Monday, July 16, 2007

Can You feed Yourself?

Can you feed yourself?

I bet you’re saying right now, “What kind of question is that? I’m an adult, of course I can feed myself.”

Really? Okay.

Let’s say, for example, that your car died, or ran out of gas, or something. Could you feed yourself then?

Sure, you say. I have stuff in the fridge, a few things in the pantry. We’re set.

Cool. The average person has about a week’s worth of food in their house at any given time. So what if something happened that made the problem worse? Suppose we had another OPEC oil embargo, like in the 70’s? If you’re not old enough to remember it, the Wikipedia article isn’t bad.

Gas stations ran out of gasoline quickly, and the price almost doubled overnight. Could you pay $6.00 a gallon tomorrow? That’s if you found a station open that still had gas.

This is an important issue. Think about it. Where does your food come from? Most is trucked in, some from other countries. Trucks run on diesel.

If the price of oil goes up, the price of food goes up too. People panic and empty shelves just like they do in any disaster or coming storm. Once you found an open station and paid double the price, you might get to the store and find nothing there. Now what?

(If you think this premise is stupid, what about a flu pandemic where everyone is quarantined? Terrorists bomb our oil fields or pipelines? I’m sure you can think of more real scenarios than I can.)

I ask again: Can you feed yourself?

I submit that most Americans have lost the ability to feed themselves. We’ve bought into the idea of convenience. It’s easy to go to McDonald’s and buy a burger. It’s easy to run to the grocery store.

It’s almost as easy to really feed yourself, by learning to grow some or all of your own food.

People used to be able to do that. During WWII, fifty percent of homes had “Victory Gardens” where they grew their own food, allowing professional farmers to be able to send their produce directly for the war effort. People had chickens and ducks in their backyards for eggs and meat. If things had gotten worse instead of better, at least people would have been able to eat.

We’ve lost the ability and the knowledge of how to do that.

Restrictive homeowners’ association rules, city ordinances, laziness… it doesn’t matter the reason. The fact is, if something happened to our food supply, after a week or so, millions would begin to starve .

Doesn’t that sound like a national crisis?

It is not conservative to allow this situation to continue. Yet no one is doing anything about it. Growing your own food is seen these days as something counter-culture types do, not something for your average person. It’s actually a matter of national security.

Getting a gun and holing up in the mountains with a year’s supply of food isn’t going to help anyone. Learning to feed yourself and teaching your neighbors how to feed themselves is what’s going to help you.

So what do you do?

That, my friend, is a whole post in itself. Stay tuned.

More at:http://thesietch.org/mysietch/redstategreen/2007/07/13/a-matter-of-national-security/
Posted by Ajay :: 9:51 AM :: 0 comments

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