Zeitgeist: Food System

As anyone familiar with permaculture can attest, the three legged stool that creates the stable basis of it's practice as well as the foundation of a sustainable future, rests on attending to People, Profit and the Planet. This overabundant process requires that we think differently about our relationship with one another and the planet.
The "Planet" leg of the stool is about lobbing our "pitches" right over the plate into nature's sweet spot, giving her the opportunity to thrive and hit one out of the park every time. Rather than demanding corn out of every available acre, plant grapes, asparagus and perhaps nut trees for a triple harvest of high profit nutrient dense foods, not just "commodities" that produce dollars at the expense of water quality, unnecessary demands on transportation and ill health amongst the world's inhabitants. The reductionist approach to our commercial landscape has created mono-culture of demonic proportions. Raping the earth of her soil, nutrients and tilth.
Similarly, creating artificial demand for products full of empty calories and fat laden goodies simply for profit is the antithesis of permacultural values and logic. People are much better served through food systems that nourish them and sate their hunger and thirst rather than creating disease and mayhem within their bodies as so many "products" do today. I once worked at a cannery that added ingredients labeled "not-for human consumption" because they helped reduce biological activity in the "product". Permaculture asks not, what will create the biggest profit, without considering the affect that the decision will have on the earth and her people as well.
Lastly, and this is occasionally the most difficult leg of the stool to comprehend or put into practice, is "People". Equitable distribution of surplus, for there is always a surplus, is one of the ways to consider people in the process. Giving away food that has been produced abundantly in a permacultural system is similar to taxation. It requires that you think about the needs of others, care about their well-being, and understand the connection between us and "them". We are actually all one. Unlike taxation though, the relationship is best practiced face to face and reorients us to our community and basic human needs, values and possibilities.
We are, after all, living in an age that demands reestablishing connection to the planet and one another. Capitalism was based on the myth of scarcity. What ever comes next will acknowledge abundance, rewarding thrift and conservation of the Earth as well as Creator's gifts (Air, Fire, Water and Spirit)which provide all things in abundance if we don't despoil her or them. Throughput and externalities will be integrated our future or we as a species will perish.