“A nations first order of business is to feed itself” says Charles Walters the founder of ACRES USA. (www.acresusa.com ). 

When I grew up food was an integral part of the local economy. We drank raw milk, we had eggs so fresh that they were still clucking. Most of our meat was butchered on the farm or by the local butcher. (That’s right most small communities had a butcher/meat cutter.) We had fresh cream and butter and we fed the skim milk to the hogs. We ate and canned out of the garden for everything in between.

But it didn’t stay that way for long. There was  steady state and federal legislative pressure to take the food supply out of the hands of the local producer/consumer and by regulation make it “safe” for storage, transport, and finally consumption.

Dr. Eugene Legates Dean of Agriculture at N.C. State is quoted; “All of our gains in genetics have been taken up by regulation”. Some have said that Dr. Legates did more to feed the country than any other single man. But while he was at N. C. State the aforementioned legislative pressure made his small retirement dairy an untenable piece of childhood nostalgia. He too grew up drinking raw milk.    

There is ample information to explain the economic and legislative pressure on the small family farm. Said simply, if there is no income for the family farm, there will be no family farm. For supporting material on this subject, I strongly recommend the National Organization for Raw Materials (www.normeconomics.com ).  The Underground History of Education by John Taylor Gatto also adds critically needed perception to this problem.

On the road to putting our federal government back into the constitutional box in which it came, we must back the food freedom that allows the commercial, unregulated, private   relationship between the consumer and the farmer(producer). I am therefore diametrically opposed the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Which would drive the last few nails into the coffin of the family farm.

The National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (www.NICFA.org) and The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (www.farmandranchfreedom.org) are two organizations that provide information and support for opposing this Orwellian atrocity.  The NICFA has a state affiliate “North Carolina Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Phone 336-286-3088. Email NCICFA@nicfa.org 

Goodness still grows in North Carolina but in fewer regulated hands. The average food item travels 1200 miles to your table. I support local food production. I support food freedom!