For good or for bad, past governments — back to the earliest days of serfdom — have exercised strong controls on farmers of all sizes, big and small.

Ultimately, control over the food supply (and those who supply it) is one of the surest forms of control over the people. We can find shelter outdoors if we have to, and we can wear the shabbiest clothes, but we all have to eat.

(Actually, the two strongest semi-invisible controls over the people are exercised through control of the food supply and control over medical care. The latter is already being locked down in America. With the food supply under totalitarian control, we’d be completely under someone’s thumb… but the verdict is out on exactly who’s running the show.)

Among today’s world leaders, Prince Charles has been one of the few voices of relative sanity, at least regarding gardening: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/13/prince.charles.gm.farming

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1544411/Charles-calls-for-return-of-Victorian-seeds.html

Though he doesn’t have much actual political clout, I’ve admired his willingness to speak out against questionable agricultural practices.

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In America, you can still buy heirloom seeds, and perhaps you should start doing so, now:

• http://www.heirloomseeds.com/
• http://rareseeds.com/
• http://www.seedsavers.org/ and
• http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-Heirloom_Seeds.aspx

Learn more about saving those seeds for future use, and other issues related to this kind of gardening, at sites such as http://idigmygarden.com/forums/

Also see http://www.onewest.net/~klack/Garden/seedsaving.html
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Farming — specifically of food crops — is one area in which I speak from experience: For eight years, I was married to a man whose family is actively engaged in corporate-level farming. Frankly, we wouldn’t eat the crops we grew on our 1000+ acres; we knew the chemicals (sometimes illegal ones) that had been used on those crops.

One of those chemicals — still in use today — is 2,4-D, which was/is one of the components of Agent Orange. But, frankly, everyone in our agricultural community knew someone who was using Agent Orange or 2,4-T (another component of Agent Orange) for widespread weed killing. When we knew where it was being used, we just stayed away from that area for a couple of weeks.

The business of farming is very Big Business, and the use of chemicals makes it vital for companies such as Monsanto to remain influential as gov’t agricultural policies are formed.

Monsanto has an unattractive history, dating back to the 1960s, at least: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/17/122734/198

Stay alert and call ir write to your senators about this bill. The bill looked like it was losing power & interest for awhile, but it’s back on the front burner again… and that pattern of activity always makes me nervous. It’s like the bill is allowed to appear to lose momentum after there’s a big furor over it, and — after sufficient time for people to forget about it — it snaps back like a scorpion’s tail.

If you don’t know who your senators are, or how to contact them, here’s the form that will tell you instantly:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?

Photo credit: Kiddee, Thailand