The Fragility of our Food System

Ever since the Corona crisis started, it clearly brought to the light how fragile our food system is. The supply of fresh food suffered from restrictions on (international) transport and on labor in the fields to pick and process the produce. This was especially true for big producer countries such as China or India, but also affected small local farmers. Everywhere people stocked up on foods in panic, especially on storables, flour, pasta, tins… to an extent that many supermarket shelves were empty. It must have been pretty impressive, bringing up rather unpleasant memories in older generations and latent fears of “not having enough” in people of all ages. Personally, I haven’t seen it, since I don’t shop in the supermarket anymore.

The whole point of this article is to (again) encourage you to also stop doing so.

I have talked about this many times before, from different perspectives. I have pointed out how by buying in the big chains you support an industrial food system that – generally speaking – destroys nature, biodiversity and small farmers and is actually to blame for crises such as the Corona one by destroying the habitat of wildlife and reducing our immunity, to just name two key reasons. This is true, even if you only go for the “organic” food in those stores (read more here).

Relying on a centralized, international food system is a dangerous thing, if we consider that stores of fossil fuels are shrinking at high-speed rates and that up to now no valid alternative is in sight. Because even wind or sun energy systems rely on petrol to build them and to install their infrastructures. There is just not enough stock anymore to make a nation- or even global-wide shift AND sustain our current levels of energy consumption (to dive deeper into this topic, I highly recommend the book “the Ecotechnic Future”). Corona gave us a taste of what things could be like, if there’s just not enough petrol anymore to fuel international imports or industrial systems of food production, and supermarkets start to get emptier and emptier. This is NOT science-fiction, as you should have experienced by now. It’s a very real threat and one of the reasons I made the move out of the city now, to start building food autonomy as much as possible, while there is still time to do so with calm and serenity.

This is also not about holding a fatalistic, pessimistic world-view. As you know, I am all about trusting in abundance and love and looking for the treasure in every seemingly challenging situation. Yet I am also all about choosing consciousness and not closing one’s eyes before a challenging or even scary reality. What the world needs IS a big change. Corona has shown that clearly. And this change will be for the better for the collective, yet it will, yes it MUST involve suffering or even death for many on an individual level. I write all of this without any notion of fear, just pure realism. We have gotten ourselves into this mess and now it is time to clean it up. This starts on an individual level.

We have to really look at how our beliefs, thoughts, actions and day-to-day habits either maintain an outdated, fear-, scarcity- and control-based system or support a new, truly healthy and fertile system. And what better way than starting with where you source your food.

Honestly, I cannot understand why anybody would still shop in the big grocery stores, supermarkets or even bio-chains under the current circumstances. It’s where cues are the longest and the risk for infection is the highest. Plus the quality of the food is the worst, if your goal actually is to optimize your immune system.

Seek out small farmers’ markets, bio shops and the like, which – according to some of my contacts in Brussels – are almost empty. Or even better, start to grow your own food!

History has shown that whenever there are political or environmental crises, nations with a decentralized food system are much more resilient than those that depend on a handful of large corporations to feed them.

Let’s remember that wisdom now that there is still time to prepare for the real food crisis comes, because it’s just a matter of time that it will arrive.

Apart from all those good reasons to start putting your hands in the soil, it’s also a priceless therapy whose value I only really appreciate now that I am actually doing it myself. It really puts you back in contact with Mother Nature and her cycles and makes you appreciate Life more. Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s such a pleasure to watch the seeds sprout and grow into plants slowly. Every day I visit “my babies”, attend to them, and in the process I learn so much about the process of creation and fertility. I often find myself surprised about how well my intuition guides me and how much I actually know without really knowing. It’s just like with the body, ultimately, we know how to keep it healthy and fertile, if only we take time, pay attention and care.

By doing what’s best for our own bodies and minds, we will also regenerate the Earth and vice versa. If you truly understood all the implications on your OWN health and fertility of buying your food from the industrial system, you would immediately make the shift. So in order to change the food system and make it resilient once again, all we have to do is be egoistic in the good sense of the word. The fragility of the food system is merely a mirror of our own inner fragility and dependence. The more we become resilient again on the inside, the more our food system will, too.

What are you going to do to make that change in your personal Life? Let me know…