You Are A Farmer

You Are A Farmer.

Yes, you there, reading this right now, YOU are a farmer.

Huh? You may say. Uh, no. I’m not.

Look, this might be hard for you to hear. But it’s true. If you buy your own food and wine, you are a farmer.

Farming may not be the job you get paid to do, but it is the business that you invest in every day. You are the head of a huge farming empire, actually, and you make daily choices about the way in which that empire is run and how the products of that business are produced.

If there is one truth that the world needs to re-learn, it’s that eating and drinking are agricultural acts.

Drinking Wine Is An Agricultural Act

That’s why Centralas is about connection.

The most important connection you can make is that what you choose to eat and drink literally shapes the way we manage and treat the millions and millions of acres of farmland on planet earth, and creates a massive global industry and supply chain that touches the lives of every creature under the sky.

You get to decide what chemicals do or do not get sprayed on tea plantations in India.

You get to decide how corn fields in Iowa are fertilized.

You get to decide if we should clear-cut and burn more virgin rainforest in Indonesia to produce palm oil.

You get to decide how cows in Oklahoma are treated and raised.

And You get to decide how wine is grown in California, France, Italy, etc.

You are a farmer. You are THE farmer.

You don’t have a choice in the matter, really. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re a farmer whether you want to be or not.

The only way not to be a farmer is to never eat anything, and never drink anything.

So really your only choice is what kind of farmer you’re going to be, and what kind of farm you’re going to create and manage.

You do this with every consumption decision you make. With every dollar that you spend on groceries, on coffee, on cheeseburgers with fries, on shots of vodka or bottles of wine, you are literally making farming decisions for the world.

It’s a daunting responsibility, and so it’s understandable that you’d resist it. But you can’t.

You can’t not be a farmer.

You can only be an ignorant, or irresponsible, or uncaring farmer. You can be a farmer who pollutes the world and destroys the health and well-being of all who live here.

Or... you can be a great farmer. You can be a farmer that makes the world a cleaner, healthier, more equitable, just, abundant and beautiful place than it was when you were born into it.

You will be either kind of farmer oh so very easily… simply by what you decide to eat and drink.