Corporate Greed & Food Security

I had a funny moment just now and both Jeff and I said at the same time, 'Whelp, there's the Fresh Sheet topic for this week.'

Not funny haha . . . but sometimes, what can we do but laugh?

Here is it :

Yesterday I received a call from a marketing agency looking to sell me ad space on reusable bags for a local 'independent grocery store'. Usually we do precisely zero advertising of any kind, but 'cha know, with the farm store coming I said - send me what you have and we'll see.

I thought it was kinda odd that a grocery store, even an independent one, would wanna advertise a farm product they don't carry, but when I got the marketing materials it all made sense.

It wasn't an independent grocery store. It was Your Independent Grocery Store. Otherwise known as LOBLAWS.

Aaaaaah. I see.

So for the low price of $800 to $4500 smackers, our little grassroots endeavour could have the privilege of lending our sustainable, community rooted cachet to the largest and most cutthroat player in the Canadian grocery market. (Who just happens to be under investigation for predatory pricing in one of the toughest economic times of my lifetime.)

Regular folks, myself included, are struggling to manage soaring prices at the grocery store, while Loblaws just posted a 30.8% increase in profits year-over-year.

So ya, that was a HARD NO for me.

I wrote back to the marketing agency and said that we have no interest in supporting or being associated with a company that benefits from profiteering and is causing real harm to the community we serve.

The whole thing, in a nutshell, was a reminder of why we started growing our own food to begin with.

We aren't wealthy people. Way back in the mid 'oughts when we were still living in an apartment in kits, I bought a small bag of canning tomatoes for $50 at the farmer's market and quickly realized that wasn't going to work for us financially.

So we figured out how to do it for ourselves. We opted out of the broken machine every chance we got. Little by little we are doing our best to create opportunities for others to opt out, too.

Whether it's buying food from us, learning to grow your own in The Holistic Harvest, or simply helping you educate yourself about the hard truth of the corruption and corporate monopolies that control our food system . . . I hope that, together, through these tiny rebellious actions we'll create a more just and more equitable food system.

This is a reminder that even if your efforts at opting out feel imperfect, they STILL MATTER.

The system is designed to make opting out as difficult as humanly possible. Any chance that you have to make a different choice is a joyful act of resistance against corporate greed and the broken system it feeds.

Thank you for allowing us to be a part of that fight.

As always.

Best,
S