Dear Mother: April/May 2009

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Barbara Gillihan
Fredonia, Kentucky

Back-to-the-land, Nitty-gritty, Sweat and Tears

I really love Mother Earth News. I used to love Organic Gardening, but it seems to be mostly advertising for what the articles are promoting. Mother Earth News is up on promoting their advertisers, but seems more like Consumer Reports when it comes to giving readers information. Kind of like my favorite seed catalog, Fedco: “Buy this seed ’cause we sell it, and it’s pretty, but here’s the downside.”

Please keep covering all the how-to, back-to-the-land, bare-bones, nitty-gritty, blood, guts, sweat and tears.

Freda Weis
Elizabeth, Illinois

From Passive Consumer to Handyman

Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your magazine. I started reading about a year ago, and we now have 10 hens, a garden and bigger plans for next year. A year ago, I would not have given a second thought to going to a big-box store to get anything. The other day we needed a part for our washer, and thanks to your “shop local, fix it if you can, make it last” message, I found a local appliance parts dealer (an old guy with a shed out back) and got my part. When the guy makes your change out of his wallet, you know you are affecting the local economy and not putting money in some overpaid CEO’s pocket. Thank you, and keep up the good work.

Bob Snook
Falling Waters, West Virginia

True Costs of Cheap Food

For 30 years, we’ve been fat and happy, living off a diet of cheap food produced by distant, faceless corporations encouraged by large taxpayer subsidies to replace age-old wisdom with trendy technology, brutal efficiency, and, most importantly, an endless supply of cheap oil and corn. The system worked so well and drove food prices so low that most small-time growers and farmers figured out they could buy food cheaper than they could make it, thus destroying an otherwise healthy, sustainable and satisfying culture.

The system looked good from afar, but, as we eventually learned, it was far from good. The true cost of cheap food is now clear: an unhealthy, risky food system that is imploding our health care system and wasting vast quantities of oil, creating endless generic sprawl, jeopardizing rural economies, as well as polluting our environment. What is most disturbing is that our tax dollars are promoting this policy, so in essence we’re paying people to get unhealthy and then paying their health care bills. An alarming 80 percent of our total health care costs are consumed by one-fifth of the population.

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