Breaking Free from the Man with Hydroponics

In the last few decades, there’s been a lot of change in how we think about top-down power, our societal economy and our government, but for some people it’s still the late 1970s and ‘the man’ is still at the door, demanding lots of the money that we’ve earned, dominating us with instructions and regulations, and trying to tell us how to live our lives. In some communities and for some individuals, there is a real sense that we are ‘not free’ with evidence of this ‘unfreedom’ showing up in some unlikely places, including the dinner table.

While lots of people would not see any kind of conspiracy or power grab in play revolving around what people eat every day, there is a lot of evidence that food distribution has quite a bit of influence over our daily diet. A lot of this is just simple free-market economics, but with that in mind, the way that we eat has taken somewhat of a weird turn in the sense that Americans are now relying on cheaper processed foods rather than actual fresh produce and whole foods, which are now more expensive to buy simply because they’re more expensive to ship.

Okay, so for the conspiracy inclined, how do we get the man off our backs? One way is by growing your own food and eating better based on your own efforts to provide yourself with some of what you used to buy in the store. Obviously, rural people have a slight advantage, and a lot of those scattered around the American countryside have been using up a whole lot of empty land to produce all kinds of green foods. But now, with the rise of high design high-tech hydroponics equipment, urban dwellers and suburbanites don’t have to be left out of the equation. Hydroponics is leveling the playing field for people in cities or other built-up communities who still want to pursue their own small gardens in order to feed their families.

So if you’re agitated about how you see other people influencing your life, start with an easy hydroponic project to get free of big agribusiness and large grocery chains, and you’ll see how growing your own food can save you money and make you more empowered to pursue your own personal goals.