How Can The Customer Know What They Want If They Can't Hear The Music Of Our Land Slowly Disappearing?
G'Day Folks,
The food on our plate is the entire world staring back at us.
I’m one of the lucky ones, thanks to you I get to listen to sounds from long ago, I get to feel the fragile beauty of the interconnected world that surrounds me. But whether I like to admit it or not, this way of life is slowly dying. There was a time, when all of the land we tended to, sang to us. Bird song filled the still morning air with a mix of sweet and gentle melodies. Soon afterwards the hum of insects beginning their patrol and then the rustling of leaves beneath the feet of curious creatures rummaging through the forest. Beneath the feet of the farmer the soil pulsed with the quiet rhythm of nature, and those who tended it did so with reverence. They knew the land not as a resource to be exploited, but as a living, breathing thing—a partner in the sacred act of feeding the world.
The music stopped when we decided together that cheap food was our priority, a decision made not in a single moment, but through each and every purchase made at increasingly larger and more disconnected supermarkets who hid the true cost in order to make a profit. They tell us it's what customers want, and any good business should do what customers want. But how can the customer know what they want if they can't hear the music of our land slowly disappearing?
Go and listen to their stories. Sit with the woman who lost her husband, a man who carried generations of farming wisdom in his hands but could not carry the crushing weight of endless demand. Walk the empty streets of once-thriving farm towns, where boarded-up windows whisper of dreams abandoned. Speak to the farmer who remembers a childhood filled with laughter and life, who now watches the land he loves turn barren, as the world demands one thing above all: make it cheaper.
Is this what the customers really wanted? Or was it more convenient, was it just easier to ignore the silencing of our land and keep pumping out ever increasing amounts of food and choices at lower costs. To fill our trolleys and have us leave without knowing a god damn thing! It is the greed of those who treated their customers like a flock of sheep with the lowest price as their shepherd, that hid the truth. The worst of all lies are those that are said in silence. Food is not cheap. Not truly. Every bite we take carries a hidden cost—a cost paid in exhausted soil and polluted rivers, in vanishing forests and silent fields, in the broken spirits of those who once found joy in their labor.
You have returned the sound of nature to our farm and the love and appreciation to our family's hearts. You choose to know where your food comes from, you eat with your heart's wisdom instead of your mind's rationale. If we only ever listen to our minds we will eventually turn every part of our world into a highly efficient and deadly silent production line. The value we place on our food is the value we place on the humans and the land that sustains us. If we do not value the food on our plate, then what is it that we value? For that food on our plate is the entire world staring back at us.
Recommended book of the week - Silent Spring Book by Rachel Carson
Recommended Documentary of the week - Food Inc. Film by Robert Kenner
