Right. THE Economy. That one. That monstrous, amorphous and difficult to control, yea difficult to define, entity within which we all live and move and, apparently, have our being. Our fortunes, our very lives, if you listen to the news, depend upon IT. If the economy is struggling, we’re ALL struggling and if the economy is growing, we’re all (it is supposed) doing just swell!
Well, to be quite blunt, we’re tired of it. We’d like to get out of it. Now don’t misunderstand. Like a person swimming in a mighty river, we’d just like to find the stability of the shore. Under different circumstances, we wouldn’t mind taking a brief swim, or dipping our toe, or even finding occasional sustenance from that great river. Just don’t make us swim there 24-7-365.
In fact, we don’t mind living on the banks of that mighty river known as THE economy. But we’d like to have our own little creek to splash in too. We want our own economy! And, we’d like to see many, many more people have their own economy too. “Why?” you ask. Let’s discuss that quality of the economy euphemistically called the “free market.” We say “euphemistically” because when it comes to running your own business, in particular a farming business, there’s not much that’s “free” about the free market. On a daily basis we’re confronted with restrictions regarding how many chickens we can butcher on the farm and who can eat them, where our meat must be processed and by whom it must be inspected, what table scraps we can feed to our pigs and whether our finished compost can be called “fertilizer” or simply a “soil conditioner.” What do you do when something that is supposed to be a common benefit to all, becomes so entirely corrupt and so obviously rigged to benefit the few and the powerful? What do you do when the river you’re being forced to swim in 24-7-365 is polluted with industrial strength sludge? See?
Did you know that this is the reason we established Harvest Partners? We firmly believe the world will be a better place when many more people are OWNERS of the means of production, when many more people are OWNERS of their own means of sustenance and when many more people are OWNERS of the knowledge of what it takes to feed, house and cloth themselves.
By establishing Harvest Partners as a full fledged legal partnership in which partners eat the livestock they own, we are increasing ownership in the food system, in the environment and in the health of individuals, families and communities. Our goal is to make the partnership successful and spawn new ones across the fruited plain. Our aim is to subvert the corrupt economy and replace it with millions of tiny “off grid” economies. Accordingly, every dollar we spend into the industrial food system is a vote to keep us all treading water in the mighty river. But spending into one of these tiny “off grid” economies makes a small, but definite, wound in the system. Think of that the next time you’re enjoying a delicious hamburger, or some slow cooked short ribs or a roasted chicken. It’s YOUR economy, smarty pants!
