Do you know where your food comes from?

Seeing as I am the only one without a blog today I thought I should post. I am currently kind of reading the Omnivore's Dilemma which is a book that goes through a story about where our food comes from and is a commentary on the food industry as a whole. I think he does a good job of describing the process with little bias and then commenting on it afterward. This allows the reader to develop their own opinion prior to reading his, which is mostly slanted against larger corporations (shocking!).

There are three things I am wonder about after reading this novel. He argues that there has been a lot of knowledge lost as a result of the move from the country to the city ( within the farming communities). I agree, as both the US and Canada have seen the demographics of their country change significantly this century. The number of city people has grown considerably compared to the number of country folks ( for these purposes Barrie is consider a city Jill). What I wonder with this is how do we replace our farmers? Do you think that anyone growing up in Waterloo aspires to be a farmer? Even if they were a farmer how would they even get started. Farm knowledge is learn from working day after day, year after year. Who wants to that when the allure of the city is so much better? I can't think of anything that would motivate people to become/want to be farmers and it could be a pressing issue in the future (even now).

The second thing I wonder is how much more would you be willing to pay for groceries? Food prices have risen the past year more than inflation and you hear grumblings. However, a lot of farmers are barely making anything and have to work a second job just to pay bills. A corporation buys their food, would they be willing to raise prices? Not likely. I for one am unsure of how much I would be willing to pay for my food (I am pretty cheap about it already). Maybe it's because food has always been cheap we are ingrained with a sense of entitlement. Can society handle an increase in food prices? People in my class always seem to think they would but they still complain when gas increases in price... I don't think they have thought about it very hard. It would certainly change how many people live their life.

My third pondering is how the effect of being so far connected from the source of food has affected people. There is a lot of ignorance out there. A lot of people do not seem to realize just where their food comes from. People cannot connect cow to steak or sausage to pigs. I wonder how many people would be vegetarian if they had to kill their own food. I think a lot would. I think it would be really hard to do; taking the life of another living being. If we were more connected to our food would we enjoy it more? I think so, because you would appreciate more than just the taste, you would appreciate all the hard work that went into delivering your meal.

So far it's a good read and I would recommend it.