The current economic fuss may just be serious. So, plant food now?

We almost all, unless addicted to chaos, probably hope this financial and economic meltdown goes away. But meanwhile, what are ordinary folk everywhere to do? About 900 million of us are hungry, jobs are in short supply and are evaporating fast, etc. The market food system is feeding most of us, but is over-stressed. Hundreds of millions of us are watching "important" people go to “important” meetings, like the G20 summit. Millions of us think maybe America’s Barack Obama is some sort of new saviour and will fix it all. Many are praying to sky deities for rations, or hoping Oxfam will do the cargo-cult thing they do so well once again.

Put not thy trust in princes, I suggest.

So:
Plant food now.

Everyone, everywhere possible and in as wide a variety of food types as possible. On vacant land, as Havana has done. On roofs, on balconies, on footpaths. Tell the friends and neighbours. Join the Ten Percent Club, and aim to grow 10 percent of your own food. Self-sufficiency is for most a dream, but 10 percent is doable, and will have a huge impact. That will help take the pressure off wheat and rice stocks, as every alternate mouthful will help free up food for those of us who cannot supply ourselves and will help bring food prices down globally. If where you are you cannot grow food, that is maybe not a healthy campsite, so shift if you can Plant sprouts for the quickest returns, veggies next, then food trees. Tend to existing neglected food trees, they are often one of the quickest ways to get extra food.

Then we need to collectively see that the farmers and the fishermen, and the entire food chain, get paid and supported enough that they can continue to feed the six out of seven of us they now feed either adequately, well, or too well. We also need to distinguish between lot-fed meat that is using up vast amounts of scarce grain, and range-fed meat, that is producing extra food from ground that would otherwise produce either less or nothing at all. We should gradually legislate lot-feeding out of existence.

We seem, as a species, to be overrunning our resources on several fonts. Both recession and depression are terms that imply recoveries, let's hope. But this may not be merely a rerun of bad times we have seen before. We are a species in plague proportions, proven by our very steep population growth rate in the last hundred years. So, ecology may shortly have some harsh things to say to us; for the track record of species with very steep demographic growth rates, see the fossil record. Survival is not compulsory.

I suggest it is not cash that is king on this planet, it’s food. The farm-and-market system is not providing quite enough food, so folk in China and India, just to eat, work very long hours and have made most factories elsewhere redundant. At some Chinese factories, the whistle blows, the people emerge from their cardboard boxes just outside the fence and go to work. Midday they may get fed, the whistle goes 12 hours later, back to the boxes, maybe seven days a week. You want to keep your factory job and compete, but intend to drive to work in a car of some sort? And then home, to a house? That, roughly, is why most factories in the rich world are now redundant.

We may be able to trade or spend our way out of this, by stimulating more of the same, but I am sceptical. I suggest, take off the tie or the high heels, get out the hoe, and plant food now. Everyone, everywhere possible, and in a great a variety of food types as possible.

Join the Ten Percent Club; if you can produce that much of what you eat, it will back off the pressure on wheat and rice. Can't eat greenbacks, no matter how deep you fry them in oil. Might be an idea to stop swanning round in the sky in large aluminium aerosol cans, en route of Monte Carlo, or off other folks' coastlines in aircraft carriers.

I may well be wrong, hope I am, but the long party may be over for the million monkey mobs, those of us still in those big refugee camps called cities. Head for vacant land? And stay or become peaceful. Scrapping or jumping off buildings won't help much, and there's lots to do, out here beyond the smogbanks. Good luck all.

Peter Ravenscroft

Subsistence or peasant farmer,
Closeburn, Queensland, Oz

PS: Am getting by on a hundredth of past peak income pre-1988, eating well, no debts. I am not slinging you a line. The setup here is not perfect, nor is it independent of the rest of the system, but its fun and workable so far.

Comment posted on Indymedia South Africa.

Sprouting crops
by Michael Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008 at 3:04 AM

Even when you have no land or soil, such as when travelling, you can produce fresh vegetables in the form of sprouted seeds. It takes a few days, some seeds, some water and a container.

Lentils, for example, produce ten times their original amount in four days and no longer need cooking.