Little Green Bubble

I just arrived back in my little green bubble after being out in the vast open space of this great country of ours. When I say "little green bubble" I am referring to the forward thinking, greeny, Sonoma County that I live in. The very place where recycling everything is the norm, local farmer's markets happen at least twice a week, organic CSA's are plentiful, and even a couple of big chain type grocery stores advertise about "buying local" and "fair trade." Not to mention that a great majority of folks here bring their own cloth bags to the grocery store--and some of the grocers even offer prizes and incentives for those of us who do.

So it is just wayyy too easy living here to get my head full of ideas that we can somehow make a difference with this giant and scary food problem that plagues our nation--and our world. It is easy, because a large number of citizens here actually understand terms such as biodynamic and Permaculture, grow their own food, and participate actively in "greening" our community. Heck, even our city dump has a Recycle Town and creates mega amounts of fresh, organic compost from all of the yard materials they pick up along the way. What's more, is the fact that we are often on the cutting edge with our intelligent and inventive pioneers who hail from such esteemed places as Berkeley and San Francisco. We actually lead the country in forward thinking on many fronts!

Anyhow, while soaring through the night, I saw millions of lights twinkling way down below my plane.. and I got to thinking that each one of those lights represented the millions of human beings living on the planet...and that obviously, each and every human being needs ample food to exist.

I do believe that everyone is entitled to their fair share of tasty grub. However, I still don't understand where we are headed with our humongous agri-farms that create genetically modified products, and food chock full of items such as corn syrup and preservatives so they can be packaged and stored for all of eternity—or shipped to any place on the planet.

Now I, myself, am certainly not perfect in this area (as it is impossible to really know about packaged foods when you are dealing with a system that hides information from the public at large) but I am slowly learning and making changes every day. Therefore, I do hope that when more Americans begin to discover where their food really comes from and develop a closer relationship with the process, they may actually start to comprehend the value in choosing the healthy benefits of real, whole foods over convenience, and a change for the good of all will be seen. But for now, at least my "little green bubble" makes me feel hopeful.