Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>]

On 02/22/2014 12:44 PM, Dan Conine wrote:

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Americans in the early 20th century spent 1/4 to 
1/2 of their income on food, plus did most of the preparation 
themselves. Today, it's more like 1/10th of their income (on average) 
and they don't put any labor into the preparation. That difference has 
been "havested" by the food processing corporations, and the "surplus" 
farm production is used to trade for the oil that enables the 
button-pushing lifestyle.

 
Thanks, Dan. For another take on that percentage-of-income-for-food question, here's this (quoted from Matthew O'Hayer in my book):

Every decade for the past 150 years, the percentage of our income that we spend for food has decreased. We now spend less than 10% of our income feeding ourselves compared to over 15% thirty years ago and over 50% before 1900. To put this in more concrete terms, in 1875 it took 1,700 hours of work to purchase the annual food supply for a family. Today it takes about 260 hours of work. Oh, and in 1875 we spent 1% of our annual income on health care. Today, we spend over 16%. Not surprisingly, health care costs have tracked the food cost trend, but in the opposite direction.
—Matthew O’Hayer, Vital Farms, Austin, Texas

 
Or as has been said: Pay the farmer or pay the doctor.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us

My book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock (Chelsea Green, 2011) is available at www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_smallscale_poultry_flock