On Cloning and Magic.

Aiye! This picture cracks me up. And yet it chillingly makes me think of the cloned meat issue that's happening in America right now. Should they (producers) be required to label cloned meat? The USDA doesn't seem to think so... do you? I think this quote put it nicely:

"The thing that they just don't get about cloning is that from an animal breeder's point of view, which I hold, is clones are dead ends. There is no improvement in them. There is always room for improving the genome through selective breeding and the process is fun, an intellectual challenge. To just copy the same animal over and over turns my farm into a factory. Boooring. I would rather keep improving. Keep moving forward. Evolution doesn't favor dead ends."

Well said, I say.

Anyway, back to what this post was supposed to be about. A friend of mine just stayed with me from London and we got to talking about farmers' markets. London is host to some really incredible markets that really have an emphasis on preserving markets as places of community and economic opportunity for small farmers. I was really excited to see that they have a similar organization as ours (the Southland Farmers' Market Association), called FARMA who makes sure that markets operate with integrity, discouraging the cash cow of a "swap meet" in favor of a market that accommodates farmers' who genuinely grow or make what they are selling.

We were talking about how the market is a real place of community where people rub up against each other and look their food producers in the eye, thanking them for the food they cultivated, harvested, and then brought from miles and miles away to put in YOUR hands. That's pretty sweet. And from London to L.A to Morocco to Costa Rica, theres that same sense of magic and community cohesion that happens. It kindof is one of those connective linkages that anyone from any culture can identify with- it brings us back to our roots, reminds of us of our common dependence on the planet and our similar needs to be fed (and our common choice to eat well!). Part primal. Part magical. That's a pretty good mix right there.