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| Tomato Basket oil/canvas 16 x 20 x 1.5 |
are in full swing now and need our support. Since the 1950's, chemical farming has altered the way food is grown in our country. High-tech farming has lessened the quality of the foods and depleted the soil causing lower nutrient crops as well as increasing erosion. The yield per acre has tripled. Labor has been cut by 2/3. But energy use has quadrupled. Not a good thing....all sponsored by the petrochemical industry. According to Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy in San Francisco, the myth of world hunger has also been propagated by this same industrial outlook. Rather, hunger is not the result of poor production, but the result of social and political policies that cause farmers to plant commercial one-crop products that are exported for monetary gain, leaving the local and regional communities with little to nothing.
I have spent the past three weeks painting fruits, vegetables and other food items. I cannot paint without thinking of the subject and what this particular experience has to teach.
