Food security listed for discussion

Food security will be the topic for discussion at the next gathering Beneath the Wisteria on Saturday, February 25, at 11:30am. Below are some notes about the issue by  Robert McLean.

Food security and climate change are inextricably linked.

Making a complex situation even thornier is the almost impenetrable difficulty of oil scarcity, worsened by the tortuous route of an imploding world economy.

Survival for man hinges on three fundamental needs, air, food and water to which you can add shelter as without it; the first three are almost superfluous, certainly considering conditions climate change is inflicting on some parts of the world.

Food shortages will be just one of the many dilemmas confronting humanity and one of many unknowns as it wrestles with the complications of climate change, not to mention the near certain, confrontations that will arise as oil becomes more difficult to extract and so more expensive, water shortages disable many societies, and climate refugees flood the world looking for a place a safety, plenty and respite.

People facing unseen dilemmas with consequences beyond their understanding or comprehension will repeatedly look to their local environment for solutions.

Home gardens will
help secure food
 supplies.

Writing in “Occupy World Street - A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform” author Ross Jackson said that the key to real development is the local production of basic necessities, in particular food.

“Once a local food market, a local dairy, and a local slaughterhouse are established in a community,” he said, “secondary support industries will appear naturally, creating local jobs and a thriving local economy”.

Writing in the 2012 book, Jackson said evolutionary biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris has long claimed it is a myth that we cannot produce enough food.

According to Jackson, she said traditionally agriculture analysts tend to measure the difference in the two systems in terms of financial gain on grossly distorted prices, rather than energy terms, which are far more relevant.

Sahtouris writes: “In fact, the natural farmer at the turn of the century (twentieth) produced ten calories of food energy for every one calories of energy input and kept his soil healthy, while the present-day industrial farmer put at least ten calories of energy into his farms from every one calorie of food he gets out. Meanwhile, his land is increasingly impoverished, thus destroying the very basis of his livelihood. Hi-tech agriculture must be counted enormously inefficient and energy wasteful.”

The rude statistics of industrialized farming point to efficiency, but close analysis of the figures suggest otherwise as the so-called efficiency arises from the exploitation of fossil fuels, in the form of oil to power the many machines needed for that style of farming and the many fossil fuels needed to create the fertilizer that makes the apparent richness of the soils possible.

Industrialized farming is built around mono-cropping, which is the antithesis of what nature intended. As the variety of crops is reduced, the subsequent vulnerability is increased with just a handful of bugs can dramatically reduce harvests and the insecticide industry, upon which industrialized farming dependent, is fundamentally oil based.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) will play a huge and critical role in helping us divest ourselves of our addiction to the oil-driven industrialized farming system.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
will help the world find food security.

Through CSA, farmers grown a huge variety of crops in response to demand from customers; customers who contribute financially, and in kind, to the running of the farm and be “paid” through being allowed to share in the resultant crops.

CSA puts people back in touch with the earth (dirt under their fingernails) and causes them to again have a resonance with the seasons, helping plant the crops, helping nurture them and then, subsequently, helping the cropping ends with them sharing in the resultant bounty.

The variety of crops makes them vastly more resistant to insect invasion and the seasonal rotation of crops ensures, and enables, the earth retains its robustness and fertility.

Individuals have a role to play in reaching a state of food security in that most people should be able to grow enough vegetables that they have ample for personal use and swap and share with neighbours and friends.