Keith Addison wrote:
>"Feeding People Is Easy" by Colin Tudge
>Published in the UK in April 2007, not yet been released in the US.
>
>The book argues that it is possible to feed the world, forever,
>without damaging the environment or cruelty to animals. The book
>shows how governments and the food industry have created the major
>problems so much of the world faces today. It proposes a new global
>food chain based on principles of sound biology and justice.
>
>
>
This was a fascinating article, if a bit repetitious at times.
There are a few things that nag me about it, though. While I clearly
see the connection between home grown food and good cooking (my
sweetheart is an excellent cook!), a lot of what I really enjoy eating
simply doesn't grow where I live. Aside from tea (which I get from
India) and coffee (which my sweetheart buys from Sumatra) which we have
no hope of obtaining locally, staples like rice, black beans and wheat
come here from very far away. I eat far more rice and wheat than corn
or potatoes. Part of this is cultural, as I have a palate preference
for rice over potatoes that stems from growing up eating rice and beans
every day, and part of it relates to the consumerist tendency to buy
whatever is available at the supermarket simply because it IS available
. . . (We've talked about growing rice before, but my sweetheart is
adamantly opposed to it because she thinks it's not worth the effort for
the amount of grain we'd grow. Food is very cheap for we who are affluent.)
We had a horrid summer this year. The weather was primarily cool
and wet. We got a LOT of rain, yet most of our garden did
extraordinarily well. We had better maize this year than I've ever
grown before. (It was a bit chewy, but that's because we left it on the
stalks too long!) We've had green beans in abundance. Our jalapeno
peppers did remarkably well for surviving such a soggy summer, and they
were wonderfully HOT!
Our problem this year involved EXCESS production. There is simply
no way we can eat all the food we've grown, we've given so much away
that our neighbors are shunning us, and our freezer is STUFFED full! My
teaching clients have gone home laden with squash, pumpkins, dill (which
went wild while we were on holidays), strawberries, blackberries and
potatoes. A lot of what we've grown, however, has simply rotted on the
ground, and it's become clear to me that we need to re-evaluate our
gardening to actually REDUCE the amount of food we're growing to a more
reasonable level. If we can produce such an astonishing volume of food
on this little property, with NO inputs other than barn litter and my
own compost, how can anyone say that we can't grow enough food to feed
people?
It's really not THAT much work, either . . .
Even our plum trees, despite the aphid infestation, produced SO MUCH
FRUIT that we couldn't possibly eat it all. Benita's been making plum
desserts like mad!
So while it's clear that high production doesn't have to involve
machines, fossil inputs and vast tracks of land it DOES depend on
nutrient recycling and soil husbandry. It's more labor intensive,
certainly, but in Canada I can't pay my mortgage (or the car payment, or
school tuition) in potatoes or beets--both of which seem to grow
extraordinarily well here. It seems to me that we need a fundamental
restructuring of our society. The more I think about these things, the
more I'm reminded that the issues of sprawl, food miles, energy use,
resource warfare, consumerism, corporatism, crime, climate change and
other woes we face are all inter-related and revolve around decisions
human beings make that are really NOT as immutable as we are led to
think, or perhaps, that we like to think.
My father-in-law grew up on a farm and didn't like it. He's
convinced that most people nowadays wouldn't tolerate the kind of hard
labor necessary to survive on the land, but my experience with gardening
makes me question how "hard" this labor really is . . . Yes, I've used
a rotovator and I have a shredder that speeds up the composting process,
but these things COULD be done by hand if I really had to do them, and
the exercise wouldn't hurt, either.
But getting to a place where I can sustain my family on a piece of
land, while a worthy goal, exists somewhere on a path I can't find. Or
is it, perhaps, that I'm so accustomed to my comforts that I can't SEE
the path that's evident before me?
Hmm . . . Something to think about!
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
"The Long Journey"
New Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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