The next few weeks are going to be very interesting. We have a collision unfolding in center field, just past second base. And the Umpire, Mr. USDA is right on top of the action; he doesn't want anyone to know that he's been bought off.

Screaming "I got it!" while charging from center, the movie Food, Inc. started last week on June 12, 2008. It spreads into more theaters this week and next. Reviews agree: you will leave the movie theater changed. Lets assume you are changed so much that you swear you're going to eat organic, whole foods only, and if that means no more eating out, and supporting your local farmers only, so be it.

Lumbering ungracefully in from way out in left field with all the stigma it carries, we find OTA's watering down of the organic standards while shouting out "I got it!". Many of the OTA's members have been actively engaged in deceptive practices in collusion with the umpire. Take the every popular Silk soy milk brand. Dean Foods claims that there is a shortage of American farmed organic soy beans and therefore have been forced to buy their soy beans from elsewhere...

Shortage is defined like this: Dean Foods cannot find American grown organic soy beans at the price that Dean Foods wants. It's a price that if farmers accept will drive them right out of business. And who else are they going to sell to and receive a fair market price?

There is no shortage. American farmers have plenty of organic soy beans to meet the demand, but to submit to the gun that Dean Foods holds to their heads is asking the American soybean farmer to commit financial suicide.

Coming in from right field, after watching the movie Food, Inc. is the American consumer screaming "OMFG!! I've been eating WHAT!?!?!? Give me organic foods!!" only to find that America's largest organic grocer, Whole Foods, has remade itself into a conventional supermarket with better lighting and ambiance, while supporting other OTA members in their war to call their products organic while knowing very well that they are not. All to charge the consumer with higher prices.

Catch the irony: Whole Foods has been riding the organic wave for years, all the while helping watering down the standards so they can sell conventionally produced foods as organic and charge a higher price for it. Why else did you think Wal-Mart and Target got into this racket?

There's a lot more about BigAG and the OTA than meets the eye. Sure, go ahead and laugh at the crunchy activists who swear by eating organic only to find that it isn't organic after all. Regardless of your belief systems, political affiliation and upbringing, each of us belongs to the same group: "those who eat".

Maybe by now you get it: we're all in this together. I hope you do because the next steps are to relocalize the entire food system. Scary? You bet. Do-able? Absolutely. It will not be a political solution though. We who eat are far more powerful than those who make. Support your local organic farmer now!