US Common Ground Podcast | AFFEW

younger people are are more aware and are stepping up on that you know trying to do better with that situation and even even healthy living or you know using organic practices when growing food and buying organic i mean not everybody can you know it costs more right now but you know with with a lot of things if more people buy a product then the prices go down

Well, economy of scale, as more people buy it, the price will go down.

So we move away from some of the food production practices that are taking place and replace them with more, you know, fresh foods.

And, you know, one of the things I've seen in Michigan is a lot of hothouse growing taking place.

You

know, we're

now...

People are actually growing plants, vegetables, et cetera, year-round because they've put up these structures.

It is possible to actually have fresh food that isn't imported from Peru or Chile or California grown in Michigan.

We just have to make it a priority.

Right, right.

And there are a lot of companies and startups and a lot of people that are researching, you know, ways to do that, you know, more sustainable.

I know I was saying something that you said earlier was uh you know using kelp as um either carbon sink or using it in products for like a little bioplastic so

yeah

there's different different plants and things like that it's it's exciting there's a lot going on and we just have to promote it and keep researching and fund it you know but yeah

there's there's a lot of plant-based applications that we haven't really uh been willing to go into because the oil-based, the petroleum-based applications of chemistry and so forth have been cheaper to do and easier to do.

And we've kind of built up a whole industry that's produced things like plastics from fossil fuels and so forth.

But we can do similar things using plant-based sources.

It's a matter of really thinking outside the box and thinking about how do we use the recyclable environment that we're in to its total potential.

And it's interesting because the native people, the first generation people, the people that were here before people came over on the Mayflower and so forth, were doing that.

They were using every bit of the environment in one way or another.

for agriculturally, for goods and services and so forth.

They had the idea of the earth being something that you take from, but you also give back to.

And, you know, that's something I think we could possibly reinvent with a modern touch.

Yes.