epub p101:
The defining characteristic of normal food, of secure food, is that it waits, in state, for us to call from our kitchens. Sadly, today our rural communities are as dependent on the supermarket and its concomitant chain of factory farms, truckers, processors, and warehouse forklift operators as any urban area.
I was in New York recently, in the Delaware Highlands, where in the past two decades 350 family dairy farms have turned into a scant fifty struggling dairies. In this place of breathtaking beauty and resource bounty, most residents eat the same food as the much-decried food deserts of inner cities. The Spam sold at the corner general store comes from the same supply chain, the same grinder, the same factory, as the Spam sold in the corner store in the impoverished inner city. And it’s all wrapped in plastic, kept for months in a distant warehouse, inaccessible to the community. Unknown and unseen.
Remember, in the mid-1940s, nearly half of all vegetables in the United States were grown in home vegetable gardens. The Victory Garden effort was our country’s last curtain call in the food security theater. That stage is now practically vacant. Witness the panic that sets in when weather forecasters warn of impending snow or other weather disturbances. Without being cocky, I’m confident that our family could eat for months from what we have stored in our larder. It’s right under our noses, in our own castle.
This is not only normal, it’s secure. When food is spread out among the households of a community, it’s less vulnerable to anything, be it weather, politics, economics, or bioterrorism. Part of ecology is preparing for tough times. Plants store energy in their roots. Squirrels bury nuts against winter’s snows. Bees busily make honey all season in order to survive the winter. Trees shed their leaves to conserve carbohydrates that will renew their growth in the spring. The whole world pulses with this preparation and awareness toward security.
We’re acting like a mama bear facing hibernation who, rather than eating extra to put on fat for the long sleep, lies around watching the leaves fall hoping someone will come and feed her in January. Indeed, it begs the question of whether a civilization this irresponsible toward the primal requisites for survival can or even should survive. Food security is not in the supermarket. It’s not in the government. It’s not at the emergency services division.
True food security is the historical normalcy of packing it in during the abundant times, building that in-house larder, and resting easy knowing that our little ones are not dependent on next week’s farmers’ market or the electronic cashiers at the supermarket.
see Joel Salatin