Faires - Food Confidential The Corporate Takeover of Food Security and the Family Farm℗اand What to Do About It

Praise for Nicole Fairess The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading

The kind of book any homesteader or wannabe homesteader should have on their shelf.

Progressive Pioneer

In a word... Wow!

Small Town Living

A compendium of skills for self-sufficiency and survival, this book contains answers to just about every practical question you might have about homesteading.

Sierra Clubs The Green Life

It REALLY is the ULTIMATE guide.

The Renegade Farmer

Shows you how to do everything yourself, and I mean everything.

Frugal Flora

Highly recommend[ed]... if you are interested in sustainable and independent living.

Healthy Homesteading

A must for any person interested in living self-sustainably.

Finger Lakes Foodie

Once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

Off-Grid.net

Praise for Nicole Fairess The Ultimate Guide to Natural Farming and Sustainable Living

There is a lot of powerful information here for anyone on a homesteading quest, whether they are working with 1/4-acre of 140 acres.

No Ordinary Homestead

The perfect book to read before developing your property into a sustainable, food-producing haven.

Advanced Survival Guide

Other books by Nicole Faires

The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading (2011)

The Ultimate Guide to Natural Farming and Sustainable Living (2015)

Copyright 2013 by Nicole Faires

Previously published by Skyhorse Publishing as Food Tyrants in 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Kisscut Design

Jacket photography Picsfive/Shutterstock.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-669-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0291-2

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A nation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 1967

Years ago I watched an episode of Wife Swap that featured a particularly memorable character. The premise of the reality show is that two mothers swapped families for two weeksand these families were far from the traditional American family. This particular woman believed that she could draw energy from the sun. Every morning she would go outside and greet the desert sunrise by staring straight into it for hours at a time, basking in its golden glow. She had forbidden her family any cooked food and had removed the stove from the house so she could become disciplined enough to subsist only on the suns rays, her ultimate goal.

This woman became infamous because everyone knows you have to eat to live. Theres no getting around it. Youre not a plantyou cant stick your feet into the soil and raise your arms to the sky and expect anything other than a slow and uncomfortable death.

But no matter how crazy we might think this unfortunate sun woman may be, she is no crazier than the majority of people living in most industrialized nations. We are just as guilty in our beliefs and it would be hypocritical to laugh at her. We believe that we can eat processed foods and still receive the nutrients that we need. We have allowed our entire food system to be hijacked by corporations. Is that any better than trying to absorb our nourishment from the sun?

Trying to absorb nutrients from foods processed and packed in factories is killing us, gradually but undeniably. In North America, we have become increasingly aware of the problem because of popular documentaries like Forks Over Knives and Food, Inc. But now that we know, we find that its very difficult to take control of our food because weve already given up our right to do so. Government legislation both federally and locally has taken away our freedom to produce it and eat it; the suburbs have taken over the farms and the farmers are gone; and the food we do get might as well just be labeled with a big stamp that says Cancer.

But you know all of this. You already know about the health effects of processed food, and you are already aware that your food supply is in trouble, otherwise you would be reading some other book. Be warned that this book recommends subversion . Rebellion. This book advocates growing your own food no matter what. If you choose to do something that your government considers illegal, I take no responsibility for that.

I just dont think you have much of a choice.

CHAPTER ONE

The Foundation of Food

I saw all the people hustling early in the morning to go into the factories and stores and the office buildings, to do their job, to get their check. But ultimately its not office buildings or jobs that give us our checks. Its the soil. The soil is what gives us the real income that supports us all.

Ed Begley, Jr.

The Abridgement of Freedom

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison

You may not realize it yet, but you do not have the legal right to grow and eat anything that you want, and food has become a very complex issue. However, this right was not lost overnight, because originally food was not political. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution would have included agriculture if any of the founding members or later leaders believed that the government had any say in the matter. Our relatively young food industry was still safe in the 1920s, when President Coolidge vetoed a complex price-fixing bill for various crops. He said, I do not believe that upon serious consideration the farmers of America would tolerate the precedent of a body of men chosen solely by one industry who, acting in the name of the Government, shall arrange for contracts which determine prices.... Such action would establish bureaucracy on such a scale as to dominate not only the economic life but the moral, social, and political future of our people.

This bureaucracy he meant to avoid, however, is now a staple of most of the food industry legislation in America today. Only ten years after Coolidge, Hoover introduced the Farm Board, which fixed the price of wheat and cotton. The Farm Board had good intentions, but its policies had far-reaching consequences. If the price of wheat or cotton dropped too low, the government would step in and buy it at the fixed price. This relative financial security convinced many farmers to start producing wheat and cotton, and pretty soon they had too much of it. Supply far outstripped demand. Thats when President Roosevelt created the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Rather than paying farmers too much for a worthless crop, the government now paid them not to grow wheat or cotton. By that logic, any business that got into trouble by poorly estimating the market should be bailed out and paid to prevent stupidity. But this only applied to farmers.