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Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Farm Grown Food

Have noticed on television ads the use of the term"farm grown Food" several ad campaigns are using this useless term to make their products sound wholesome (which may or may not be the case).

I call the term useless because all the food used by the corporate food system is grown on farms. I suspect this will be the case until they come up with something else. perhaps "food" synthesized in laboratories, though I suspect the labs would be referred to as farms.

I see the use of the term "Farm Grown Food" as yet another disconnect between the eater the the farmer. The term is being used because some ad company did a lot of market research and found that people related to the term. I am willing to bet that people associated "Farm Grown Food" with wholesomeness, freshness and other good things. now the food that is using this term in their ads is always over processed crap that bears little resemblance to the raw product right off the farm. I also suspect people assume the farm that grows the food is a quaint farm with grazing cows, a few chickens pecking in the yard, a big garden, some fruit trees, a red barn with a silo and a straw hatted farmer riding a smallish antique tractor around his amber waves of grain wheat field. "Farm Grown Food" would have nothing to do the the behemoth "Factory farms" that reduce property values, keep lots of livestock cruelly confined in very unhealthy conditions and pollute the local air, soil and water or the big grain farms that use majestically huge equipment to bring in the harvest from millions of acres. No, few want to think about their food being grown so industrially. And so the gap between reality and fantasy gets ever wider. Because so few people care about where their food comes from, the corporations who control what we eat gain ever more control over us. They feed on our collective ignorance and lack of concern and because of that we allow them to feed us ever more dangerous stuff.


One of my missions in life is to educate the ignorant about how food is grown and to reconnect as many people as I can to the farm. To educate them on the realities of industrial/Green revolution farming vs more sustainable farms. To educate them on the fact the choices that they make as to what they eat have far reaching ramifications on many levels-human rights, environmental health, personal health, politics, etc.. To teach people that there is farm grown food and than there is local farm grown food.

2 comments:

OhioMom said...

...."To teach people that there is farm grown food and than there is local farm grown food"

Which is why I buy from small local farmers.

..."High-tech tomatoes. Mysterious milk. Supersquash. Are we supposed to eat this stuff? Or is it going to eat us? ~Annita Manning

Gina said...

It's funny to read this because just this past week my husband and I heard one of those ads and he said, "Isn't that an oxymoren?"

i also only buy from small local farmers (or grow my own when possible).