Get what you deserve. Create what you deserve.

Are you providing for your or your families’ base needs? Where is your food, fiber, and shelter?

You may count on the ribeye at Chili's on Friday or online pick-up for your grocery orders. Amazon has us covered…we can have almost anything we need within just a few days.

As for shelter, you may rent a nice place with a view of the river or a condo within walking distance to work or the best restaurants. Maybe you own a home in a nice neighborhood or a good school district.

Today’s agriculture producer is producing 1,000 acres of commodities or cheap inputs to sell to integrators, yet barely feeding their families on the efforts of their labor.

Many of our protein producers raise animals that aren't theirs, with a 20-year mortgage, astronomical energy costs, unmet labor needs, and low-profit margins. The liabilities are owned, but the assets are not. Much of our beef is being grazed on investor-owned land with cows purchased with borrowed money.

In the book, Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry remembered, at a meeting with agriculture economists, one farmer stood and said, "Professor, I don't think our ancestors came to America in order to rent a farm."

We get exactly what we deserve. We have allowed so many of our needs to be met by systems over which we have no control. I personally don't like a risk to my survival by being dependent on bureaucratic systems and policy.

My question is, what does it cost us and our society when producers don't own what they produce or the land they produce it on?

We don't care about the roof leaking when we are renting. It's not our problem. People will not make the same infrastructure investments when the land is not theirs.

When agriculture producers grow commodities that go into the supply chains of integrators, what incentives do they have for quality and nutrition?

The integrators add value and sell the profit-added food. In this model, low-cost production is key, and selling the largest mass of food is the goal. Low food cost stimulates the economy. It frees us from the drudgery of food production, saves mankind from toilsome labor, and allows creativity and growth of higher order skills.

Yet, it seems that the physically stimulating, mentally challenging, cultural connecting, and nature bonding interactions we are craving are all found in the tasks we have outsourced.

We’re seeking fulfillment through virtual farming games, 5 am workouts at the gym, joining the mirage of social media interest groups, hiking, hunting, or birding to fulfill the connections that are missing in our lives. In appearance, the idea of outsourcing our base needs to "AWAY" has created some inverted societal issues.

Drive down the road and count human service businesses vs human need production businesses and do an inventory. You will find that in most communities, we are out of balance.

It is ironic that some of the largest food deserts are found in our agricultural communities. In agriculture regions where the freshest foods should be available, we have access to a Dollar General and the all mighty pop-tart. As Seinfeld states, "Poptarts amazingly never go stale. Because they were never fresh, to begin with".

Rural American diabetes and obesity are chronic. Food policy has achieved cheap caloric energy sources but where is the nourishment? What has outsourcing our base needs cost us and our planet?

Any time there is a cost, someone is profiting. Someone is drawing the interest of yield from us and from the earth. The interest and profits are going somewhere. "You can't starve a profit into a cow." is a phrase that comes to mind. The wisdom was shared by a county extension agent and old friend.

I believe the cash cow of rural America has been starved out and consolidated to death by integrators, poor food policy, and financial investment interest. How much time did we trade to participate in and purchase a lifestyle planned for us by intelligent marketers? We've been sold and squeezed.

American agriculturalists have dug ourselves into a hole. The good thing is, that we also know how to dig out. Outsourcing genetics, finance, fertility, water, labor, marketing, and energy has weakened the ability of the agriculture producers’ systems to be regenerative.

If societies’ producers are not able to regenerate, societies will not regenerate. They are our base. A nation, state, community, or household must have its base needs to be covered if we want stability, regeneration, sustainability, renewability or whatever other flashy buzzword comes about next. If we are not intentional, the only way these come about is through chaos, destruction, and disorder, which eventually yields order. Wars, pickets, uprisings, starvation, and civilization collapse does not sound fun. We must dig out.

Common sense and reason was engrained within those who worked the land for sustenance and necessity. They knew that you cannot go the the field in August, get on two knees, fold our hands, and ask for a fall crop. They knew they had to prepare the ground and plant a seed in April. This was the instinctive knowledge that used to be passed down through generations.

We can't go to a two hour counseling session with our seventeen year old and fix ten years of problems. There are elements of time, space, and energy that must be accounted for. Forests take decades if not centuries to develop. If we cut the battle tested, time proven oaks down, they will not be back in that system in the same form. Ever.

Just as you never step in the same river twice, business, home, relationships, and you are constantly changing into a different form. Ecological succession doesn't happen overnight, however, ecology is in perpetual change to something.

What future are you growing? If you don't set the trajectory, it will be set for you and you may not like it. The current empty field will revert to a different mean. The field may be taken by new invasive plants, strong and vigorous and ready to accomplish in the new environment. To get anything different from the natural reversion to the mean, it will take guided, focused, energy.

How can you get what you deserve in life before you're a story of the past, defeated by the invasive?

You go Forward to the Basics.

In this series, I will lay out some ideas on getting what you deserve in life.

Part 1: Happiness is not Pleasure, Happiness is Victory

Part 2: Get your Eyes Checked

Part 3: Are you a Goal Digger?

Part 4: B.E.E.F.

I hope you follow along. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Feel free to comment below or reach out via email. If you prefer to live with security, freedom, and self-resiliency that will allow you to regenerate life and play another day, let's go Forward to the Basics.

Are you ready to dig?