To me, what was really sad, was the lack of collective/community responce. The US chicken farmers were being pushed to the wall, one at a time, picked off quietly, with no collective to fight the big corporate raiders. Same with the other farmers. Same with the meat workers, while the so-called union delegate stood by and wrung his hands and complied with the bosses over the daily quotas sent back to Mexico… There was no explanation of why those Mexicans were there, how they’d been pushed off their land, or even had it stolen from under them by corrupt government and the same food corporates!

The lack of political and collective organising against the evil corporate food system virtually guarantees business-as-usual and culture-as-usual, until this society (so-called ‘civilisation’) hits the wall.

Organising local neighbourhoods and communities to reverse this by supporting small local producers is a great way forward, and the TT movement could quietly push for the needed resistance movement to the global corporate take over, or at the very least support all attempts at resistance to the dominant insane culture we now wake up to find ourselves in.

If Permaculture is “a revolution disguised as gardening,” then TT could be the social version of it for towns and communities…I say could be…

But the need for urgency is great, time is short, and the 6th Mass Extinction is telling us, change now, or join the dieoff.

Welcome to the cultural crisis, where tipping points into The Great Unravelling may be the only way to push the sleepy consumer hords into re-owning their responsibilities as citizens and members of local communities.

Maybe check out Carolyn Baker’s book “Sacred Demise”.

Regards
Ted

Nelson, NZ

But what do the U.S. foodie luminaries in this film do? They glorify grass-fed beef and free-range chicken consumption, giving Salatin all the time he needs to show us how he feeds his cattle and slaughters his chickens (interesting they didn’t reverse that). For some reason, they can’t take even a few minutes to show us the John Jeavons side of the story, for example, or sell plant-based nutrition to that part of the film’s market that is presumably ready to look into the benefits of this alternative.

I hate to disagree, Rob, but while they certainly get some things right, on the whole I think Schlosser and Pollan are totally out to lunch. As I detail in this post, I don’t think their plan for grass-fed cattle is something that scales up well in the United States, let alone in more densely populated regions of the world.

Peter: here’s a form of ‘microcommunism’
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch5.html

As it should do.

The industrialisation of agriculture is one of the worst facets of a poorly designed and laissez-faire economic and political system. I fail to see how this particular form of capitalism can possibly do any good for most of the population of the planet. China’s brand of communism has many of the same problems.

My take on the situation is a sort of hybrid between modern capitalism, localism, and classical marxism, wich I call “Microcommunism”.

The gist of it is that it gives local communities a great deal of power over their collective land and wealth, while still maintaining a strong sense of freedom, and maintaining a working democratic system that does not favour the rich and powerful.

I haven’t finished it yet, but I soon will have.

http://www.capitalismalovestory.com out soon.

I was at a ‘Forum for the Future’ seminar about ‘Prosperity Without Grouth’ last night given by Tim Jackson. Very relevant to the way in which we manufacture products and at the same time strive to reduce labour rather than increase employment!

For those interested in local woodland and crafts a friend of mine call Guy Mallinson sent me the following:

BBC Mastercrafts with Monty Don
The new TV series ‘Mastercrafts’, which includes an episode filmed in the Woodland Workshop, hits the screens on the 12th February at 9pm.

BBC Mastercrafts with Monty Don
The new TV series ‘Mastercrafts’, which includes an episode filmed in the Woodland Workshop, hits the screens on the 12th February at 9pm.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by newforestfood: RT @robintransition: My review of #FoodInc. http://tinyurl.com/yfymdc9. Well worth checking out, passionate, inspiring, informative, angry….