What does it mean to eat in a world where you scroll your virtual shopping cart through the isles and bag your groceries with a double click? The emergence of online food shopping offers a certain percent of the population an upgrade in easy access to their favorite foods, but how easy is too easy? You can now have a supermarket deliver your groceries to your door, get Amazon to overnight perishable goodies, and order pre-portioned ingredients to prepare a meal at home. Just like that, the already minimal connection consumers have with their food is intercepted by a combination of technology and laziness.

In her TedTalk, Winona LaDuke describes in great detail the histories of crops grown on her land and by her people. With such intricate details, her people are able to gain a better understanding of how to best grow their plants and sustain their land. In comparison, most stories around food for the average American most likely involve a grandmother and some type of pie (for me, it was brownies). Most of us have trouble tracking down the stories of our food much farther back than that.

With a deep, personal understanding of a food, as expressed by LaDuke in her stories, people have the knowledge necessary not only to sustain the growth of crops, but also to protect them from alterations from pesticides and genetic modification. With a history comes a certain respect and caring for a food and the land it’s produced on.

The monopolization of the seed industry and subsequent heavy uses of fertilizer leave the majority of farmers in a vicious cycle of debt, leading to increased suicide rates among the people who grow and harvest our food (Shiva). As farmers relieve themselves from the unlivable conditions our food system has created for them, consumers are relieved of having to travel to the grocery store, hand selecting their food, and carrying their take their goods back home.

As we continue into this century, it is time to rethink the farmer-consumer relationship. How can we use our technological advances and creative thinking to come up with systems that add ease to a farmer’s life in ways that such ease has been added to the life of the consumer? And so, ask not what your farmer can do for you, but what you can do for your farmer.