If I may ask a few questions of you…Stop for a minute and think about last nights dinner.

Home cooked meal from a can or box? Fast food? Take out? Restaurant?

Where did the food come from that you ate? How far did it travel to get to you? How long before you consumed it was it prepared? To get it to you without being completely rotted, was it preserved like an Egyptian mummy, embalmed like a corpse? Was the meal processed at a factory and pre-packaged for your convenience, again, pumped full of ingredients in the processing listed on the label that you can’t even pronounce?

What if there was a truckers strike..or if a disease pandemic hit….that lasts a week, a month, or three months. Would that food still have been available to you? Have you ever seen the shelves at Wal-Mart and Food Lion when a big snow storm is coming? Why do the shelves go bare? Don’t they have more “in the back”?

Do you know that produce is genetically modified, bred, and grown so that it ships well and looks nice on the shelf….not so that it is nutritious and healthful to eat?

And regarding the Standard American Diet (SAD). Did you know that the SAD is the primary reason behind the deteriorating health status in the US? Did you know The SAD has more calories but less nutrients than ever, and that these calorie dense, nutrient poor processed “food-like” products account for more that 70% of SAD?
{Stats courtesy of Dr. Nat Kirkland}     www.kirklandintergrativemedicine.com

What if you had obtained the food you had eaten from your yard, or your own garden, or a local market where the distance the food you purchased traveled is measured in a few miles, not continents. What health benefits would you receive from eating food that is grown to be nutritious and healthful, instead of tough skinned and shiny, or preprocessed, boxed, and shipped?

OR…

The answers to these questions may make a serious difference soon. The food system worldwide is quite fragile. Limited petrochemicals are used to create farm factories that produce food in an unsustainable manner. These farms requires enormous inputs of water, pumped from depleting aquifers, genetically modified seed that allows the spraying of glyphosate (Round-up) that yes, kills almost all the weeds, but is also taken up in the eaten plant.

The factory farm then has to insert the seed in ground with no real soil (it has washed into the ocean and those areas are now susceptible to another dust bowl) and spray it with fertilizer. This erosion has washed into the Gulf of Mexico creating a dead zone due to nutrient enrichment from the Mississippi River, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous. Soil loss from erosion due to the factory farm methods being used is measured annually in multiple “Tons per Acre”! They are using these methods with the belief that production rates utilizing this method surpass any other methods, and that the ends justify the means.

1930’s dust bowl

Then, they spray with insecticides and fungicides, and the finished product is shipped by diesel burning truck across many miles for days and (weeks sometimes) to its destination, where it is processed in a manner that it can be shipped and served up in a box.

To coin a phrase from Joel Salitin… “Folks, this ain’t normal” (I highly recommend his book of the same title).

Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World

 

Some words we should learn or re-familiarize ourselves with are:

Canning
Fresh Produce
Farmers market
Larder and Pantry
Freeze Dried
Dehydrating
Curing
Fermenting
Pickling

I was talking with my brother-in-law from NJ while on vacation about hurricane Sandy. It was reported that people in New York City…average, middle class people, were dumpster diving for food after the SECOND DAY OF THE CRISES! No more on the shelves at home than that?!

Gramma takes the twins dumpster diving for dinner…

I believe that almost everyone has room for food producing plants and trees (or even a shelf with some pots with vegetables on the balcony) and can begin to correct the rise of this “food insecurity”.

And it doesn’t have to be difficult. Plants can be planted in a way that they help each other, following God’s design. Look at the forest here in Virginia. The acorns grow into small Oak trees growing up through a mixed canopy, shaded early on and nourished by the Laurel shrub and other understory plants and eventually become canopy trees themselves, producing huge crops of acorns without any biocides or tractors or tilling or weeding at all. This concept is a key component of Permaculture Design.

So, rephrasing my original question…do you know about the sources, healthfulness, and reliability of your food…and when you do, are you ok with the answer?

OR…