A Organic Carrot, A Spider, and Hope
Organic carrots give me hope. Hope that is indelibly rooted in the future. No pun intended. A week ago there were a couple of articles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that piqued my interest.
One was about a woman who found a black widow spider in the grapes that she had purchased for her daughter’s lunch and the other about organic food gaining more popularity in grocery stores.
My interest here is not to write about spiders and organic food per se, but rather to draw a distinction between where the food was grown and why it is so absolutely necessary for this country of ours to implement a national health care program.
A program whereby everyone participates, regardless of their financial situation or health status, with benefits that are sufficiently comprehensive to provide access to appropriate, high-quality care without endangering individual or family financial security.
Let me start by explaining why I thought the first article was interesting. According to the P-I, the woman brought the grapes home, spotted the spider crawling around on the grapes on her kitchen counter, fetched a jar and put the spider in it. She then took the trapped spider to the zoo where zookeepers intended to eventually display it to the public.
Everything turned out all well and good, but let me pose a hypothetical question at this juncture: “What if the woman had discovered the venomous creepy crawler only after it had bitten her daughter?”
I dare say that instead of going to the zoo, they probably would have made a beeline for the emergency ward in the nearest hospital. The focus of attention would have been centered on the girl’s health since a poisonous bite can sometimes be deadly.
Supposing the spider had actually bitten the girl, would medical treatments have put the proverbial bite on her family’s finances to the point of paralyzing her parents’ purchasing power, consequently poisoning their credit rating as well?
Keep in mind that one family member’s innocent misfortune nowadays can hurt the whole family financially. In addition, would this one incident put a red flag on her health record, making her ineligible for future claims because her insurer might deem her a financial risk?
Will her parents’ health care premiums increase to equal their monthly mortgage payment, making them fall back on a “pared-down” plan leaving them now underinsured, thus opening them up later to even more financial risk in the event the untoward strikes another member of the family?
Sadly, the way our current health care system is set up, the girl would have sooner than later been pitted financially against her parents and likewise pitted her against her own health as well.
With many other health care plans around the globe, parents would never worry about losing their homes due to a spider biting one of their kids. Plus, their health care premiums would be the same from one month to the next; it’s as if the biting incident never occurred.
What’s more, there would be no pre-existing eligibility requirements that would disqualify her from receiving care in the future for two reasons: one, once you are enrolled in the national health care plan, you are in, and two, access to medical care is guaranteed – there are no eligibility requirements.
Not only is health care a right in other countries, health is the raison d’être in the grand scheme of health care. Not so in the United States: illnesses and accidents are to the health insurance/financial/pharmaceutical complex as coal and natural gas are to energy conglomerates – natural resources that are to be exploited for maximum profits.
The popularity of organic food is promising, not just because organic fruit and vegetables are cultivated without using pesticides, hormones or other chemicals, but because I sense people are once again considering every meal as a moment to nourish the body, just like a good book nourishes the mind and peaceful music enchants the soul. Others associate organic produce with re-establishing our culinary culture of generations past.
Likewise, serving up traditional dishes during seasonal festivities restores childhood memories when cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would gather around the table to share stories old and new. All in all, the art of honoring those you cherish in your family, in your circle of friends, and in your community can be reclaimed by sharing good food.
Good food, though, needs time to grow, to gather by hand, clean, cut or peel, cook and digest. Sadly, though, our culture hasn’t devoted enough time to good food over the past thirty some years.
That’s why I find increasing sales trends for organic fruits and vegetables hopeful, an indication that we are finally breaking free of the death grips of consumerism and embracing the desire to participate collectively as citizens in the future well-being of our community.
This new trend signals the rebirth of good nutritional standards while at the same time sustaining the local economy. We regard the local grocer as a steward who is entrusted with procuring garden-fresh fruit and vegetables cultivated by small farmers in organically certified native soil.
Elementary and secondary school systems are encouraged to contract with local organic food vendors to provide students with natural, locally grown foods, in the hope that our community’s youth is getting the proper nutrients they need to build strong bodies and healthy minds.
In my view, promoting local, organic produce is a statement advocating wholesome principles in support of small farmers and a rejection of some bland, industrial food commodity originating from the production line of a global agribusiness which eventually finds its place on supermarket shelves in the form of a package.
According to the P-I, the spider got a free ride inside a package of grapes imported into the United States from a country south of the border. The spider is problematic for two reasons.
First, I consider the spider to be the emblematic embodiment of free-trade policies and its poisonous “market access” bite has already killed 38,310 small farms in the U. S. between 1995-2002.
Wasn’t the intention of these free-trade agreements to create more jobs instead of eliminating them? Small native farmers can’t survive financially when they have to compete with large global agribusinesses that are subsidized to bring mass-produced alimentary commodities to our domestic markets.
Isn’t this too high a price to pay for grapes in the month of May when we normally eat them in season around September? On top of that, what do these huge agricultural conglomerates give back to our communities anyway? Their workers don’t pay into Social Security or Medicare.
These subsidized agribusinesses don’t pay local, state or federal taxes either. If farmers lose their jobs, our tax base diminishes, meaning that we have less support for our public schools. As we all know, a good education improves our quality of life.
Further, how can we level the playing-field in the food market so that small mom-and-pop restaurants serving good locally grown food can flourish once again, so that neighborhood grocery store owners can make a decent living selling organic fruit and vegetables to their community, and native family farmers can successfully live off the land by supplying restaurants and grocery stores unadulterated produce?
I think one way to level the playing field is to guarantee access to health care for all farmers big or small. This means that farmers will be entitled to health care services wherever they are provided, and “as” the services are available. Pre-existing conditions would also be included for treatment.
Once access is guaranteed, medical services will have to be paid for. Farmers, like any other business owner, would pay a monthly fee that would be funneled into one public medical security fund. Hospitals, doctors and other medical clinics and suppliers would then be paid from this general fund for services rendered.
Depending on the yield of the harvest in any given year, the number of years in operation and the number of family members, the medical health care assessment will go up or down accordingly.
Under no circumstances would the medical security fee be based on actuarial profit margins of the health care provider or on the health of the farmer.
What’s more, overhead costs of operating a farm would go down roughly 30% because there would only be one comprehensive public medical plan, thus eliminating the massive and complicated bureaucratic mess that we currently have.
Farmers would be provided with one medical ID card that would essentially direct payment for medical services from a centralized claims processing clearinghouse to either doctors, hospitals, clinics, labs or pharmacies.
Farmers can already track FedEx packages, bank, trade shares, file taxes or re-new their driver’s license on-line.
Wouldn’t it be better and simpler for the farmer, and for the doctor, if the farmer could choose his own doctor, bring his ID card with him, swipe it in a card reader at the time of service and then have the doctor be paid on the spot with an electronic funds transfer?
What does all this mean? It means that more organic farmers would have more money available to maintain their farms, purchase more land, diversify their product lines, and save for retirement.
It means farmers will finally have a choice in choosing their own doctors for a change. It means that as a small farmer you won’t have to take on that second job in the city just because it provides health care benefits.
It means that your coverage will continue if you decide to get out of farming. It means that there no longer will be any procedural barriers from accessing care. It means that your hired hand will have the same coverage as you.
It means that you can be a volunteer fire fighter without having to worry about coverage. It means the organic farmer will practice what he likes best without worrying about losing the farm to an illness or an accident.
Finally, it means the organic carrot will reclaim our sovereignty over the intrusive free-market spider. I consider the organic carrot a sign of hope, a promise that our quality of life will be improving. It will take time, but I have hope
(Source USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farms and land in Farms 2002,” Feb. 2003, at 1.)
One was about a woman who found a black widow spider in the grapes that she had purchased for her daughter’s lunch and the other about organic food gaining more popularity in grocery stores.
My interest here is not to write about spiders and organic food per se, but rather to draw a distinction between where the food was grown and why it is so absolutely necessary for this country of ours to implement a national health care program.
A program whereby everyone participates, regardless of their financial situation or health status, with benefits that are sufficiently comprehensive to provide access to appropriate, high-quality care without endangering individual or family financial security.
Let me start by explaining why I thought the first article was interesting. According to the P-I, the woman brought the grapes home, spotted the spider crawling around on the grapes on her kitchen counter, fetched a jar and put the spider in it. She then took the trapped spider to the zoo where zookeepers intended to eventually display it to the public.
Everything turned out all well and good, but let me pose a hypothetical question at this juncture: “What if the woman had discovered the venomous creepy crawler only after it had bitten her daughter?”
I dare say that instead of going to the zoo, they probably would have made a beeline for the emergency ward in the nearest hospital. The focus of attention would have been centered on the girl’s health since a poisonous bite can sometimes be deadly.
Supposing the spider had actually bitten the girl, would medical treatments have put the proverbial bite on her family’s finances to the point of paralyzing her parents’ purchasing power, consequently poisoning their credit rating as well?
Keep in mind that one family member’s innocent misfortune nowadays can hurt the whole family financially. In addition, would this one incident put a red flag on her health record, making her ineligible for future claims because her insurer might deem her a financial risk?
Will her parents’ health care premiums increase to equal their monthly mortgage payment, making them fall back on a “pared-down” plan leaving them now underinsured, thus opening them up later to even more financial risk in the event the untoward strikes another member of the family?
Sadly, the way our current health care system is set up, the girl would have sooner than later been pitted financially against her parents and likewise pitted her against her own health as well.
With many other health care plans around the globe, parents would never worry about losing their homes due to a spider biting one of their kids. Plus, their health care premiums would be the same from one month to the next; it’s as if the biting incident never occurred.
What’s more, there would be no pre-existing eligibility requirements that would disqualify her from receiving care in the future for two reasons: one, once you are enrolled in the national health care plan, you are in, and two, access to medical care is guaranteed – there are no eligibility requirements.
Not only is health care a right in other countries, health is the raison d’être in the grand scheme of health care. Not so in the United States: illnesses and accidents are to the health insurance/financial/pharmaceutical complex as coal and natural gas are to energy conglomerates – natural resources that are to be exploited for maximum profits.
The popularity of organic food is promising, not just because organic fruit and vegetables are cultivated without using pesticides, hormones or other chemicals, but because I sense people are once again considering every meal as a moment to nourish the body, just like a good book nourishes the mind and peaceful music enchants the soul. Others associate organic produce with re-establishing our culinary culture of generations past.
Likewise, serving up traditional dishes during seasonal festivities restores childhood memories when cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would gather around the table to share stories old and new. All in all, the art of honoring those you cherish in your family, in your circle of friends, and in your community can be reclaimed by sharing good food.
Good food, though, needs time to grow, to gather by hand, clean, cut or peel, cook and digest. Sadly, though, our culture hasn’t devoted enough time to good food over the past thirty some years.
That’s why I find increasing sales trends for organic fruits and vegetables hopeful, an indication that we are finally breaking free of the death grips of consumerism and embracing the desire to participate collectively as citizens in the future well-being of our community.
This new trend signals the rebirth of good nutritional standards while at the same time sustaining the local economy. We regard the local grocer as a steward who is entrusted with procuring garden-fresh fruit and vegetables cultivated by small farmers in organically certified native soil.
Elementary and secondary school systems are encouraged to contract with local organic food vendors to provide students with natural, locally grown foods, in the hope that our community’s youth is getting the proper nutrients they need to build strong bodies and healthy minds.
In my view, promoting local, organic produce is a statement advocating wholesome principles in support of small farmers and a rejection of some bland, industrial food commodity originating from the production line of a global agribusiness which eventually finds its place on supermarket shelves in the form of a package.
According to the P-I, the spider got a free ride inside a package of grapes imported into the United States from a country south of the border. The spider is problematic for two reasons.
First, I consider the spider to be the emblematic embodiment of free-trade policies and its poisonous “market access” bite has already killed 38,310 small farms in the U. S. between 1995-2002.
Wasn’t the intention of these free-trade agreements to create more jobs instead of eliminating them? Small native farmers can’t survive financially when they have to compete with large global agribusinesses that are subsidized to bring mass-produced alimentary commodities to our domestic markets.
Isn’t this too high a price to pay for grapes in the month of May when we normally eat them in season around September? On top of that, what do these huge agricultural conglomerates give back to our communities anyway? Their workers don’t pay into Social Security or Medicare.
These subsidized agribusinesses don’t pay local, state or federal taxes either. If farmers lose their jobs, our tax base diminishes, meaning that we have less support for our public schools. As we all know, a good education improves our quality of life.
Further, how can we level the playing-field in the food market so that small mom-and-pop restaurants serving good locally grown food can flourish once again, so that neighborhood grocery store owners can make a decent living selling organic fruit and vegetables to their community, and native family farmers can successfully live off the land by supplying restaurants and grocery stores unadulterated produce?
I think one way to level the playing field is to guarantee access to health care for all farmers big or small. This means that farmers will be entitled to health care services wherever they are provided, and “as” the services are available. Pre-existing conditions would also be included for treatment.
Once access is guaranteed, medical services will have to be paid for. Farmers, like any other business owner, would pay a monthly fee that would be funneled into one public medical security fund. Hospitals, doctors and other medical clinics and suppliers would then be paid from this general fund for services rendered.
Depending on the yield of the harvest in any given year, the number of years in operation and the number of family members, the medical health care assessment will go up or down accordingly.
Under no circumstances would the medical security fee be based on actuarial profit margins of the health care provider or on the health of the farmer.
What’s more, overhead costs of operating a farm would go down roughly 30% because there would only be one comprehensive public medical plan, thus eliminating the massive and complicated bureaucratic mess that we currently have.
Farmers would be provided with one medical ID card that would essentially direct payment for medical services from a centralized claims processing clearinghouse to either doctors, hospitals, clinics, labs or pharmacies.
Farmers can already track FedEx packages, bank, trade shares, file taxes or re-new their driver’s license on-line.
Wouldn’t it be better and simpler for the farmer, and for the doctor, if the farmer could choose his own doctor, bring his ID card with him, swipe it in a card reader at the time of service and then have the doctor be paid on the spot with an electronic funds transfer?
What does all this mean? It means that more organic farmers would have more money available to maintain their farms, purchase more land, diversify their product lines, and save for retirement.
It means farmers will finally have a choice in choosing their own doctors for a change. It means that as a small farmer you won’t have to take on that second job in the city just because it provides health care benefits.
It means that your coverage will continue if you decide to get out of farming. It means that there no longer will be any procedural barriers from accessing care. It means that your hired hand will have the same coverage as you.
It means that you can be a volunteer fire fighter without having to worry about coverage. It means the organic farmer will practice what he likes best without worrying about losing the farm to an illness or an accident.
Finally, it means the organic carrot will reclaim our sovereignty over the intrusive free-market spider. I consider the organic carrot a sign of hope, a promise that our quality of life will be improving. It will take time, but I have hope
(Source USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farms and land in Farms 2002,” Feb. 2003, at 1.)
