WINNING THE LOTTERY

No, it wasn't me.  Have you missed me?  I apologize for being away a few days.  I've been teaching the Stockman Grass Farmer marketing and pastured pork production schools in Indianapolis and Dallas so have been a bit out of pocket.

 This morning, riding the shuttle to Dallas airport to fly home, everyone was talking about the lottery and what they would do with all that money.  The consensus seemed to be "buy a beach house."

 I did not participate in the discussion but listened to all the silliness.  Why are we so silly?  We've just seen yet another recall of a million pounds of tainted food, Costco announced it's going to develop its own factory farming system to produce 60  million chickens for its rotisserie sales, industrial food wants to put nanoparticles into our bloodstream, and these folks would take $1 billion in winnings to just buy a beach house?  Really?

 Where is the outrage at these things?  I did a radio show yesterday with "To Your Health" and the host asked me why more people didn't agree with my assessment of things.  My answer, as always, was simple:  "INERTIA."  We're all comfortable in our routines, the daily schedule, the entertainment/recreation portfolio, our political pigeon-holes.

 What would it take for me to get as many readers on my blog as the Kardashians have on theirs?  As a culture, we're fixated on football and beach houses while buying risky food.  Okay, enough rant for one day.  So I ask, what would you do with a lottery winning?  For the record, I have never and don't intend to ever play the lottery.  I think it's evil.  For sure, it's the most targeted regressive tax (albeit voluntary) in the country.  Rich smart people know better than to play it.  Mostly ignorant poor people play it.

 So if the winner decided to give me the lottery check, what would I do?  I'd help every struggling local food entrepreneur punch through the labyrinth of government regulations, from zoning to labor to food police, that keeps them from bringing food to market that is nutritionally superior, safer, and more authentic than what the current government agencies endorse and encourage.

What would you do?