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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] BUILDING RESILIENCY: FOOD FIRST!
  • Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:48:13 -0700


The Fierce Urgency of This Spring: Veggie Seeds & Nut Seedlings for Us All
by Dan Allen Published Feb 18 2010
excerpt from http://www.energybulletin.net/51610

BUILDING RESILIENCY: FOOD FIRST!

So here is our challenge as individuals, families, and communities: As
rapidly as possible (for time is short), begin replacing our doomed
industrial infrastructures with resilient structures perhaps capable of being
sustained through the turbulent times ahead. Such structures must be able to,
at the very least, provide the ‘basics’ for our species as we scramble to
reconfigure our lives around a reality defined by much lower energy inputs.

The key low-energy systems we need can be categorized as such: food, clean
water, shelter, manufacturing of basic goods, and transportation. And I would
suggest that, among these required resilient structures, food is perhaps
paramount. For what good are functioning low energy transportation systems
between walkable communities of cozy, energy-efficient dwellings if we have
no food?

Of course, all these required systems are related and need to be interwoven
in some fashion -- but at this late date, we need to practice some triage.

…So food first!

THREE REQUIREMENTS FOR A RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEM

So what are the requirements for a resilient, low-energy-input food system –
one that can take hit after hit, and still keep producing food? I can think
of three off the top of my head.

First, it must be locally-based. With severely reduced fossil-fuel
availability and the inevitable political and environmental disruptions,
supply lines of any length will be a thing of the past -- undependable at
best, and very possibly nonexistent. We simply cannot count on anything that
needs to come from very far away – seeds, tools, labor, or the food itself.
The safest way to think about our food system in the coming low-energy future
is this: if you can’t walk a few days to get it, don’t count on having it. If
we want resiliency, we need to be able to fashion just about everything for
our local food system from our surrounding areas.

The second requirement for the resilient food system is that it must be
easily maintained and fixed by users. Again, we likely won’t be able to just
‘send away’ for replacement parts. If you or your neighbors can’t fix it
using locally-available materials, don’t count on it getting fixed. And a
good rule of thumb is that, with all the human shrapnel flying around as our
civilization collapses, things will probably be getting broke – accidentally
or not -- a lot more often in the years ahead. If your food operation depends
on the continuous functioning of a solar array and neither you or your
neighbors can fix a broken/malfunctioning solar array or fashion replacement
parts from local materials -- well, you should probably have some back-up
plans. Likewise for tractors, freezers, hay-balers, etc.

The third requirement is this: the food system must be redundant. In other
words, in the crazy days ahead, you can probably count on some significant
fraction of your local food system to crash and burn every year. We just
won’t have the fossil-energy safety blanket we’ve enjoyed for so long. Maybe
it’ll be drought or floods, maybe blackouts or fertilizer shortages, maybe
heat or cold, maybe vandalism or armed skirmishes, maybe hail or wind, maybe…
heck, you name the disturbance and it will likely occur with increasing
frequency in the turbulent years ahead. So let’s not put all our free-range
eggs in one basket. Such disturbances do not usually hit all crops or
livestock in all locations equally. For resiliency, we need many different
crops, spread out across all ecological gradients of the local food-shed,
tended by as many knowledgeable farmers as possible. In other words, a
resilient food system will need backup plans – lots of them.

"THEY AT LEAST TRIED TO MAKE IT RIGHT"

…Now, before I get into some specific recommendations, I have to admit here
that my head starts to spin when I contemplate the near-impossible logistics
and death-defying learning curve associated with the task ahead; with
teaching 100+ million American cubicle-potatoes and fast-food patrons how to
grow enough food for their families in few years with the
knowledge-intensive, resilient, low-energy food system that will be required
of us – essentially from scratch! And all this in the face of the wrenching
upheaval that will surely come with an imploding civilization!

So in the name of honesty, I don’t want to underestimate what a fearsomely
large task this will be – what an awesome, monumental, seemingly-impossible
undertaking it is.

But heed this: it must be done; it will be done soon whether we want to or
not; the sooner any of us begin, the better chance we’ll have for some
measure of success; and the very real and growing risks of a catastrophic
economic ‘discontinuity’ suggest that perhaps our window of opportunity on
getting started is much slimmer than we had thought.

And also heed this: the question is NOT whether such a system should or can
be put into place – it must and it will. There will simply be no other
option. No other food system will be able to withstand the coming convulsions
and resource-depleted reality. It’ll be the only game in town.

The key question – and I apologize here, for it is a grim one indeed -- is
how many of us will die before the new system becomes able to feed us. The
answer may range from ‘a few of us’ to ‘most of us.’ We just can’t tell for
sure at this point.

Now again, I apologize if that was a little grim. Because maybe such thoughts
(however true perhaps) tend to leave us on the verge of unconstructive panic
or debilitating despair – like, “This problem’s too huge!”, “It’s too late!”,
“There’s nothing useful we can do about it!”

But again, I would answer with this: WE MUST TRY – at the family and
community level. We must do whatever we can; and we must do the best we can.
For the issue of ‘what to do now?’ is heavily steeped in morality: if we do
not have the decency to at least TRY to fashion a livable world for our
children – in the face of a series of incipient economic, political, social,
and environmental disasters we nurtured ourselves – our culpable generations
become worse than mere global criminals; we become monsters.

We must do SOMETHING. We must try – however hard or unfamiliar the path ahead
may be. For if we are not destined to deserve the epithet, “They saved their
species and stabilized the biosphere” on our grave markers, we can at least
have this: “When the shit came down, they at least tried to make it right.”

OPEN-POLLINATED VEGGIE SEEDS

So that’s a certifiable challenge, all right. And I suppose I should now give
some specifics on how we might begin to meet it. So I will.

What follows are a few things we can do – some things we MUST do – right now.
And by ‘we,’ I mean you and me at the individual/family/community level. And
by ‘right now,’ I mean within the next few weeks or months. (Clip-clop,
clip-clop, clip-clop…)

So do your species a favor and do this: this spring, buy a mess of different
open-pollinated vegetable seeds and fruit/nut tree seedlings – and then try
to figure out what to do with them in a way that might contribute to building
a resilient food system in your community.

Got that? Veggie seeds and food-tree seedlings. Now. This spring. Clip-clop.

So let’s start with the seeds: I don’t mean get just any old veggie seeds.
They can’t be ‘F1’ or ‘hybrids.’ They must be ‘heirloom’ or
‘open-pollinated.’ Why? Those are the only ones where you can save the seeds
from this year’s plants, re-plant these seeds next year, and still get
something resembling the variety you planted the year before.

Because remember: we’re trying to make a local, maintain-it-yourself,
redundant food system. A resilient food system. And these open-pollinated
veggie seeds are where we start. These magical little specks full of
biological potential are THE cornerstone of a resilient food system. Get them
while you can -- i.e. now.

And in case you already garden and have some favorite hybrid varieties, let
me be blunt: screw hybrids! They’re a relic of the soon-to-be-over
fossil-fuel age. They have little relevance to our coming post-carbon
civilization – marginal at best. Their large-scale production and deployment
requires a societal complexity that we won’t see again on this planet for a
long time – if ever. In other words, don’t count on being able to send away
for hybrid seeds every year to the ever-fewer and ever-larger seed companies
that sell the hybrid seeds. They won’t be able to help you. They probably
won’t exist. Heck, the mailman might not even exist. You shouldn’t count on
it, at least.

In short, you and your community will very likely be on your own with only
the open-pollinated vegetable seeds and varieties that you are able to
maintain yourselves – by skillfully growing them out and saving seeds. And
that will require knowledge and skill and teamwork within your local
community. And you’ll probably mess up a lot until you work out the bugs – so
you better start now.

I’m in New Jersey, and I get my open-pollinated seeds (for now, at least)
from Fedco Seeds (www.fedcoseeds.com/) in Maine. They’re also available from
Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org/). There are lots of other places
too. Look them up. Find someone who sells them in your general region. Get
some now. Start experimenting.

And if you’re not sure how to garden, I recommend asking a friend or neighbor
who does and/or checking out some good gardening books; I like Eliot
Coleman’s books. Also, check out the Johnny’s Seeds catalog
(www.johnnyseeds.com/) – it tells you how to grow just about everything.

And remember: clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop…

FRUIT AND NUT SEEDLINGS

OK. Now for the food-tree seedlings.

If we had ever gathered our wits about us as a civilization, we would have
put far more emphasis on perennial food crops (like fruits & nuts
trees/bushes, perennial tubers, etc.) than annual ones (like corn/wheat/beans
and veggie row crops). The destructive history of annual-based industrial
agriculture is well documented and horrifying. We have literally been
destroying the biosphere to feed ourselves in this manner.

Perennial crops – in addition to being easier on the land then annuals –
would also introduce greater resilience into the food system. They require no
annual collection and storage of seeds, with all the risks involved there.
With their typically-larger root systems, they are also better able to
survive droughts or other ‘weird’ weather disturbances. And if, for some
reason, you had to evacuate your home for awhile – they’d likely still be
there when you got back.

I should mention that the use of perennials in agriculture has already been
advanced in the fields of Permaculture (see Holmgren & Mollison, etc.) and
Natural Systems Agriculture (see Wes Jackson’s The Land Institute). Our
efforts and any future resilient agricultural system would do well to borrow
heavily from that body of literature.

But even without lots of knowledge about permaculture design (or the
not-quite-yet-ready perennial grains of The Land Institute), you can still
make some initial steps towards a perennial agriculture by planting some
fruit and nut seedlings this spring. Find a nursery that sells plants adapted
to your region (or maybe a bit warmer, given the coming climatic changes),
and get as many different types as you can.

I get my fruit and nut seedlings from both Miller Nurseries
(www.millernurseries.com/) in NY and Fedco Trees (fedcoseeds.com/trees.htm)
in ME. I also get Chinese chestnut seeds & seedlings from Empire Chestnut
(www.empirechestnut.com/) in PA. They come ‘bare-root’ (i.e. with no soil) in
the mail in the spring & I just pop ‘em in the ground. I also recommend
eventually learning to propagate these trees yourself via grafting and
rooting methods (see Toogood’s ‘Plant Propagation’).

And if you have lots of land – like a field -- get ‘standard’ sized trees.
They get big & live a long time. If you have less land – like a
baseball-field-sized yard, get the smaller ‘semi-dwarf’ trees. And if you
have a postage stamp of a yard, get ‘dwarf.’ The smaller trees, although they
produce sooner and are sometimes the only practical option, tend to fall over
a lot easier & don’t live as long.

If you don’t have any land, maybe try to sneak some trees onto public or
private lands near your residence. Property lines make good sneaky places to
plant food trees – usually nobody notices. But remember -- you’ll have to
protect them from deer somehow. I use cylinders made from wire fencing, with
a re-bar stake for support. You’ll also need mouse guards on the bottom
during the winter.

THE FIERCE URGENCY OF...THIS SPRING!

So there it is. Clip clop, clip clop.

Now, in light of the urgency of our situation, the huge changes required to
replace our current industrial food system with a resilient system, and the
lack of any real major ground-swell already trending in that direction, these
meager steps I’ve proposed are bound to seem quite…well…pathetic. As if your
one little box of seeds and a dozen or so wimpy little seedlings are going to
be able to fend off the tsunami of change soon to be crashing down all around
us!

But I’ll respond with this: What if they DID help – even a little? What if
you found out you really NEEDED them? What if these little seeds helped get
your family and your neighbors through a disastrous year?

And what if we do even have a couple more chaos-free springs remaining to
hone our skills? What if you convinced your neighbors to start saving seeds
and planting trees? What if they convinced some of their neighbors? What if
you started a Transition Towns program (http://transitionus.org/) in your
town? What if, due to progressively-deteriorating economic conditions, people
actually started to ‘get it’ about this resiliency stuff? What if you became
a leader in your community?

And what if the little seeds in your little box become THE varieties grown by
your great-great-great grandchildren on their resilient, ecologically-sane
farm sometime in the 22nd-century. And what if a little barefoot girl on that
farm picks a ripe peach off your tree, bites into it -- and smiles. And what
if it makes her fall in love with the Earth?

What if these seeds and these little trees DO make a difference?

Because they might.

So make the order, dig out your shovel, and call some friends – we’re havin’
a resiliency party!





  • [Livingontheland] BUILDING RESILIENCY: FOOD FIRST!, Tradingpost, 02/18/2010

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