stretching pennies

I stumbled over a news article today about how food prices are going up about five percent this year, with an expected three percent rise next year. So in two years, the price of food will have gone up nearly ten percent.. This is hardly news to folks who are already stretching meager earnings, but reading this article confirmed what I've been thinking for awhile now. They even state in the article that rising oil costs tie into it, and that spells trouble. We're using a finite resource to grow, ship, and store our food. That's insanity.

Most of the fertilizers and pesticides used in the US are petroleum based, and then you have to drive the tractors, drive the semi trucks, (or the boats for imported goods, and THEN the trucks) refrigerate all of it, etc. I know I've harped on this before, but according to the USDA's own numbers, a third of our fruits and veggies are imported. The average meal travels over a thousand miles before it reaches our plate. That's a staggering amount of oil based energy to get our food, and it's all built on a house of cards! Oil is going to RUN OUT. It's a fact, because it is a finite resource. Regardless of the politics of oil, it's going to run out someday not far from now, and what do we do with our sweeping monocultures then? We've reduced much of the soil to nothing more than a sponge to hold chemicals and seeds, what do we do with this bastardized soil when the last drop of oil had been sucked out?  It's already starting to effect food prices, what happens when oil starts getting scarcer and more expensive?

We see the price of oil fluctuate daily, and that is now starting to effect the ability of people to feed themselves. This is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about people growing and raising a portion of their own food. If you have a few hens in the yard, and some produce in the garden, you can feed your children, no matter what else is going on, and there's a security in that. Knowing even if the boat with all the apples doesn't show up and inflation is jacking the price of basics up, there will still be something to eat.

 A third of the citizens in the US live on less than 15,000 a year now, there's no cushion or savings anymore for food costs going up, or any costs going up.

In a way, this may be a stark wake up call for folks to try and take matters into their own hands. I hope this spring we'll see a burst of new gardeners, new hen keepers, new folks who realize that the era of cheap food in the US is drawing to a close, unless we figure something new out very soon.

*update*

I got curious about how much you can save by gardening, and this Wall Street Journal article was very interesting:

"The nonprofit National Gardening Association just produced a study -- sponsored by ScottsMiracle-Gro Co. -- that found the average family with a vegetable garden spends just $70 a year on it and grows an estimated $600 worth of vegetables.


George Ball, chairman and CEO of seed giant Burpee, can rattle off the savings for dozens of homegrown crops. Green beans will generate $75 worth of crops for each $1 you spend on seeds, Mr. Ball calculates. Even the lowly potato will generate $5 of spuds for each $1 you invest in seeds."


The article goes on to discuss the added cost of tools and equipment, but as a second year gardener, we've saved all our fencing and tools, so all we need now is seed, and the cost of some stepping stones and a little extra fencing since we're expanding the garden. And since we're getting mostly heirloom seeds, we plan on saving them. So the year  after that if we don't plan on adding new plants, our garden will be free. People should really start taking advantage of their yards, I know it paid off big time for us, and it wasn't as much work as the article describes. An hour of weeding a week maybe if you mulch properly, not back breaking labor by any means.