Learning from the Market Basket strike

Wow a lot has happened while I was romping around down in South America! I am assuming that most people have heard about the strike currently waged by Market Basket employees due to the firing of CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. Apparently this guy is pretty great, as he is reported to actually care about the people that work for his company (shocking) and works to keep costumers happy with consistently low food prices. I mean, there are lots of people putting their livelihood on the line and boycotting Market Baskets everywhere to stand up for him so I am thinking that these claims are probably true.

But all company politics and hearsay aside, I'd like to quickly extrapolate what I think is the key take-home message here for all of us food shoppers. Specifically, how quickly and easily we can be cut off from our food supply.

We all (or most of us) rely on supermarkets for most, if not all, of our food. It is how the modern world is fed. Yet the entire food production process is entirely out of our hands (except for the consumer influence on the market, which may or may not really exist. Discuss at will). This, to me, is a little scary. Like, really scary actually. And the Market Basket strike demonstrates just one of many potential wrenches that can be thrown into the system. So all I am saying here is, whether or not you are already preparing for an impending apocalypse, it is wise that we all take a closer look at our local food sources and try to use them as much as possible in order to minimize our reliance on supermarkets. Because it is all to easy for something to cut us off from the food provided by these giant companies where any number of things that can go wrong along the supply chain. Definitely something worth thinking about...