Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Hunger in America

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Hunger in America
  • Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 09:36:19 -0700


Thank you for a balanced, realistic and perceptive response. This one's a
keeper. I agree - his agenda is not my agenda. I can't add anything to your
points 1-9. That should be spread far and wide.

You pointed out "The affordable areas have no jobs. The areas with jobs have
sky-high housing costs." That's the #1 dilemma for so many. Where we live,
our remote area has no "jobs" within 50 miles. While some are on food stamps
etc., what many people here do is make their own jobs - literally. The key
is, wherever people live, they have needs to be met by goods and services.
And the more out of the way it is, the more locals have an opportunity to
make a living providing those goods and service. Some cut and deliver
firewood, a thriving business this time of year as always. Some work in mom
and pop businesses in our town of 300. Some do plumbing and electrical, back
hoe work etc. We found nobody growing and selling local produce, probably due
to climate, altitude, etc. Yet land is frontier cheap and the water is so
clean and good for irrigating. And we are determined it can be done, even on
rented property with under 10" precip annually and a 90-day growing season.

>Many people nowadays do not have the concept, the idea of
>cooking basic foods from scratch, much less gardening. They
>just were never exposed to it. It's like talking a foreign
>language to them.

You know it, Pat. We'd have more market for fresh eats if more people knew
how to cook chard or boil water. Maybe you should offer Cooking 101 to the
local community? Actually Barb and I have thought about it. Yesterday Barb
made an apple pie from scratch and baked it in a toaster oven. Best crust in
town. She had the good fortune to learn cooking and gardening from immigrant
parents. The Old Ways weren't lost.

paul@largocreekfarms.com
http://medicinehill.net
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 12/26/2004 at 8:10 AM Pat Meadows wrote:

>On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 09:55:42 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>
>>fwd for opinions on it ---
>
>Consider the source - he has a particular agenda. Let me
>just say that Saxon is not in the mainstream, but an
>extremist. I can agree with a few of his point, though.
>
>I believe the program he describes (assuming it existed)
>aired a LONG LONG time ago. That particular article has
>been on the web for at least seven years, to my certain
>knowledge, and I think it may have been written considerably
>before then. Unfortunately, he does not date his webpages
>so we probably will not know when the article was written.
>
>I do not believe that food stamps amounts are nearly that
>generous anymore, on the whole. I have some personal
>knowledge of this (not as a recipient).
>
>Food stamps amounts vary by:
>
> State
> Family size
> Income
>
>Costs of food also vary considerably by locale, within the
>USA. I know this because we have lived in four states
>during the course of the last seven years.
>
>I can, and do, feed us adequately on considerably less than
>the USDA considers the lowest cost for a family of two (we
>are a family of two). These numbers are here:
>
>http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/FoodPlans/Updates/foodjan04.pdf
>
>For me to feed two people on considerably lower than the
>USDA's lowest cost 'food plan', the following are all
>necessary. I want to stress that ALL the following are
>necessary:
>
>1. That we garden and preserve some homegrown veggies for
>winter.
>
>2. That we eat only basic foods, cooked from scratch.
>
>3. That we bake our own bread and other baked goods.
>
>4. That we make our own yogurt.
>
>5. That we make our own soymilk and tofu.
>
>6. That we have a large freezer (and freeze home-grown
>vegetables).
>
>7. That we eat many non-meat meals and that we also eat
>many meals when meat is used as a flavoring, not a major
>component (e.g., vegetable soup with a little beef).
>
>8. That we buy in quantity when things are on sale. We
>buy, for instance, canned pineapple on sale only: we buy
>about 60 cans (a year's supply). We just bought 72 cans of
>decaf coffee (it was on a very good sale).
>
>9. That we do not have as many fresh fruits and vegetables
>in winter as I would like: that is, I could eat many more
>fresh fruits and veggies in winter if we could afford them.
>
>For these things to be possible, for us to achieve the
>above, the following preconditions are all necessary:
>
>1. That one of us has good enough health to do these things
>(often we do not). (If my back hurts, I cannot cook, for
>instance. I have lupus so I cannot garden when the sun is
>out, only in shade. This doesn't help. Etc.)
>
>2. That we live in a place with enough room to garden.
>(This would rule out most trailers, apartments, etc.) In
>our case, this meant that we needed enough cash to put a
>substantial down payment on a house. We also needed to move
>to a low-cost-of-housing area to do it. We did both. We
>were able to do both only because neither of us was working
>by that time (because of health problems). Had we been able
>to work, we could NOT have moved to this low-housing-cost
>area because there's no work here.
>
>This is *the main problem* of many low-income people in the
>USA, as I see it. The affordable areas have no jobs. The
>areas with jobs have sky-high housing costs. Affordable
>housing would go a long, long ways towards solving many
>problems the USA is experiencing today, IMHO.
>
>3. That we can stay put - i.e., we aren't moving several
>times a year.
>
>4. That we have some savings so that we can buy in quantity
>when things are on sale. We just spent, for instance, $139
>on decaf coffee - about a year's supply. This saved us about
>$50 over buying it each week, at regular price. To do this,
>we needed $139 we could spare. We also needed to have
>storage space for six cases of coffee cans (12 per case).
>
>5. That we not work full-time - people who work full-time
>do not have enough time/energy to do all the above. At
>least, when I worked full-time I certainly did not have
>time/energy to do all the above: not even most of it.
>
>6. That we do not have a bunch of little children to take
>care of: people with a bunch of little children generally
>do not have enough time/energy to do all the above.
>
>7. We need a degree of emotional stability to plan ahead
>and achieve goals: someone who is clinically depressed, for
>example, or devastated by grief (maybe a loved one just
>died), or an alcoholic is not apt to be able to make
>long-range plans and follow through on them.
>
>7. And last - and here I do agree with Saxon - we need a
>considerable KNOWLEDGE to do all the above. We need
>knowledge of planning, cooking basic foods, budgeting,
>gardening, and food preserving.
>
>Many people nowadays do not have the concept, the idea of
>cooking basic foods from scratch, much less gardening. They
>just were never exposed to it. It's like talking a foreign
>language to them.
>
>Education could presumably overcome the lack of knowledge:
>but when someone is working full-time, how do they get the
>education? Suppose I were a single-mother, divorced maybe,
>with three young children and working full-time. There's no
>way I could manage an evening course in gardening, cooking,
>food preserving, and budgeting. Or in anything else.
>
>So I think it's a tough problem, all things considered.
>
>Pat
>
>







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page