Economics says you can never have a sustainable market if you produce something consumers fear and you hide critical information about how it was produced and what it contains. Human nature says the more actual producers can own and shape and control land and inputs and seeds and knowledge, the more inventive, adaptive, and equitable agriculture will be. Acceptance of those laws shapes my vision of sustainable agriculture. I picture healthy ecosystems and healthy human beings working together in thriving, close-knit communities. Farmers make more use of knowledge and people than of chemicals and seeds they can't breed for themselves.
Food is grown everywhere, in cities, in suburbs.
The distance from producer to consumer is short, there are fewer supermarkets, more farmers markets, less packaging, more freshness. To those who do not believe such a vision is possible, I can only say, it exists, it's alive and well and growing, it's even more profitable than the industrial vision, the food tastes better, the work is more pleasurable. I live in this vision. I have friends all over the world who live in it. As earlier reported, the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Council on Tuesday announced that it would require mandatory labelling of foods produced using gene technology and foods containing genetically modified ingredients.