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Every five years the USDA updates its “US Dietary Guidelines” and the latest is out. We need to be careful about believing the conventional wisdom surrounding the “preferred diet” especially when the conversation is so distorted by commercial interests and money. 
Whole Foods has been neck in neck for some time with Puget Sound’s PCC Natural Markets (the largest and one of the oldest food cooperatives in the nation), however the corporate structure of “whole” just couldn’t match the cooperative foundation of “real,” at least as far as good food principles. 
Located in the “hinge” of sub-Saharan West Africa, Cameroon is home to about 19 million people. Because the country’s natural resources are suited to agriculture, an estimated 70% of the population farms. External forces of globalization are now putting pressure on African countries such as Cameroon to shift agricultural production from subsistence-scale local production to large-scale commercial production. 
What is most important? That people be employed and happy or that investors become rich? The healthy alternative to more unmanaged – and ungoverned – growth is consciously building resiliency to meet climate change and provide young people a future they can feel good about, not scared to death over. This to me is seriously the “bright side of life” as long as we keep believing in it. Ed Hamer is doing it. 
Now more than ever is the right time to bridge the rural-urban divide. Cities are closing in on rural areas, with distances shrinking both physically through better road networks and also virtually through a better network of mobile phones and Internet connections. 
While Big Fish, Big Food, and Big Business would have you think that you can save nature by eating factory food, we have a better solution. Protect our wild salmon fisheries by eating more wild fish! 
In Ghana, and across Africa, women farmers are organizing themselves and helping each other by sharing their experiences and by restoring native seeds. 
The problem is this: seeds need a place to grow; not just a place to grow but also a place that matches the seed. Not a new place, but the pre-existing ecosystem where the seed was produced, or something that closely mimics the original ecology. The challenge then is to rediscover and restore as much of the local resiliency expressed in the natural ecosystems we have left and to replant the seed accordingly. The quality of the soil and water is as important as the seed; that is to say, without it (like we humans), the seed will die. 
How do we really know what to eat? Perhaps it’s environmental. Sure enough! If nothing but markets decide now – and they seem to be careening out of control – and history doesn’t count, everybody can be like everybody else and have any kind of food. Then maybe it isn’t so much a matter of knowing what to eat as it is regaining a sense of who we are. Perhaps the first step is to reconnect our food to place, good places – not industrial wastelands. 
We in the independent small farm sector probably need to keep an eye on new threats to organic farming. It seems there is no end of manipulation by industry to control markets and government continues to be driven by special interests. |
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