How many people are aware out there that the USDA predicted back about two years ago that the U.S. would be importing maybe about forty percent (40%) of our vegetables from China within about five years?
How can that be right though? I mean, hasn't every technological "advance" in agriculture supposed to increase our production? Haven't we been told that the U.S. is the number one food exporter in the world? Haven't we all seen the news that told us we grow so much food that the federal government actually pays farmers NOT to produce or to minimize production of certain crops?
But now we are told by the USDA that up to possibly 40% of our vegetables needed for our use will be imported from China by 2013. Why on earth should that be the case?
I will tell you my friends, that the more we push technology to solve our problems, the more problems we create in society.
By creating advanced tech methods to grow more food with less manpower, we have fewer farmers. We have fewer people who know how to work in agriculture.
So when we have an economy that is greatly down, people can't afford to buy the local produce and grains, nuts, etc.produced by the commercial farms, they must downsize. What happens when there are fewer commercial farms or downsized commercial farms? What happens when they can't make enough money? They sell land and let workers go.
Who buys the land they sell? Developers for ever more suburban housing. When we need more crops when the economy improves, how do we reclaim that land? We don't.
Technology has cost us experienced farm workers, it has cost us land to grow crops on and it brings the agriculture system down to dollar bills, nothing more.
For all we are supposed to gain by implementing advanced technology in our society, it has only cost us dearly because instead of being used correctly, to supplement the work and abilities of people, it has been used to replace people instead.
Technology is supposed to prevent things that are 'missed' by people, such a salmonella outbreaks in eggs and meat being recalled due to contamination. Instead, because of the increased production, we find ourselves facing ever bigger and far reaching recalls that the technology missed.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology as long as it is used in it's proper place, as a tool.
Computers aren't meant to replace person to person communications, only facilitate them. We have studies and polls that show us that more and ever more people in today's world feel isolated and alone though.
People aren't just using computers to enhance phone service and communications, they use them to create virtual worlds where they can escape. They surround themselves with games that become ever more advanced and attempt to make the virtual world as or more appealing than the real world.
No wonder they feel isolated and alone. They have imprisoned themselves in technology.
The has come folks to "de-tech" ourselves. To re-connect to the real world around us. Put computers and machines in their rightful places as tools while we still work in the fields and the production plants and every other area.
Take a look at the movie Wall-E, that wasn't fiction my friends, that was prophecy. it was a warning that we are too dependent on technology to do things for us instead of just assisting us to do them.
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