"The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they feed themselves."        -Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)

Our relationship to food not only determines our health and well being but what we choose to buy directly impacts the supply and demand of the food chain. Perhaps the old adage, "we are what we eat" is truer than ever. We put it in our bodies, buy it, prepare it with love and share it with friends and family. Some of us are lucky enough to grow it. Yet today only three companies control 20% of the world’s seed supply, Pioneer (now owned by DuPont), Monsanto (now owned by Pharmacia, formerly know as Upjohn) and Norvartis (the spawn of the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy). Monopoly control of anything as precious as the resource of seed for food is a formula for catastrophe. Seeds grown for generations are now replaced by Genetically Modifed Organsims (GMOs). Our farmers are caught in a cycle of dependency. Three quarters of the world’s crops of soybeans, corn and canola are grown in the US. The corporate seeds are designed with a “terminator gene” and cannot be replanted from the previous season’s crop. The farmers are forced back year after year to buy seeds rather than reap the cycle of self-sustaining, biotic communities that have been maintained for millennia.