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Food Plan
Understand All About Food Plan
Food is an essential feature of everyday life. At offices where everyone seems to be so efficient and astoundingly capable; on the streets where people are in alarming haste to catch the bus or meet appointments; even in homes where the laughter of kids is so vibrant and full of life there is one compelling habit that drives it all. And it is food. Food is similar to the motor that powers space rockets.
Once the rocket is free of gravitational pull, it separates from the vehicle and continues its ascent into space. The import of this is that food is a fuel that helps us to reach our peak abilities. In fact, it pushes us to continue surging towards that peak. However, there is just so much that the earth can give. In several years from now on the population of human beings on the planet will have exploded by the billions. As population increases, the demand for a means of survival becomes stronger and is transferred aggressively to the soil. Farmers scrape endlessly for everything the soil can give to keep up with spiraling demand.
Although the resources are vast, it also begins to tell slowly. First in small bits like the familiar loss of nutrients for a few years, then on a wider scale like famine. To make it worse, the technology driven pace at which the world moves also means that destructive acts are carried out which deplete the ability of the environment to regenerate itself. Greenhouse gases nibble away at the ozone layer leaving delicate places exposed to very hot sun. Rainfall is also depleted by the lack of vital forest cover that will allow for water to be reabsorbed plus a host of other things that progressively damage the integrity of the earth and its ability to sustain us.
In view of this, the Food Plan was envisioned as a design which places premium on smallholder farmers. It is centred on an ideal of shared agricultural prosperity. It veers away from the old norm whereby fields were tilled for the profits alone, but now looks towards a dual-faced system of agriculture. The emphasis is not only on massive consumption, it is on consumption where we all eat without having to worry whether the earth can provide the next meal. Simply put, it feeds the population while protecting the soil.
This new ideal is contradictory to the large-scale industry of agriculture where big business players manoeuvre with a money-first mentality. This old way of thinking is disregarded in favour of an ideally structured approach. That it focuses on the big players does not insinuate a cutback on food security, what it proposes is a security of food, the hands that produce it, and very importantly, the earth that coughs it out. So, it is a design premised on safety.
An important way to realise what is apparently a big dream is the enlightenment of all concerned in the science of relating with the environment. Environmental sustainability is not an issue that can be downplayed as it dictates what direction global politics will be taking for a very long time. Farmers must be orientated in the skill sets necessary for the realization of this goal. They must imbibe an attitude of sustainability. Else, it remains a fancy dream.
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