The Problem
“Cheap food hid the bill. We’ve been paying it.”
For years we got food for less than it cost to grow. The land made up the difference. Now the land is asking for it back. That’s the bill.
For a long time, the land paid for the price tag.
Food got cheaper. Soil got tireder. Water got harder to find. The price didn’t change. The cost did.
Most of us didn’t see it. It wasn’t on the receipt. It was on the paddock.
You can see it on any fence-line that hasn’t had a rest in twenty years.
Skinnier grass. Harder ground. Dams that fall faster than they fill. Birds you used to hear. Insects you used to swat.
It’s not a story. It’s the country saying the same thing over and over.
The bill is on the paddock. We’re finally reading it.
The land can pay us back. We just have to stop borrowing from it.
Farm with the land and it heals. Heal it and it produces more. Produce more and you can pay for the work.
Fresh Earth turns that recovery into something anyone can join. From a phone. From five hundred bucks.
Neurath-style civic icons — twelve grain-sheaves in a row, each thinner than the last; below them a single dollar tick rising; brown ink on cream paper.
Cheap food hid the bill. We’re paying it properly now.