elephant in the room...
FOOD AND EMPIRE
![](https://i0.wp.com/greenhorns.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/food-and-empire-article.jpg?resize=1024%2C755&ssl=1)
American food system founded on stolen lands
Read this article by Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua Farms for democracy in food and agriculture. An excerpt with some of the nitty gritty:
While other nations adopt quotas and other imperfect systems to moderate the supply of food with something more humane than unregulated free markets, the U.S. is still stuck in a Butzian hellscape of planting fencerow to fencerow just because we have the land for it. Amid chronic oversupply, during national/global emergencies or complete calm, we continue to bail out farmers, most of whom are near-millionaires (including our vaunted “small family farmers”), year after year after year. Agriculture and Defense are the only industries in America that enjoy a perennial, unconditional bailout. And they get it because they are, together, the foundation of American Imperialism.
Chris Newman is an ehakihet (farmer/land-protector) in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Acts of kindness to continue this work are always appreciated on Venmo @sylvanaquafarms
For more on the issue, listen to this episode of 1619 from the New York Times:
Episode 2: The Economy That Slavery Built
In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.
Hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones, produced by Annie Brown, Adizah Eghan and Kelly Prime, with help from Jazmín Aguilera, and edited by Lisa Tobin and Lisa Chow from Friday, August 30th, 2019.