities of life and should be available as a human right. If you look around the world it's easy to see the weaponization of food. Gaza is a good example. Less obvious is the weaponization of food in the U.S. The cutting of SNAP benefits by the current Congress is a harbinger of more drastic actions to follow. If folks are starving, they become subservient because they are unable or unwilling to fight back. Money has been withheld from farmers who were growing food for schools and food banks. Those farmers will now have a difficult time making a living and the people who relied on the food from those farmers will go hungry. My dad discourage my siblings and I from farming because he thought it was too hard to make a living. He wanted a more secure life for us.

This blog will cover many issues related to food and the politics behind its production and distribution.