16/365: Planting Seeds of Dissent.

Sorry to be so crass tonight, but we just got our year's seed order in, and they just came out this way. Weird, I know. This is not an endorsement for the Southern Exposure seed exchange, or the Southern Exposure Gentlemen's Club in West Virginia for that matter, but it is an endorsement for knowing where your food comes from. A little more after the jump...

Inspiration tonight came from watching Food, INC, an awesome film that pulls the veil off the system that gets our food from the seed to our plates. I've been interested in this issue for sometime now, since my wife Bri taught me the value of knowing where our food comes from. Food INC didn't really present any new information, but it got me riled up nonetheless. One of the major players in the complicated system of greed and consolidation that is the Food Industry is Monsanto. Stories of what this company has done to the environment, not to mention the individual farmers that stand up to them in one form or another, make my blood boil. For large scale agriculture, Monsanto is systematically destroying the farmers' ability, and right , to save seeds from their crops to plant the next year. As a home gardener, I don't have to worry so much about this...yet. I guess, in theory, they could shut me down if a grain of pollen from one of their genetically engineered corn plants pollinated a small corn plot I might be growing in my backyard, and I saved the seeds to plant next year. It has happened to others.

Ok, off the soapbox. If you are interested in learning more, the info is out there.

Strobist info: one seedlight (har har) in a shoot-thru umbrella high and behind the seeds, fired via Pocketwizards.