It’s been hard getting back into the groove of writing. The funny thing about consistent writing is that it takes practice, and sadly I’m a bit out of practice. Our lives have changed dramatically with the COVID-19 global pandemic. Our business was impacted positively while so many others were suffering from sickness, job loss and much more. We have spent years developing a home delivery business model that was catapulted forward literally overnight. We adapted to the situation rapidly while producer, processors and distributors were breaking down before our very eyes. Besides the psyche of hoarding toilet paper, the brittleness of our food system has become more evident than ever before. It’s a broken, dysfunctional food system created by bad policy and centralization over the past century.

As the food system goes, so goes the rest of society. This is the premises of Richard Manning’s book, Against the Grain (2004). The anthropological lesson of human social and political evolution suggests that the current global concentration of agricultural production, processing and distribution into fewer hands leads to a future of increasing human struggle and conflict. From the hunters and gatherers of early society to the highly industrialized chicken production and processing factories, all illustrate the lesson that the ways food is gathered, grown and distributed fundamentally shapes our society. Through the prehistoric, historic, and contemporary record of human adaptation, a reasonably clear pattern is easily discernible: as the food system becomes more centralized, so too do political, economic, and even religious systems. Though sometimes political change can precede agricultural centralization. Their is a prevailing myth based on the economic assertion that industrialized agriculture frees the remainder of society from toiling with the soil to pursue affluence. As I have said before, how often when asked what children want to be when they grow up do we hear them say “a farmer.” The industrial agriculture model of centralization and control of our food systems alienates and oppresses society's inhabitants.

Over the past century, the global shift to an industrialized form of agriculture is arguably as important for our world order as the emergence of agriculture itself thousands of years ago. The dawn of domesticated animals and plants brought with it profound changes in human adaptation—namely, the rise of cities, nation‐states, the emergence of centralized political power, the institutionalization of classes, armies, taxation, and many other characteristics resulting in a dramatic departure from a hunting and gathering past. The contemporary shift to a global industrial model of food production and distribution reveals equally compelling consequences for human adaptation.

All societies are shaped by a food production and distribution infrastructure that is essential to their survival. In the past, local or regional systems of food production and exchange shaped individual societies in terms of their social organizations, economic systems, and political structures. When the shift from subsistence production for one's own consumption gave way to production for market exchange, the production of agricultural surplus no longer meant feeding a society's inhabitants, but rather allowed political control over the distribution of a basic resource to serve other interests, such as accumulating wealth. Yet, this type of centralization was largely local or regional—even the expansive Roman, Ottoman, or Viking Empires were regional in scope largely because each entailed the notion of political expansion from one area to another. Today's globalization may be different, for with the centralization of agriculture around the globe, an infrastructure is present that allows for a global centralization of food production and distribution by multinational corporations. In other words, today's centralized global political order is not the result of political domination by one nation-state based empire over another, but rather a more insidious centralized world order emergent from a common centralized food system infrastructure controlled by nonstate entities. This emergent power wrests control of land and resources from local inhabitants and is notably present with the emergence of all instances of industrialized agricultural production.

Eroding social and economic consequences for rural areas are accompanied by a precipitous decline in farms. It is simply better for the social and economic fabric of rural communities to have more farmers producing food than to have production concentrated in the hands of a few. The core of the problem is that when farming is practiced on a scale that exceeds a family's ability to provide the main source of labor and management, industrial methods of production tend to emerge, in which ownership and management are separated from labor. As a result, this industrialized form of agriculture tends to become disconnected from the surrounding communities, resulting in social inequities, poverty, and a range of social, economic, and environmental issues.

Locally, industrial forms of agriculture leave community members and neighborhoods frustrated, distraught, and dismayed. More disturbing than the odor, water quality degradation, neighborhood social decay, or even the loss of family farms, is the realization by many that a government that should protect the public interest is frequently little more than a handmaiden of industrial agricultural interests. The larger cultural evolutionary and global contexts of these local and regional frustrations need to be brought to light so that the general public understands that their involvement in maintaining an equitable and sustainable food system is fundamental for ensuring a democratic society. Fixing the problem in any one neighborhood's backyard should not mean chasing large‐scale agricultural interests away to another neighborhood, or another part of the world. Rather, addressing the litany of problems brought about by facilities such as Industrial Livestock Operations means courageous pioneering and homesteading on the political prairies.

Manning's book reminds us that there is a connection between these larger‐than‐life issues, anthropology, and the mundane. The links between our food system and the challenges we face are the stuff of culture. As such, it can be changed, as Manning describes at the end of his book by sketching rays of hope via the growth of alternative food movements. But change can be found in the mundane if we do something simple at our next meal by asking: where is your food coming from and who's growing it? As for me, I'm going to keep on farming and attempting to make an impact one cow at a time.