Fertilize it, aerate it, water it, and as soon as it grows a few inches, cut it off and throw it away.

To the casual observer, doing it once would be curious; but to do it on a regular basis would be the act of an insane person. The expenditure of labor is prodigious: the time and energy invested, the use of fertilizers and other poisons designed to murder dandelions and other innocent products of nature, the water usage, as well as the intricate system of pipes and valves designed to automate the watering process, the machinery required to aerate and cut it, and the petroleum products spewed into the atmosphere as lunatic urban dwellers battle nature in weekly rituals of mowing the lawn, collecting the cuttings, placing them in plastic bags and sending them to the landfill.

Modern America is a classic study of lunacy. While much of the world struggles to feed itself, urban Americans indulge themselves in meaningless and nonproductive tasks with utter confidence that soulless corporations will continue to provide their food and the necessities of profligate wasteful overindulgence. Innocent peasants may be starving in Darfur, but the shelves of Safeway and King Soopers are always full in the USA, and Burger King can still super-size anything.

The most fundamental principle of any military operation is the necessity for efficient supply lines. If we stop and think about it, the supply lines that bring food to our city are tenuous at best. If the trucks were to stop running, the supermarkets would be empty in a day or two and there would be no food. Our local environment has been so urbanized and removed from reality that it is not capable of producing enough food to feed its own population.

We live in violation of one of the most fundamental principles of a sustainable society, and that is self-sufficiency. How absurd is it that we expend huge amounts of time, money and energy growing grass and then outlaw owning any animals that might be capable of eating that grass. We pass laws that allow a multitude of dogs and cats to live within the city limits. Those cats and dogs produce nothing but noise and feces, while at the same time outlawing any animals that produce an edible product, such as eggs or milk or meat. Are we utterly insane?

We might be forgiven the stupidity of urban laws if the surrounding countryside was producing the necessary food to supply the city; but farmland has been converted into suburban estates that produce nothing except greenhouse gases and sport utility vehicles. What farms that are still producing belong to international corporations. I am reminded of a few years back when the poor people of Bangladesh were starving to death while corporate farms were exporting strawberries to the United States.

The City Council struggles with the idea of chickens in city limits. They should be seriously considering just how vulnerable we are to any disruptions in a very fragile food supply line that extends over a thousand miles to food sources. It is time to get real and realize how far we have strayed from the most fundamental principles of sustainability and survival.

Richard Shaffer lives in Fort Collins.