Watermelon in Winter

I am eating watermelon.  It's January, and I am eating watermelon.

It occurs to me that my children may experience the loss of this forever-season of fresh fruit and vegetables.  They may see an end to the grocery stores we take for granted, now.  They may lose the variety of foods we have now.

My grandchildren may never know what it's like to have fresh fruit in winter.  They may never know what a lemon or lime tastes like, an orange, certain types of grapes and apples, bananas.

Bananas.

There's a threat to the banana.  Some kind of blight.  The banana our great-grandparents ate is not the same one we eat - theirs died out.  If this blight spreads, there will be no more.  No more banana bread, banana muffins, banana pops, banana smoothies...all that will remain is artificial flavoring, fake banana that doesn't taste right, but when the real thing is gone, who will know?

GMO plant life is contaminating heirloom varieties, and the companies that manufacture the GMOs are suing and winning over this contamination, forcing farmers to destroy their seed stock, pay fines, even shut down their family farms because wind and pollen don't recognize field boundaries.

People treat this planet like a giant rubbish bin, tossing their trash wherever they stand without even a twinge of conscience.  They treat our Earth like Gurgi's bag of endless crunchings and munchings, like there will never be an end to our finite resources, and if there is, who cares as long as it isn't during THEIR lifetime?

Fresh water is a joke.  What fresh water?  It is ALL polluted, ALL full of the medication our neighbors upstream peed out, ALL full of crap to one degree or another.  What passes for fresh has been treated with chemicals and additives, made "safe", but its still full of what's put there and what gets int it as it rushes through plastic pipes to our homes.

The oceans are so polluted, so over fished, they can't sustain life.  Will my children, my grand children, know what wild salmon tastes like?  Cod?  Tuna?  Crab?  Lobster?  Farm raised just isn't the same, and besides, we NEED life in the ocean.  Imagine all that vast expanse, dead.

Red meat is a nightmare.  So many diseases, now, and contaminants, drugs and chemicals.  It's not meat, it's a chemistry experiment.  What is it doing to us?  Chicken, too.  Wonder why your 7 year old is developing breasts?  McNuggets.  All that chicken.  All those hormones.

Our government has all but declared war on raw foods, local sourcing, untreated, unpasteurized, untainted meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, products.

A great deal of what is called "food" isn't - it's chemicals, fillers, artificial this and FD&C that.  It's processed and treated, pulverized into paste, rolled out, and reshaped to be a more perfect version of itself.

Here I sit, eating watermelon in winter.  I paid a few bucks for a small container of ready-to-eat chunks.  I wonder what the real price is?