~SUSTAINABLE LIVING FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

[sumisu]

"Progress," in retrospect, has been "regress" in disguise! Yes, I agree with all of what you outlined in your post. I can only add that my Mom and Grand Mom lived during the Great Depression and basically I was taught to stay close to the land for food and near a train for transportation. When I finally bought a house with limited property of 1/7th of an acre, I was able to make it produce more than most properties because I was taught gardening skills at an early age.

I wrote this short essay a while back.

THE U.S. AGRICULATURAL MODEL

I was always taught "reap what you sow." My late Mom taught me this Biblical concept, gave me a little plot of land, and showed me how to grow vegetables and herbs. My Dad had an apple/peach orchard. The problem with the U.S. now is that around 4% of the food is produced for the other 96%; this is hardly a sustainable proportion. In Russia, which has the “dacha” garden approach and does not tax food, 40% of the food comes from its gardens.

Long term we are on a precipice with only three day's food supplies in big box stores. If the grid broke down by whatever reason, we are toast. Cities will be violent hot spots, areas of concentrated populations very bad but possibly less violent, and small villages will be safer.

The U.S. produces an abundance of food because it uses a mono or a one-crop approach that could not exist without using large tracts of land and large machinery operating on abundant oil. Furthermore, the food seeds are grown in soil doused with petrochemicals. The resulting crops are a slow inducement toward bad health as this approach is not organic and the soil soaked each growing season can only grow again with annual petrochemical applications.

The only solution to our food problem would be organic gardening and organic small farms surrounding and supply our cities. In my 1950s living on Long Island, it seemed that every property had vegetable gardens, orchards or both. Then the big box grocery stores came into being with trains, trucks and planes supplying the grocery shelves from long distances including overseas. Eating TV dinners and fast food became more amenable to the young while the older self-sufficient generations passed on. In essence, we deserted our agrarian past for the most part, as agricultural skills were not passed on to a generation that had become "modernized."

What can be done now? In warm areas of the U.S., Fleet Farming, with young people, has been formed with an approach to grow vegetables in raised beds on back, front, and side lawns wherever there is sun. Using raised beds with fresh soil and additives avoids growing on lawns that were previously medicated with petrochemicals. It is working and should spread to more parts of the U.S. [The owners of these lawns receive fresh vegetables and don't have to care for their lawns.]

The gardening and farming concepts must be re-introduced into our public school systems immediately with raised beds around the school property plus grow rooms inside schools and churches. Believe me, give a kid a seed, let it grow, and they become a captive audience forever. At least that was my experience.

Personally I have a seedling program, limited to ten people, where I give away tomato and pepper seedlings in the spring and seed garlic in the autumn. These ten people once had very small or no gardens; it has been a success, but I cannot supply the world.

40 maps that explain food in America
https://www.vox.com/a/explain-food-america