permaculture

[Harold Waldock <hwaldock@telus.net>]

"Joe",

Thanks for the reply (see it below).  Without your comment, I would not know 
what people are worried about or what the other issues related to this topic 
are.  I've passed this onto my local Permaculture list and bcc'd you.

If the whole world followed my advice and accumulated a 3 month to 1 year 
supply of food then we would have a more resilient food system.  Not long ago 
most civilized and tribal-agricultural societies had very significant food 
stores.  Egypt in biblical times had up to 7 years of grain.  Tribal Sudanese 
areas had technology to store grain for 7 years.  Rural Prairie Canada had 
grain elevators in every town but most of them have been torn down.  They 
could have a large % of crop held over for a year or two.  In the 
inflationary 70's we had huge stockpiles of various farm products milk 
powder, butter, potato powder, from price support systems and because we had 
the cold war preparations - they faced down the consequences of nuclear war - 
with food supplies. Those times have been forgotten and the tonnes of 
biscuits they had in tins and stored supplies sold. 

We have had trouble of an unseen kind in the food and warehousing industry 
caused by monetary debasement, manipulation of interest rates and rigged 
markets that have unreasonably favoured just-in-time supply systems over 
traditional warehousing systems.  Food warehousing has succumbed to this 
regime and became unprofitable where in history it has always been profitable 
because the weather is always unpredictable.  So now we have food system with 
no food reserves or food banks (I mean supplies in large warehouses, grain 
elevators, wheat pools etc)  Food systems with no banks go illiquid and 
insolvent suddenly when the market demand suddenly increases.  Food systems 
like banks need reserves and not low reserve ratios like 9% that banks have 
but more like 100% of year.  Fractional reserves in banking is collapse 
guaranteed but why should we have the same for our food?  Banks can collapse 
no big deal but I do not want myself or my family or my fellow countrymen 
collapse on the street just because the bankers have ruined food warehousing 
and there is no spare food in a bad year.  Bad years are easy to come by all 
it takes is a volcano somewhere and the whole northern hemisphere will have 
bad weather even frost in June like what happened after Krakatoa  in 19th 
century New England or  about -mid1500's when Iceland volcano's froze (and 
polluted) northern Europe. War is enough to cause major problems too and 
comes much more often.  We used to also eat grains normally fed to  animals 
in problem years but now it is all partially toxic as it is not fit for human 
consumption or even worse not fit for animal consumption because it is 
exclusively designed for biofuels.  With no reserves or easy to access 
alternatives we are setting up the whole human population to a foreseeable 
disaster, that traditional practice was always prepared for.

Food stores would be good for farmers because the warehouses prevent any good 
crop year from depressing prices too much and keep farmers level headed in 
bad crop years because warehouses also prevent the prices getting too high.  
I'd agree that this preparation should not be squeezed into one crop season, 
but I also must admit the financial crash is about one temperate zone crop 
season away if history of the 1930's repeats.  This time most people are 
urban and this time the currency in use will disappear - a much more harsh 
situation than the 1930's.

Ok, I'll give another example.  Can you guess what I bought for my father for 
Christmas?  20kg bag of white rice.  Why? He can't eat wheat and Vancouver 
had an awful shortage in the bad rice crop year of 2008.  A number of rice 
regions had floods including Pakistan, India  and Vietnam resulting in top 
exporters struggling to feed their own people so they banned exports.  The 
Philippines are the worlds largest importers, and had problems in June.  Rice 
spiked in price.  Locally, the Philippinos went to the stores and packed the 
rice for their families in the Philippines and the major stores either sold 
out or went to rationing for a few weeks.  Rice comes a long way to get to 
Vancouver but there are no stores of it here. For my father's birthday, he 
got another 20kg.  It is tradable and keeps easily for 3 years and every body 
eats it anyway.  I have info on technology that will keep it for 20. 

If we prepare then we can look after friends and family, if as a nation we 
prepare we can look after other nations.  It is never too late to start until 
the bad day arrives.

I think it key that every urban permaculture course should also have a short 
section on food storage especially long lasting stocks that don't have to be 
rotated every year like canning does.  Wheat and white rice are especially 
important because they can keep the longest and are extremely versatile and 
well known. Along with dried potato and corn, they are the great civilization 
builders because with out reserves you have no civilization. Rice and wheat 
serve as the vast majority of the key long term storable transportable 
reserves in the world.  Barley may also be important but I'm short on knowing 
this.  Globally, for quite a few years we have run our reserves of grains 
down below 3 months quite regularly like last winter.  That is a very low 
level of reserves little more than a just in time system and not a reasonable 
way to take care of people in an unpredictable world.  More like a system of 
"food slavery" or food extortion system.  We can't have liberty or peace with 
that threatening us.  Ask the Irish, they lived year to year (no storage) on 
potatoes and the wheat (that could and should have been stored) was exported 
before they knew the potato crop was ruined by blight in mid 1800's in the 
famine- the Irish did not have potato powder technology or practice (which 
the Inca had) in those days.

Food stores are key to human flourishing.  Do not forget that food and money 
have historically been intimately tied: a troy ounce is defined as 480 grains 
grains of barley because barley has very consistent weights and sizes.  Money 
which is gold (all others being poor substitutes), was weighed in units of 
food and was used to buy and sell food.  We have to have both gold reserves 
and food reserves for the care of people, and it is the best that the people 
themselves have these reserves.  


On 2011-09-27, at 5:57 PM, John <snip> wrote:

> Hi Harold,
> 
> I have been preparing for over 20 years for what is coming and I still 
> don't know that I am ready.
> I agree with you for the most part except for a few critical points. For 
> instance, what would happen to the world food supply if everybody in 
> Vancouver (or any other big city, anywhere in the world) followed your 
> advice? It is an essential point for me that when the crisis comes we are 
> going to loose more than 6 billion people on this planet quite fast. It 
> will not be nice, it will be horrible and I don't think that getting a 
> supply for a year is going to help anybody much if you are going to be 
> generous with it. For every one person prepared with a stash of food there 
> will be tens of thousands without and unprepared.
> Just my penny worth and to you privately for most lists are not prepared 
> for this doomsday thinking.
> "Joe", biologist, self sufficiency farmer in <snip>
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harold Waldock" <hwaldock@telus.net>
> To: "Vanpermaculture" <vanpermaculture@yahoogroups.com>; "Permaculture 
> list" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 7:29 AM
> Subject: [permaculture] The Permaculture saying,"Prepare for Disaster" and 
> the money system collapse (part 1)
>