An almost forgotten means of economic self-reliance is the home production of food. We are too accustomed to going to stores and purchasing what we need.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
The packaged food business environment is very Darwinian. You're fighting for survival every year; you evolve and grow or you die. It's really that simple.
Poverty breeds lack of self-reliance.
The long-term solution in preventing another famine in Somalia is to promote self-reliance.
However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some 'Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.'
People do care where their food, or other goods, comes from, not merely if the price is right. And that means no business can afford to ignore the impacts their buying practices have on producers and on the perceptions and choices of consumers.
It's not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort... to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.
We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.
In simple terms, I realised that food is the most fundamental need for a person. In difficult economic times, people's priorities change, and they might be willing to do something that secures for them the lowest possible weekly food bill.
We've gotten so good at growing food that we've gone, in a few generations, from nearly half of Americans living on farms to 2 percent. We no longer think about how the wonderful things in the grocery store got there, and we'd like to go back to what we think is a more natural way.