The old saying that you are what you eat is often only said at dinner tables when making some sort of humorous response to the dish being presented. In our modern context, it is not only true but also of great importance in the big scheme of things.
Being a Prince George certified organic farmer, I may have a very biased opinion when it comes to food. However, I did not always have this bias nor have I always been a very concerned organic-farmer.
I often say that the very act of eating is the most intimate affair that a species such as our own can partake in. Think about it. Every time you eat, you are in fact deciding (consciously or unconsciously) that this vegetable/meat/bread/pasta is good enough to take into your body and be used as energy and the formation and repair of your cells. I don't know about you, but personally, I don't want an oil laden, languid, lab experiment that has been ever so beautifully packaged in plastic and marked as a consumable "food product" to be creating my cells. Recently, the World Health Organization has decreed that processed meats are on par with that of other cancer- causing products such as tobacco.
Oh, sweet breakfast meats, say it isn't so!
Some paintings have become iconic because they portrayed a comforting scene and elicit some stories or memories of the past. Almost habitually, when one thinks of a farm where food is produced, they think of a red barn with green pastures and animals roaming freely and grazing in a beautiful field. Or perhaps your painting is a river valley bottom field with farmers working bountiful rows of vegetables. Those paintings and thoughts of farms invoke happiness, but the origins of the majority of food production areas are quite the contrast of those pastoral scenes. The image of the degradation of my hometown's watershed located in the breadbasket of the United States (Kansas) in the form of massive fish die-offs through eutrophication caused by fertilizer run-off is something that most residents of the north have not had the pleasure of being burned into the memory of a farm scene.
The Google definition of eutrophication is "the enrichment of an ecosystem with chemical nutrients, typically compounds containing nitrogen, phosphorus, or both." When eutrophication, occurs you can see massive fish die offs due to the algae consuming the oxygen in the body of water.
After a nice trip to the San Joaquin Valley of California (the biggest vegetable production area in the US) in my early twenties, I also had the pleasure of burning a scene of a strawberry farm complete with biohazard suited farm workers spraying into small poly tunnels into my cortex. I bet you would never see that scene block-printed as a logo for any of the strawberry farms' packaging. If you don't enjoy the last depictions of the conventional food production models, then I would suggest that you eat from the landscapes that gives you joy to look at. Not only will eating from an ethically-driven small local organic farm be good for you and your children, but it will ensure that the image of what a farm should look like will continue to exist in reality and not just in old paintings.
Recently our brightest scientists have learned that by genetically engineering an animal to lack a certain protein that stimulates the cingulate cortex, that animal does not become hypersensitive to a subsequent painful stimulus such as a normal animal would. So now, your beautiful breakfast plate full of bacon may come with meat produced without any pain from the horrid conditions that it had to endure when it was a pig. Pain-free cancer meat may not be a great marketing tool, but then again I am sure someone will enjoy the idea.
If you want a pretty farmscape then I suggest you eat one. Would you not rather be a happy frolicking, mud loving, thistle rooting, sun-bathing pig than the alternative zombie slave pig that does not feel pain? Do not forget that dollars cast stronger votes than the ballot. Eat seasonally, locally and go and vote wisely because your life and that of others in far-away places may depend on it.
