It is good to have hope these days because we are beginning to see the unraveling of the centralized food system. This in itself can be a hopeful thing, but of course it can carry with it some very hard times: First there was the tomato scare with the FDA dragging its feet and not wanting people to freak out over the actual source of the contamination. The administration’s initial recommendation to avoid certain varieties tomatoes was of course absurd, and people knew it. The result has been a run on local tomato growers (several of the largest in Arkansas have already have long waiting lists of people wanting to buy). The other sign of unraveling came with the Iowa floods. Iowa will have massive crop failures from this flooding, and this could put further pressure on corn prices, destabilizing even further the monocultural system (as well as hurting many poor people in the process). 

This all reminds me of the ancient Maya. When I was in Belize recently, my wife and I visited a cave in which the Maya sacrificed people to appease the gods. Our guide told us that the Maya went through an agricultural crisis possibly caused by too much deforestation and drought. The Maya became desperate because the gods that once brought rain and fertility were no longer responding to their sacrifices. As their civilization collapsed, they sacrificed even more people in more extreme ways. 

Nothing worked, and the Maya civilization collapsed into a society of small villages and disjointed bands living in the jungle.

Looking at our own crises, I am afraid we are very much like the Maya. Our gods (oil and industry) are no longer delivering what we need as quickly as we need. And many people are going to greater and greater extremes to appease the gods--sacrificing the public good paid for by gasoline taxes for a few more drops of cheap oil in the tank; proposing lifts of the bans on drilling offshore and in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge so that we can hang on just a little longer to a dying energy system. Too bad they are only idols of our own making. The problem is with ourselves, and we are the ones who have to change to alternative, sustainable systems of energy and agriculture. Perhaps we can't do that quickly enough. But chicken-raising in the city gives me hope that we have a chance.