Where does this food come from, anyway?

The grain elevator in Dorothy is pretty darn cool. Check out those hills in the distance! I was driving by with my brother-in-law a few years back and we just had to pull over to take a photo. As far as I know, it’s still there and in OK shape.

But it brings up a question – one I can’t answer here given my lack of time to write, but one that I’ll pose anyway – how many of us actually know where our food comes from? In this case the grain was taken from the fields right nearby and then stored until the train showed up. Then (I believe) it was brought by truck to the elevator and the conveyor in the elevator would bring the grain up and fill the railcars. At least that’s my understanding. This elevator isn’t for storage – it’s for loading rail cars.

Then it would get moved off to market. There are all kinds of other themes here, too – transport, pooling of product, monocultures, organic farming (or the lack thereof)… The fact that it’s near-impossible to grow just a little bit of wheat and deal with it in any profitable way given the way the modern food markets work…

I took the photo for a number of reasons – namely that it was a really interesting view and I’m always worried that these vestiges will pass quietly away before they can be documented. I didn’t really take any time to think of the actual use of it until I wrote this post. Form following function, but beautiful nonetheless.