Galen Chadwick of the Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance discusses localized farming and how returning America to community-based agricultural production will be a necessity to maintain adequate food supplies.
In Restoring Local Food and Economic Sovereignty Mr Chadwick writes:
You can imagine this scenario: three days after the trucks stop rolling, a thought slowly stirs in the minds of millions of hapless Missourians, one sixth of whom exist in the fog of Federal Food Supplements and handouts. Ultimately, this thought will begin to take the shape of a small bubble, which finally struggles to surface: “I can’t feed myself, and nobody else can either!†No doubt a long silence will follow this epiphany, both individually and collectively. The next thought will be: “Nobody had a “Plan “B.†Ask not for whom the bell tolls . . .etc.
The lesson of history is stark: whom ever controls our food controls our destiny. Because we have lost control of our local and regional food base, the coming fight is not going to be framed by agricultural efficiencies, or government price policies, but the issue of basic survival. The top-down paradigm has failed us, and a grassroots, all-volunteer citizen’s drive to restore local food and jobs has begun. Why? Not one county in Missouri can feed its own people, much less the teeming millions in urban centers.
We have often discussed the importance of survival food preparation at SHTF Plan. While freeze-dried foods, vacuum packed rice and MRE’s should be a part of any emergency preparedeness reserves, we highly recommend learning gardening skills and how to set up a micro farm. It can even be done in the suburbs, on a 1/5 acre plot of land!
Any disruption in our food supply could literally cost millions of people their lives. Take a close look at the government’s response during Hurricane Katrina. Another few days, and people would have been dying by the thousands in New Orleans from lack of food and water. The point is, if there is any disruption in the food supply, then only those who stored food, or those with the means to produce their own food, are going to make it.
Trend forecaster Gerald Celente has said “We don’t need Walmart, we need mom & pops. We don’t need factory farms, we need family farms!” He is right on target, because what he is saying is that we need to bring the production capacity back to the USA, to the local communities, like we did in the first part of the 20th century. It was our ability to produce and innovate, not spend and consume, that made America great.
Mr. Chadwick highlights the problems facing our food supply and how we can return to what we once were:
The last generation that can actually feed itself, and not with overseas slaves, cheap oil, and industrial mono cropping are now in their 80’s and 90’s. The last people with any inkling how to survive, and feed the rest of us, are slip-sliding away. Going with them: control of our mutual destiny. To lose the capacity for food self-sufficiency is to lose the only true commonwealth that the common man has ever had.  The truth? We’ve so lost track of what is essential to our lives that freedom itself is now on the line. Food sovereignty means, “We, the people, have the inalienable and God-given right to own, grow and trade our own food under no other authority than what we ourselves see fit.â€
The changes we desperately need in this country will not come from politicians in Washington D.C. They will come from individuals and organizations on the ground within the local community, like The Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance.
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