Response to Todd

Todd: Thus, I raise the question of if it is possible to incrementally eliminate the factory food system with the slow push of the hunter-gatherer method? Should we teach this to our children instead of grocery bought foods? Or is it too late?

Interesting questions, no doubt, and I would like to address a few things within your post before I begin. While it may be a compelling example I do not think "The Omnivore's Dilemma" truly proves anything. Now I have not read it, that is fair, but it is far from the end arbiter of such topics.

I would posit, perhaps prematurely, that yes it is possible to incrementally initiate an innovation to, rather a gradual demolition of factory farming. And yes, I think it possible to switch the a hunter-gatherer method of obtaining food. The question I wanted to address most was whether or not this should be taught to our children instead of grocery bought foods.

I do not think it is too late, even for our generation, those raised on supermarkets and fast food joints. I do not hunt, nor do I gather, I have not the time, I do try to purchase from farmers markets and locally grown food, but it still is not the same. The issues is not of time, I think, but of practicality. If we were to start teaching our kids to hunt and gather rather than buy, there would have to be enough wild food readily available, is there? I do not know, that was not a rhetorical question. We might also consider Mary.

Who is Mary you might ask? I'm glad you did.

Mary is a forty year old single mother of two children. She and her two daughters live in a small home she was able to bu with a loan she's having trouble repaying. Why is she having trouble? Well, when she took out the loan she had a steady job managing the local supermarket, but lately so many customers have stopped coming because they have switched to a hunter-gatherer method. She lost her job. She's now scrubbing the floors of a local high school during the day and working at a gas station by night. She doesn't have the time to hunt and gather herself so she still needs a place to buy food, though there aren't many left, and they're getting more and more expensive.

I do not mean to argue from a single possibility, but it speaks to the possible difficulties in this switch. You mentioned incrementally, which may help to alleviate some of these problems, but not all of them. In this economy, a job lost is not a job easily gained elsewhere.

Question: What would be the economic ramifications of switching to a hunter-gatherer method?