Kit Knightly – Off-Guardian Jan 24, 2024

Have you ever made a prediction and wished you’d recorded it?

Last week, in a phone conversation with a family member, they happened to mention growing their own vegetables, and I said in reply “Enjoy it while you can, they’re gonna start claiming it’s causing climate change soon.”

Literally four days later…

Apparently, a new study from the University of Michigan has found that “urban gardening” is 5 (or maybe 6, they’re not sure) times worse for the environment than “conventional crops”.

I don’t know how they calculated it, and it doesn’t really matter. If you read the bodies of the articles they even say it only applies to some vegetables in some places and it all depends on how the “infrastructure” is put together.

The details aren’t the point. The point is yet another weapon in the war on food. More regulation, more commercialization, less freedom, all in the name of “fighting climate change”.

And if you’re doubting that’s the agenda here, check out the sheer number of government research agencies which the “supported” the research project:

Support for the project was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French National Research Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Poland’s National Science Centre, and the European Union’s Horizon 202 research and innovation program.

It’s a fairly obvious case of needing a study to support a position, going out and and buying one.

This is one of those stories that exists simply to be a headline, so some pundit can quote it on some political panel on primetime TV and start a conversation about “regulation”.

Since we started with a prediction, let’s end with another one: This is just the first step, and you don’t have to be paying especially close attention to see where it goes from here.

They are never going to make growing your own vegetables illegal, they are just going to make it increasingly difficult.

It will start with licenses, for food safety purposes or something. Maybe an outbreak of a disease will be linked to people sharing food from their allotments.

Licenses will be increasingly expensive, and come with restrictions. You’ll only be allowed to use seeds from specific approved vendors, seeds of GMO plants which “mitigate the impact of climate change”. These seeds will likely be “terminator seeds”, meaning they are sterile in the second generation.

And, in that fashion, growing your own vegetables will no longer be an individual and independent experience, but just another corporate subscription service.

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