The current system is not set up to get all the foods we actually need grown and prepared for us locally. So when the acute stages of The Great Reset happen and the big profit-focused supply chains have irreparably broken down, the reality is that there will be a period of time when this ‘old system’ stops providing for us, and when the new (or rather renewed) local supply chain system has been put in place.

Yes, there are some really good examples of Farmers here in the UK and elsewhere too, who are offering us all their dairy products, meats, produce and even beer that has come from crops and animals grown and prepared on the farm.

If you’ve tried what they produce, you will already know that its fantastically good. But right now its also very expensive – because of how the big corporate interests have such a ridiculous level of control.

If our politicians were awake enough and forward thinking enough to recognise what lies ahead – even though they bear much of the responsibility for it happening themselves, they would be doing everything they could to support our Farmers – who by their very nature are great innovators – to turn production on its head and grow and produce everything locally, either on their own, or as part of small and localised cooperatives that make practical sense with how different animals are taken care of and how different produce and crops are grown.

Politicians will not do that today, because like the big interests that profit from it, they have too much invested in everything continuing as it appears to be at the moment, and for it continuing to be run and to make money or to continue to benefit them in the same way.

We will have no option but to work with and support our local farmers to reequip and redesign their operations and business models when the time comes that we need them. This may even mean some of us literally getting out there and helping on the land. Otherwise the future beyond The Great Reset will be one where our lives revolve around little more than the question of what we will next have to eat.

The hard message to take in and consider here, is that without the changes in policy and the contingency planning that our out-of-touch politicians should today be taking care of, there is a period of time – that will hopefully be short – when in respect of at least some foods, but potentially a lot more and possibly everything that we need, we may have to go without.

We cannot rely on our politicians to do the right thing. We cannot rely on Politicians to keep everyone fed. We cannot rely on Politicians to keep the things that are vital to our life working, when things will no longer work, and the only solution Politicians have is to ask how much it will cost.

We have to Prepare, Produce and make Provision.

It’s time to start growing your own food.

Because of the way that the system around us has been developed to keep increasing and funnelling profits at the few, more and more of the lessons for life and good living – which are more often than not metaphorical – are being hidden from view.

Not only that. Very regrettably, because this whole system only works or benefits financial interests by becoming increasingly big, it means that the supply chains that get food to us – like the example of the production of the dairy products from cows – get more and more spread out over our Country, or even across borders too.

Supply chains involve more and more processing that involves more and more people and interests that we do not experience or see. And all the time this form of centralisation has been happening, the very stable, short supply chains that would mean all of the food that is grown or produced for us locally and where we can be in touch with the whole process, has all but been completely wiped out.

We are now in danger because we have become over reliant on a system that is already beginning to crash. And it’s a system that has been rebuilt so that it supports the way that big business works.

If you really want to understand how the basics of providing for life work, look no further than the cycles of activity that take place on one of those farms that too many of us overlook for providing our milk:

• The grass that grows in the early spring is cut in mid-late spring and early summer. The earlier cuts are turned into silage (fermented grass which in a process not unlike brewing, means that nutrients for the cows are increased). The later ones into hay (dried grass which you often see as very green looking bales).
• Silage and Hay are stored over the summer and early autumn, whilst the cows go out and enjoy all of their fields, whilst grass continues to grow.
• When the autumn and winter comes and the grass has stopped growing and the ground has become too muddy for the cows and their hooves, they move inside and under shelter, where they are fed with either their Hay or Silage, and sleep on beds made from the straw of cereal crops, so that they are all dry and warm.
• The Farmer will have planned and made enough Silage and Hay the previous spring and summer, to make sure that the cows have more than enough to eat for the whole time that they have to stay inside.
• Throughout this period, the herd of cows will be providing milk perhaps twice or even three times a day – that’s during spring, summer, autumn and winter, so that milk, cheese, yoghurt and anything else that is made with dairy products or ingredients of some kind can come and will continue to come your way.
• The whole process is a cycle that goes round and round. It never stops or finishes, if the cows and we want to continue to eat.

The Farmers prepare, produce and make provision. That way, their cows are always fed, can always produce their milk, so that we can all be fed and not go hungry too.

We cannot rely on any system where its reliability is based upon things that we cannot see or have no way to understand – i.e. you can’t pick up the phone or visit and speak to the farmer and ask in which field the wheat being sent to the local mill and then to the local baker to make the bread you eat, is being grown.

The only system that we can rely on, is one that we either have responsibility for ourselves, or is being driven and managed by other people we know and can trust. Because they are people who we may not be interacting with, but are around us and perhaps without us being aware, we are passing them and they are therefore in our lives each and every day.

As I write, I’m smiling. I know that there are people – and lots of them, who would respond to the direction of this book by jumping in and scornfully suggesting that what I am proposing does nothing more than hark back to either a medieval or romantically impractical age.

All well and good – if you live in a world that does everything for you, tells you that you can be everything to everyone else and does everything other than help you to help yourself, the very moment that even the smallest thing goes wrong!

The simple things are the most intelligent. It’s the process of storing up problems – and potentially catastrophic ones for us all, where the real £benefit for others of hiding their real motives behind complexity and a very complex system lie.

It is no accident that there are children in our cities and towns who have absolutely no idea that the milk they drink each day comes from a cow.

Somebody somewhere is benefitting from the accepted narrative continually going this specific way. And what you need to understand is that it is ALL about profit for the few.

None of how or why this system runs as it does is about anything that is good for you financially – as the messaging and culture we have tells us, or indeed your mind, your body and certainly not your spirit.

The age of consumerism is making us forget who we really are. It has dehumanised relationships, and this process has only been made worse by the arrival of the internet and smart technology – which pushes the focus of everything to the self or to our self-interest – which for all the good that the Net has the power to still do for us, this is above all the most hideous and socially destructive part of its darker side.

The truth of the matter is, that it is good to think ahead – even when we are not facing a national and worldwide crisis.

We need to learn – or rather relearn – to Prepare, Produce & make Provision.