(NaturalNews) I didn't write a July 4th article this year. I was busy harvesting food out of my garden in Ecuador. Instead of celebrating geopolitical independence (which is what America's July 4th holiday is about, after all), I was celebrating my food independence.

This was the weekend that my gardens and orchards broke through a milestone, producing more than 50 percent of the food my wife and I consume daily. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out what we did this weekend:

• Pulled 40 fresh avocados off the tree.

• We have hundreds of fresh, sweet tangerines off the tree each week.

• Our garden is producing large quantities of cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli.

• We have an unlimited supply of green onions and red raspberries (year-round).

• We just pulled up our first batch of home-grown peanuts.

• Our four papaya trees are producing at least one fresh papaya fruit each day.

• Fresh pomegranates are nearly ready for consumption.

• Corn, tomatoes, zucchini and potatoes are all producing large quantities.

• Celery, carrots and strawberries are ready daily, right out of the garden.

• Our herb garden is producing massive quantities of mint, thyme, lemon balm and even dulcamara (a local medicinal herb).

• The aloe vera plants are growing like crazy, producing several large aloe leaves for juicing each day.

Thanks to all this abundance, we are harvesting and juicing fresh, organic produce from our garden every single day. And keep in mind that this food production is year-round, so we have fresh food every day. It's also 100 percent organic. I use only neem oil, tobacco, garlic and natural soap as my pesticides. All the crops get sprayed with seaweed extract once a week, and we apply ash from the local sugarcane mills on a regular basis.

True freedom requires food independence

Because of all this, I am now celebrating my food independence from the greedy, poisonous food corporations of North America. No more Dean Foods or PepsiCo in my life. No more being enslaved by Monsanto or ADM. No genetically-modified foods, pesticides, herbicides or terminator seeds are found around here. No long-distance food imports, no waiting in line at the grocery store with a stupid discount card and no more packing my groceries home in toxic plastic bags made from petrochemicals.

My food acquisition process has become ridiculously simple:

Step 1: Walk to the garden (60 seconds).

Step 2: Pick what I want to eat (5-10 enjoyable minutes).

Step 3: Prepare it (juice it, boil it or whatever).

Step 4: Eat it.

This process requires no financial transactions, no taxes, no transportation, no plastic wrappers and no coupons. It does not involve finding a parking spot, going into a building, carrying cash or inhaling the toxic vapors of detergent products that permeate all the aisles of modern grocery stores. There is no need to check a price, enter a UPC bar code or banter with grocery store clerks. Instead, I simply walk to the garden, harvest the food and eat it.

That this simple act is so astonishingly rare is, all by itself, a disturbing commentary about the state of the food supply in America today.

The Food Matrix

In modern America, people are not independent or free when it comes to food: They are slaves to a corporate-controlled system of food marketing, processing and delivery. They buy foods in pretty boxes wrapped in petrochemical-based plastic packaging. The food shapes, textures and nutrient profiles are highly divergent from the natural world, and foods that were once nutritious when harvested are processed, refined and bleached beyond all recognition. (I call it "the Food Matrix" because it's all a fictional world of food illusions.)

And on top of all that, the food is then fumigated, irradiated, pasteurized, fried, microwaved, cooked or otherwise destroyed by heat to such a degree that it becomes utterly useless to the human body. This is what passes for "food" in America today: A collection of nutritionally-obliterated, hormonally-enhanced, chemically-adulterated shapes of refined whatever, all hyped up to make them seem like real food when in fact they're just agricultural byproducts devoid of any real nutrition.

But today in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, we are finally free from any enslavement under such a system, and we have achieved a level of food independence that will see us through any global food crisis or crop failure.

It took about 18 months of planning and hard work, plus some up-front money to purchase the land near Vilcabamba Ecuador. But now it's paying off, and from here forward, our home-grown food supply will only become increasingly abundant.

Americans remain enslaved, even on Independence Day

As one of the few Americans who is now truly "food independent," I find it astonishing to watch the July 4th celebrations in America, where people light up fireworks and celebrate their "independence" while snarfing down processed hot dogs, factory-farmed beef steaks and acidic Pepsi products laced with aspartame. When it comes to freedom, most people remain dangerously ignorant of reality. They are walking contradictions who enslave themselves with every bite they take, even in the midst of a so-called "Independence Day" celebration.

When your food is controlled by dangerous, powerful, monopolistic corporations that are actively working to destroy the organic industry, pollute the DNA of plants with genetically-modified seeds and destroy local farmers with their predatory agricultural practices, you are not free. You are enslaved by your dependence on the so-called "food" they provide.

By the way, if you want to free yourself from being a corporate food slave, move to Ecuador. I've posted pictures on four properties available right next to my own ranch, where the soils are rich and the climate is perfect for year-round food production. Check out the photos here: http://www.naturalnews.com/phototou...

(And if you're interested in any of these properties, email us at vilcaland@gmail.com and we'll put you in touch with the sellers...)

If you can't get to a place where you can grow your own food year-round (like Hawaii, or Ojai, California), I urge you to grow as much as you can in your own garden. In a global food crisis, a home garden could very well mean the difference between living and dying. And it's a source of real food that cannot be taken away from you or destroyed by the FDA, FTC or USDA (not yet, anyway).

True independence requires you to have an independent source of food

Do you think you're free in America? Think again: If you depend on the local grocery store, restaurant or soup kitchen for your food, you aren't free at all.

The goons in charge have figured this out, too. They know the best way to control any population is to control the food supply. That's why the U.S. government is dreaming up dangerous new laws that would control the production and transportation of food (http://farmwars.info/?p=1145).

Meanwhile, monoculture farming is devastating crops in the Eastern U.S. (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...), and a strange new fungus is destroying 80 percent of the wheat crop in Africa. It's expected to reach the U.S. in a few short years (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...).

It's not difficult to do the math on this: Monoculture farming, genetic modification, unrelenting topsoil depletion and the criminal chemical abuse of our farmlands with pesticides can only lead to one thing: An eventual collapse of the food bubble.

And when that happens, those loaves of bread that magically appear on store shelves each night will suddenly stop being replenished. Food that once seemed abundant will vanish, and the delivery pipelines that keep stores stocked with the illusion of abundant food will collapse, revealing the bleak reality of food scarcity.

Remember this: Ninety percent of Americans are one paycheck away from bankruptcy, and one meal away from panic.

If the food supply is ever disrupted, America will see itself transformed from a first-world nation to a third-world shipwreck in less than 72 hours. Because if there's one thing that an over-fed, under-nourished and radically obese population can't stand, it's being cut off from a supply of cheap, empty calories. You can take away Americans' car companies, banks, houses and retirement accounts, but mess with the food supply and you're facing a real crisis.

Personally, I saw this coming years ago, and I don't want to be sitting in the middle of Los Angeles when the crop failure reports hit the airwaves and the National Guard is called out to distribute government cheese. I'd rather be sunning in the Valley of Longevity, biting into plump, raw figs and avocados, living as a free citizen, independent from the machinations of the military-industrial-agricultural complex that dumps fluoride into the water supply and sprays chemical insecticides on our land.

Wherever you are, I wish you the greatest of success in shoring up your own food supply, and I urge you to plan ahead for the coming food crisis that will likely devastate populations around the globe. Long-term food storage is one option (www.BePrepared.com), but growing your own food on your own land is even better. And for that, you need to have soil-rich land in a climate that can support food production year-round.

There are only a few places like that in the Western hemisphere. Hawaii is one such place, but the labor prices there are prohibitive (and you're still under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government). Mexico, Central America and South America all offer fantastic opportunities for true food independence. Ecuador is currently the best thing going, and there is a growing population of Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Australians coming to Ecuador to find their own little piece of paradise where they can live as truly free individuals.

And here, we don't celebrate July 4th. You know why? Because every day is Independence Day in Ecuador. We're free citizens -- with our own independent food supply -- every day of the year.

Check out some of the amazing photo tours I've posted on Ecuador:

Properties available in Hacienda San Joaquin:

http://www.naturalnews.com/phototou...

Stunning pictures of the Podocarpus National Forest near Vilcabamba:

http://www.naturalnews.com/phototou...

Ancient Inca cities near Quito, Ecuador:

http://www.naturalnews.com/phototou...

Flowers of the Ecuadorian highlands (near the Papallacta hot springs):

http://www.naturalnews.com/phototou...

The pristine waters of Vilcabamba

By the way, because so many people have asked me about the quality of the water supply in Vilcabamba, I acquired a Watersafe Drinking Water Test kit from Silver Lake Research (www.SilverLakeResearch.com). I pulled a pitcher of water from the canal running right through my property. This canal is fed directly from the river running westward out of Vilcabamba, alongside Hacienda San Joaquin and continuing toward the coast.

The test results, which anyone can replicate here, are as follows:

Total Nitrate / Nitrite (fertilizer runoff): ZERO

Nitrite: ZERO

pH: 8.0 (alkaline)

Total hardness: near-ZERO

Total chlorine: ZERO

Lead contamination test: NEGATIVE (no lead)

Pesticide contamination test: NEGATIVE (no pesticides)

Bacteria test: (results still pending as they require 48 hours)

I also brought a TDS EZ meter which measures Total Dissolved Solids. (Made by HM Digital.) This device measured the water right out of the canal as having only 16 ppm of total dissolved solids. This level of pristine water is typically only found after filtration such as reverse osmosis or carbon block filtration. And yet, this water was taken right out of the canal running across my property.

The bottom line on Vilcabamba's water? While I can't make a blanket statement about all the water around Vilcabamba, the water coming out of the town and running westward down the Vilcabamba river (after exiting the town) is astonishingly clean, containing no detectable pesticide residues, lead contamination or nitrites / nitrates from fertilizer or animal runoff. The water has no chlorine in it, the pH is astonishingly alkaline, and the total dissolved solids count is what you'd normally find in filtered or bottled water.

You would be hard-pressed to find better quality water anywhere in the world. No wonder the plants here grow so abundantly! Water, sunshine, soils and seeds... it's nature's recipe for health and longevity. Maybe that's why they call it the Valley of Longevity.

www.naturalnews.com/z026567_Vilcabamba_water_America.html