The End of Food?

There's plenty of food in the world to feed everyone a decent set of meals every day. The only problem is that the food isn't always where it needs too be.

Yeah sure....an actor that knows something? Ha! Like most entertaioners he has almost no education, has little real understanding of the problems much less the solutions & yet has the gall to act as if he is an expert...! Give us all abreak.....put out something froman expert in this are then it will mean something....!

Is it just me or does anybody else feel the shadow of Sir Thomas Malthus wafting into the room? Oil, food, water... Seems that we 6 billion are breeding and consuming ourselves into eventual oblivion, or at least a stone age redux. Why does the supposedly most intelligent species the planet has ever produced consistently behave with such abysmal stupidity?

The US alone has the agricultural capacity to feed ourselves generously and several other countries as well. If we are not succeeding the problem has to do with politics and greed, not with the ability of the world to feed itself. Even considering the issue of energy that is fueling the current price increases, there are ways--if we are willing to rethink politics and forgo greed--to deal with the energy issue as relates to food costs.

If we stop eating convenience and fast foods and start to replace value on cooking meals wfrom scratch with fresh food every day, and if we carry bag lunches to school and work that contain homemade bread and freshly cut up carrots (rather than the precyt "baby" carrots from the supermarket) we will make huge steps towards dealing with the problem.

Mark, I believe the abysmal stupidity you mention is actually an expression of original sin.

We have gotten hydroponic farming down pretty well. Why not just take this technology and bring it to other nations and regions, especially those where it's difficult to grow crops in the ground?

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I live in a two-family household, and we largely abandoned the regular grocery store about a year ago, when money started getting tight. The discount, no-frills place is across the street from the regular grocery, and we do 70%-80% of our shopping there. We get our meat, dairy, frozen stuff, and fruits and veggies from the no-frills. The produce isn't as pretty, or laid out in polished rows, and the selection isn't as big, but the price is 2/3 off. They have all the basics like flour, sugar, off-brand cereals, oil, etc., again for about 2/3 off. We do have to nip across the street to the full service grocery for a few things not carried by the no-frill.

If you can wean yourself off the name brands in most things (the only thing I insist on name brand is peanut butter, tomato soup, and toilet paper), you can save an astonishing amount of money if you have a no-frills grocery in your town. It's a bit of a "culture shock" to go from 40 kinds of crackers to 4 kinds, but honestly, how much "choice" do we really need? I have to bring a list when I go to the full-service grocery, to keep myself from buying all kinds of stuff I don't need. You get kind of dazzled walking down the aisles of a regular grocery store, and you suddenly get an urge to buy all kinds of garbage you can do without.

We live in a city on a street with row houses, and have a postage stamp of a yard, so we grow a lot of vegetables in tubs in the driveway in the backyard. For about $300 a year for manure, mulch, plants, and seeds, we get a lot of food. Last year, we got our money back in peppers alone, and also had tomatoes, squash, zucchini, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, and herbs. This year, instead of flowers out front, we have carrots, radishes, scallions, and broccoli. We froze dozens of quarts of spaghetti sauce and chili at the end of last summer, and dried a lot of other vegetables, enough to last us until the end of February. When payday is a few days off, and money is tight, it's wonderful to be able to reach into the freezer for a quart of spaghetti sauce, and serve it over dirt-cheap whole-grain pasta from the no-frills grocery.

We only buy junk food and pop when relatives are coming over for picnics and the like. We bake most of our baked goods. My relatives eat more fast food than I do, but I only get it once every two weeks, on payday.

These measures have saved us a tremendous amount of money, and we eat better than we did before, when there was more junk in our diets. We've lost weight and lowered our blood sugars and cholesterol. (I also add beans and soya granules to many things I make, enabling me to use less meat in each recipe, while raising the fiber and protein content.)

I watch my next-door neighbors who eat take-out nearly every night, and bring home bags and bags and bags of chips and soda from the regular grocery on grocery day. I can't imagine what their food budget is compared to ours. I do notice that their kids are hyper and getting overweight, though, compared to our kids. I also know the mom has less time than we do, as she works and goes to school, so I know that's why she resorts to convenience food (I work out of my home, and my niece only has one job, so we're more flexible for gardening and cooking).

I know that we cut our food budget because we had to, and we're healthier for it. I think more people are going to have to go our route, though, just to survive. I'd be interested to see what measures the regular groceries are going to have to take to lure back people like me.

Food for thought.

Like Claire, I do inner city gardening for fruits and veggies. We have a couple of mulberry trees that sprung up and bear an amazing amount of fruit in the summer. My friends from Ukraine have taught me there is a lot of stuff growing in unlikely places that make good eats. Chinese dogwood trees and other bushes that I've seen growing for decoration actually produce small fruits that can be eaten! Of course you have to find someone who knows which ones are safe.

We all ate better when farmers could farm and the factory farms didn't exist.

And soup -- everybody forgets soup. I get a $4 chicken from the no-frills store, and after you get one good meal out of it, BOIL THE BONES, people! Add a couple of bouillon cubes, some vegetables, and some grain like barley or rice, plus some spices, and you've got 3-4 quarts of really good soup. I'm amazed how often people throw out the bones from chicken and turkey and don't make soup. It's like throwing away another couple of meals.

Claire, I really think your comments are fabulous ideas! We're in a one-bedroom apartment with a patio but no earth for planting. We're trying containers and lots of veggies instead of flowers, as well. So far, so good and I feel good doing it! All your suggestions are great and we're also trying them. It's great to read about the differences (benefits) you see in contrast to your neighbors.

OPW, great question for discussion as usual!

There is enough food for everyone, it is the governments in the rest of the world, it is their fault. They are not allowing their people to eat - the rich get richer in these countries - the food is sent to their countries but the King or Queen or head of the country is not allowing the food to be distributed. What happens in Africa or the Sudan or in parts of South America is that the heads of the country are taking the money that the farmers are paying, or the companies that produce the food, and not giving the food to the people. Instead the food is going to feed the King and his family and his friends - not the people. It is really a shame. These same countries are sending us food and we're paying them for it.

Rhonda -- my niece got great results with tub tomatoes on her apartment patio. I recommend an enriched garden soil mix (soil, a 3-month fertilizer, and manure), and a pretty deep tub. Don't forget to drill holes around the bottom of the tub, otherwise the water will sit in the tub. Too much water is as bad as too little.

Go online and find how to pinch off suckers and how to support the stem. We use tomato stakes, and use a kind of green "garden velcro" tape that holds the vine to the stake without too much stress (but my dad used strips of rags). Don't bind the vine to the stake too tightly. Leave room for it to get thicker in diameter. A cage is a good idea, too. Feed the branches through the cage bars so they can rest on them for support.

"Patio" tomato plants don't have as good a yield as better boy or better girl or beefsteak. If your tub is deep enough, you can grow the bigger tomato varieties. Peppers, yellow squash, cucumbers, and zucchini also do well in tubs. We just have so little arable soil that we have 13 tubs. A big tub can hold 2-3 pepper plants, or one tomato, or 2 squash. Lettuce is also ridiculously easy to grow, and can grow in a much more shallow pot. We use those long, thin, rectangular pots.

The only problem you might have is sunlight, depending on which direction your patio faces. A west-facing patio is best, for afternoon sun.

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I think there is enough food - people just have to make wiser decisions and stop eating all that junk.

I've been growing as much of my own food as I can. I'm lucky to live out in the country on eight acres. I have a big garden (I more than doubled it this year) and can a lot of my produce. I also have chickens...the difference in quality between my eggs and store-bought eggs is beyond description...and honeybees and rabbits. My husband hunts deer and next year I'm hoping to try pigs. My initial reason was to save money, but in the past few years I've become more concerned with quality...I just don't trust food that I don't grow and process myself. I buy flour when it's on sale and put it in the freezer to keep it fresh and bug-free...I probably have 75 pounds or so stocked up. I do my own baking, make my own noodles. It really doesn't take as much time and energy as you might think. And when things fall apart, my family will not go hungry.