Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Does

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Ellen LaConte

Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Does
There are at least five reasons why more of us should take up the spade, make some compost, and start gardening with a vengeance.

March 29, 2011 |


Spring has sprung -- at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it -- and the grass has 'riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food -- all of which are also becoming more expensive -- or less food.

In some American towns, and not just impoverished backwaters, as many as 30 percent of residents can't afford to feed themselves and their families sufficiently, let alone nutritiously. Here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina where I live it's 25 percent. Across the country one out of six of the elderly suffers from malnutrition and hunger. And the number of children served one or two of their heartiest, healthiest meals by their schools grows annually as the number of them living at poverty levels tops 20 percent. Thirty-seven million Americans rely on food banks that now routinely sport half-empty shelves and report near-empty bank accounts. And this is a prosperous nation!

In some cases this round of price hikes on everything from cereal and steak to fresh veggies and bread -- and even the flour that can usually be bought cheaply to make it -- will be temporary. But over the long term the systems that have provided most Americans with a diversity, quantity and quality of foods envied by the rest of the world are not going to be as reliable as they were.

What's for Supper Down the Road?

As they move through the next few decades Americans can expect:

* The price of conventionally produced food to rise and not come down again;
* Prices to rollercoaster so that budgeting is unpredictable;
* Some foods to become very expensive compared to what we're used to;
* And other foods, beginning with some of the multiple versions of the same thing made by the same company to garner a bigger market share and more shelf space, to gradually become unavailable.

...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/food/150428/garden_as_if_your_life_depended_on_it%2C_because_it_does/

[xchrom]

1. the price of food is going to be a stickler for the political status quo.

they helped to make this crisis.

[Catherina]

2. Rec'd. Which reminds me, I need to take care of the compost today.

To this all I can say is rec, rec, rec!

Get chickens too.