A Society Grows on Its Stomach

We are so inundated by an abundance of material goods in this country that we have lost complete contact, awareness, and knowledge of its primary major strength. Every single person in the U.S. is a recipient to some degree of the fruits of this strength and almost every foreign country in someway also is benefited. But, were it not for the most basic supply of all, we couldn't have achieved the strides in production we have nor would human population be increasing as it is. This basic supply is the one thing along with water and air that no person on this Earth can do without--food.

The one discovery that let man get away from the forests, savannas, plains, pampas, and jungles was recognizing and learning how to grow the food he wanted so that it would always be at hand. Maybe it also was so that he wouldn't have to search or relocate so far from home to find game or gather herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and all of the other things necessary for living at the time. How and why man developed farming remains a mystery and I'll leave it as such. But, farming for oneself and family has developed over the millenia into large corporations and conglomerates that produce and control much of the diet of technological countries and are fast ruining stable healthful diets of the rest of the world. It is hard to go anywhere and not find some product or artifact of industry-produced food, be it treats, snacks, or something more substantial.

An adage has it that armies travel on their stomachs, a truth that is so apparent that most people don't consider its profoundness. Most of the ancient armies survived on breads they could make over campfires or on provisions carried individually by each soldier. Most of the richer rulers waging war tried to feed their armies but all to often had to resort to pillaging for food anyway. The Romans developed a type of hardtack to feed soldiers and records show that other foodstuffs were also carried along. The Roman hardtack became the mainstay of Roman armies because it was almost completely unspoilable. Other armies of Europe carried other kinds of breads similar to hardtack which also maintained their edibility for long periods and the British seem to have perfected its production for their seaman.

Over the ages rulers experimented with all kinds of ways to preserve and carry provisions for their armies. But it was Napoleon who recognized that an army travels on its stomach and offered a 12,000 franc prize for a process which could allow him to carry provisions with him in his campaigns. This stimulated the development of the can, though hand made at the time. Napoleon never got to use canned goods for his armies because the canning process was so laborious and developed too slowly for him to take advantage of it. He was long out of office when commercial canning finally came into its own.

All this is about showing how military campaigns affected the supply of food as we know it today. Without their impetus we in all probability would not have preserved and packaged foods today. We might well still be agriculturally bound societies instead of technologically dependent.

Providing food for the military in many countries seems to have been the primary motivation, next to profit, for the development of the present food processing and distribution system in technological countries. All “developed” countries have industry, technology, and pervasive food-distribution at the base of their economies and societies. Without any of these, their present societal structure would fail disastrously. The United States would be no exception, although there are many people living in rural areas who could and would find ways to feed themselves. But the thrust of all this explanation is that, without the present food processing and distribution motivated by military needs, none of today's technological societies could exist. As armies march on their stomachs, societies grow on theirs.

Think about it.

Walk in Peace, Love, and Happiness.