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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Perfect Storm /was Local food: success is 100% possible
  • Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:58:20 -0700


This jumps out at me:
"a combination of high input costs, epic droughts brought on by
accelerating climate change, and a shortage of credit caused by the
financial collapse."

No matter what we think of climate change, drought in California and
elsewhere, and shortage of credit for farmers to finance this year's crops
are impacting food production already. We're not even factoring in the
inflation expected down the line from unprecedented printing of money
supposed to combat the recession. Or whatever you want to call it. And one
other little problem: Mexicans who've harvested much of our produce crops
are going home
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4731
How much extra will growers be forced to pay for farm labor this year? And
how much more will the end product cost shoppers? And the cost of fuel and
fossil fuel inputs can turn ugly and be a fifth source of trouble. And
porkbarrel federal subsidies for big agribusiness may very well turn south
this year. Six factors to drive food prices. Perfect Storm.

It's a good time to be growing our own and to be a seller instead of a
buyer.

Any thoughts on this, fire away .....

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
--Henry David Thoreau

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 3/1/2009 at 10:32 PM Tradingpost wrote:

>Local food: success is 100% possible
>Saturday, February 28, 2009
>http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/local-food-success-is-100-possible.ht
m
>l
>
>
>This is a guest post from Tim, a city planner from sunny Moncton, NB. Tim
>has spent some time looking into the viability of local, small scale
>agriculture, and has come up with some results that give us every reason
to
>be optimistic regarding our ability to feed ourselves through our
>individual and neighborhood-scale efforts, even as the systems of
>large-scale, industrial agriculture and food delivery unravel due to a
>combination of high input costs, epic droughts brought on by accelerating
>climate change, and a shortage of credit caused by the financial collapse.
>The remaining challenge is start doing it quickly enough: this summer,
that
>is.
>
>"Russian households (inclusive of both urban and rural) collectively grow
>92% of country's potatoes on their garden-plots, the size of which is
>typically 600 square meters [0.15 acres] for urban households, and
>typically no more than 2500 square meters [0.62 acres] for rural
>households," tells me Dr. Leonid Sharashkin, whose dissertation, "THE
>SOCIOECONOMIC AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FOOD GARDENING IN THE VLADIMIR
>REGION OF RUSSIA" contains a wealth of specifics, based on original field
>research as well as Russian government data. For instance, he writes:
>
> "In 2003, 34.8 million families (66% of all households in the country)
>owned gardening plots (subsidiary plot, allotment, garden, or dacha) and
>were involved in growing crops for subsistence (Rosstat 2005b). By 2005,
>53% (by value) of the country’s total agricultural output was coming
from
>household plots (which in 2006 occupied only 2.9% of agricultural land),
>while the remaining 47% (by value — Rosstat 2006) came from the
>agricultural enterprises (often the former kolkhozes and sovkhozes) and
>individual farmers, requiring 97.1% of agricultural lands (Rosstat
2007b)."
>[Sharahkin, p.12]
>
>Elsewhere in his disseration, he details how much food was being produced
>in household plots, and its figures were on the order of 90% of all the
>potatoes in Russia, 80% of all the vegetables, 50% of the meat and milk
>etc. In other words, very high proportions of certain products, including
>at least one calorie staple (potato).
>
>Dr. Sharashkin quotes the previous figures from Russian government
>publications, but his dissertation also contains the results from his
>primary field research (and therefore are isolated from the usual concerns
>one might have about the reliability of government statistics): on page
>162, Figure 24 indicates that, of the gardening households in the study
>area:
>
> * 39% were cultivating under 0.05 hectares (i.e. 500 sq.m.);
> * another 36% were cultivating between 0.05 and 0.1 hectares; and
> * none of them were cultivating more than half a hectare.
>
>In other words, 3/4 of gardening households were gardening the equivalent
>of two suburban house lots. (At least based on the typical house lots we
>have around here, which are 50-60 feet by 100 feet.)
>
>Considering that Russia has just 110 days of growing season per year,
while
>most of America has much longer growing season and significantly more
>sunshine, this is all quite encouraging from the standpoint of what
>Americans and Canadians could do with their tiny suburban house lots,
>assuming they all learn to garden quickly enough.
>
>
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