Let's just buy a hat and forget

During a recent chat with a developer, I asked if he was going to move his family into this great new “enhancement” he was planning for Botetourt County.

Well, no.

He lives on a farm that backs up to government-owned land. “That’s not the lifestyle I choose,” said the builder of the townhouses.

I don’t think living in a condominium, or looking at them, or fighting the traffic created by whoever does live in them, is the lifestyle anybody who already lives out here has chosen, but I don’t see that stopping developers from forcing it down our throats.

Yay for him for being able to “choose” while the rest of us watch helplessly.

What right do you have to close the doors? the developer asked.

My ancestors moved here in the 1700s, I said. My genes have been around for a long time. It ought to count for something.

The growth in this county is all about money. It is not about “enhancements” or community or doing good. It’s about greenbacks and $100 bills and getting yours while trampling on the backs of the farmers and others who’ve sweated, tilled, and toiled until they dropped dead in the furrows of the soil.

What will we do when the farms are gone? What will we do when we’re on the downside of “peak oil,” if we’re not already, and there’s no way a farmer can afford to farm?

I hear you poohing-poohing my concerns. Never happen, you say. We’ve got miles of land. Somebody will feed us.

Meanwhile, am I the only one who’s noticed that the produce from the grocer is rotting before I can get home? Noticed that the selection of vegetables is slim and none? Are we all going to live on macaroni and cheese?

One fifth of all U.S. energy consumption involves our food supply. We don’t farm with horses anymore. Check this out: synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, essential for high crop yields, are a byproduct of natural gas. Farm machinery, necessary to gather grain, uses gasoline and diesel. The factories that process all of that food and make the pasta for the macaroni require electricity. And all of those trucks hauling food 1,500 miles across the country so that it ends up on your table use countless gallons of fuel.

That’s why a bag of salad that used to cost $1.49 now costs $3.49. It’s why we have less disposable income to buy MP3 players or clothing or an occasional rib-eye steak.

Farmers cannot pass their costs along to you. They don’t get two percent cost of living increases. They’re on the bottom of the food chain. They’re the beginning, and they’re the end, because when they are done, the rest of us are done, too.

Petroleum is a non-renewable resource. Water is a non-renewable resource. Land is a non-renewable resource.

When we use those things up, that’s it. Finito. End of the line. Bye bye humanity.

Our food supply is in danger. It’s in danger from development, it’s in danger from the higher prices of gasoline (if you can’t afford it, it may as well not be there), it’s in danger because people don’t have gardens and grow their own zucchini.

Meanwhile, let’s applaud another new housing development, add more retail shops and watch with fascination while huge construction machinery in Daleville bulldozes the apple orchard, apples still clinging to the trees.

Maybe if we go buy a pretty little hat or a sofa for that new house, it’ll all go away.