Happy Independence Day! Now, Go Get Independent!

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." --The Declaration of Independence

At the time Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration, practically everyone who read or heard his words was either a farmer or a gardener.  There were no grocery stores, although there were farmer's markets.  A person might buy their produce rather than grow it themselves, but they were distinctly in the minority.

By 1800, there were only a little over 5 million people in this country; most of them lived on farms.

These were not the same sort of people as those who inhabit our shores today.  Today, the vast majority of us live in cities; even those who say they don't live "in the city" are usually fooling themselves.  In 1800, New York City comprised a little over 60,000 souls.  Today, that would be considered a smallish sort of town; that is roughly the size of College Station, Texas, for example. 

There are numerous implications to the changes which have taken place over the 234 years since the members of the Continental Congress declared some self-evident truths; unfortunately, one such implication is a lack of independence.  The average food product travels over 1,000 miles before it reaches our plates; some folk look at the fact that American agribusiness concerns are ultimately making the profit on food production and assume that this means our country has food independence, but those folk aren't paying attention:  if the food travels 1,000 miles before it reaches our plates, then it is moving by the power of oil.  That makes it no longer an American concern, because we are the world's largest importer of oil.  It isn't even close; Japan, a nation with no oil reserves at all of their own, is the number two importer; we import three times as much as they do.

We are, in short, not an independent nation.  Where the oil companies twitch, we follow.  Do you want to know why our waters have been permanently infested with hydrocarbons?  Why it is taking so long to clean up the mess of British Petroleum?

It is because we are too lazy to grow our own food in our own backyards.

We are lazy, and have sold our independence.  Not to a foreign country; no.  We have sold our independence to faceless corporations.

Thomas Jefferson, as President, led our nation in a successful fight against pirates from the Barbary Coast.  Were he around today, he would be fighting against more insidious pirates from boardrooms around the world, and he would have done it with the hoe and shovel, rather than the sword and musket.

Jefferson, you see, in addition to being a statesman and philosopher, was also a successful farmer.  Monticello was the sight of many of his agricultural experiments; he, along with fellow farmer George Washington, practiced a form of crop rotation unusual at the time, making detailed notes about what worked, and just as importantly, what did not work.  He was not alone among men of the Continental Congress; even those who were not technically farmers, like John Adams, for example, were nevertheless either gardeners or else owned farms run by someone else for their families.

Very few Americans of the time of the Revolution would have been willing to put as many people in a chain of control between them and their food the way modern Americans have done.  If we wish to recapture their spirit of independence, we should start with our plates.  Grow your own food; if you can't grow it, buy it locally from someone who can.  The British have come again; they have fouled our waters, and declared that if we wish to be independent, we are going to have to fight for it, for a long, long time.

But gentlemen, we must hang together, or we shall surely hang separately.

Happy 4th!

And happy farming!