Will Americans Starve This Year? Probably Not, But Lets Plant Gardens Anyway

 A few days ago, Chris Martenson posted a blog essay titled "Will You Starve to Death This Year?" Martenson pointed out that escalating prices for natural gas have led to a global rise in fertilizer costs.  The price of diesel, which runs the world's farm tractors, has also shot upward dramatically, contributing to a sharp increase in food prices. A ten percent decline in global food production, Martenson argued, would be catastrophic.

Other people are beginning to worry about food. On television, I'm now beginning to see ads from emergency-food-supply companies--the outfits that sell food packets that can be safely stored for up to 25 years.  Is it time to stock up on canned goods?

I don't think Americans are in danger of starving to death--in the short term, at least. We live in a great country blessed with fertile soil, a temperate climate, and the advanced technology we need to feed a nation of 330 million people. 

In addition, the U.S. has a pretty good safety net to make sure people don't go hungry. The federal government's SNAP program (food coupons) is readily available to low-income families. Thousands of churches and nonprofit agencies deliver food to people who need it--including elderly shut-ins.

The American consumer is paying more for food, and we can't always get the food we prefer due to kinks in the supply chain. But nobody will die of hunger in the U.S., at least not in the near-term future.

Nevertheless, Americans should not take our food for granted. I've been reading about famines, and history tells us that people can starve to death even in countries that export food.

Several million people starved to death during Ireland's Potato Famine of 1845-1849, even though the British government exported food out of Ireland. Almost four million Ukrainians died of hunger in 1932-1933 due to Stalin's order to seize food stocks from peasant farmers, even while the Soviets were exporting food to Europe.

Anne Applebaum, who wrote a masterful history of the Ukrainian famine, described how people react when they don't get enough to eat. First, hungry people respond with anger and violence--especially if they have access to firearms. Eventually, however, starving people fall into lethargic apathy and quietly die.

In The Great Hunger, the best treatment of the Irish potato famine, Cecil Woodham-Smith explained how mass starvation always leads to epidemics. Disease invariably follows when the living become too weak to bury the dead.

I am also convinced from my reading that mass starvation inevitably leads to cannabilism, even in advanced societies. The starving people of Leningrad began eating the dead during the Nazi's 900-day siege of the city, as did the Ukrainians during the Holodomor. During World War II, German prisoners of war descended into cannibalism when the Russians penned them up and allowed them to starve to death. 

Americans have been blessed by abundant food for so long that we've forgotten its importance. We can eat whatever we want--from Russian caviar to Chicken McNuggets, and the grocery stores are always open.

Nevertheless, I think it is time for us to think about food.  We still have plenty to eat, but the grocery-store shelves no longer have everything we desire. And food prices have gone up alarmingly over the last few months.

Martenson concluded his sobering essay by urging his readers to plant gardens. I agree. I have been gardening for about ten years, and I now grow both a spring and a fall garden.

My little vegetable garden can't sustain my family for any length of time, but I am learning how to tend my crops, how to spot and treat diseases, and when to fertilize and harvest. 

Just as importantly, raising my own food is fulfilling on a spiritual level.  Planting a seed and seeing it grow into a bean plant that twines around a trellis and produces something I can eat is a miracle. And nothing tastes better than a home-grown tomato picked from my own garden. 

As Guy Clark observed in a famous song, "What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?"  Indeed it would not be nearly so sweet.

James Howard Kunstler says plant a garden: That's good advice

Blow up your t.v.

throw away your paper

Go to the country, 

build you a home

Plant a little garden

eat a lot of peaches

Try and find Jesus on your own

Spanish Pipedream

John Prine

If you would like to get a provocative and unconventional take on the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying financial crisis, you should read James Howard Kunstler's refreshing blog, clusterfuck nation. Mr. Kunstler has been predicting an economic meltdown for a long time. And now, by God, his prediction has finally come true.

What we are experiencing is not just a health emergency, and it's not a recession. We are at the beginning of the 21st century's Great Depression, and it is going to last a long time. A lot of industries, a lot of organizations, and a lot of jobs are going to disappear, and many of them are not coming back.

So what should we do? Kunstler recommends planting a spring garden:

If you’re prudent, you can begin at once to organize serious gardening efforts, if you live in a part of the country where that is possible. I’d go heavy on the potatoes, cabbages, winter squashes, and beans, because they’re all keepers over winter. Baby chicks sell at the local ag stores for a few bucks each now and you’ll be very grateful for the eggs. Get a rooster — even though they can be a pain-in-the-ass — and you won’t have to buy any more chicks.

I think Kunstler is right. I'm not saying we are in danger of starving to death in the coming months. I feel sure that our supply chains and grocery stores will continue to provide us with food. We may not be able to get Mexican blueberries in February, but we will always be able to get canned beans and Kraft macaroni and cheese--or so I believe. And, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, we'll always have baloney.

But planting a garden is a good thing to do. I have maintained a vegetable garden for the last eight years, and it gives me great satisfaction to harvest and eat food I grew myself. As everyone knows, homegrown tomatoes are better than the store-bought varieties. And homegrown broccoli, harvested and cooked on the same day, is a totally different experience from eating frozen broccoli from the grocery store.

Furthermore, by planting a garden, we begin to retrieve essential skills that our grandparents knew. My elders knew when to plant various crops and when to harvest. They knew how to preserve fruit and vegetables through the winter. They knew how to butcher a hog and turn it into smoked hams, bacon, sausages, and lard.  

I can't feed my family on what I grow in five raised garden beds.  In fact, if I gathered all the food my garden grows over the course of a year, my wife and I would survive for about a week. But I am learning a few things about raising food crops.

For example, I planted a fall garden this year and learned that broccoli can survive a light freeze.  I also learned that collard greens are ridiculously easy to grow and taste delicious if seasoned with bacon and a little garlic. 

I plant okra in my spring garden.  I've learned that okra likes hot weather and grows so fast once it starts producing that I have to pick okra every other day. But I also learned that I don't like okra very much.

In World War II, Americans ripped out their front lawns and planted victory gardens. I am told that at one time, people's individual victory gardens produced more food than all commercial farming combined.  

That's comforting to contemplate because things are changing in America, and they are changing fast. We are going to have to be more resilient, more frugal, and more self-reliant.  Planting a garden will help us obtain these virtues. 

After all, a tomato bush growing behind the garage is a reminder that we are capable of taking care of ourselves.