Posted on 06/02/2021 10:38:42 AM PDT by Pining_4_TX
I do live in an urban food desert, but just a few steps over the city line are grocery stores and Walmart super-centers. There are also farms in the county that have stands during the growing season. I do have a garden.
Amy Dacyczyn has a number of books out and the edition that combines vol 1 & 2 of her Tightwad Gazette contains a section of recipes for convenience foods as well as casseroles with cost breakdowns of her versions vs the branded products. Its a bit out of date but you can save a lot of money following her recipes, with in-season American grown food.
5 acres seems doable, eh ?
A good video about bottled water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJEw5aDzOo
Buying American is not quite the same thing as buying locally produced food only. Not everyone has access to farmer’s market or can have a garden. The whole point of the article is that the proponents of “buy local” believe that it is more efficient and better for the environment. That is not true. If you live in Florida, you buy spuds grown in Idaho, and people in Idaho buy oranges grown in Florida. That is the only reasonable thing to do. If we are going to feed all 275 million (if that number is correct) people in the US, it is highly impractical, inefficient, and expensive to buy food that is produced within a 100 miles of where you live.
New place/sandy soil. So we put in raised beds and a 7 ft fence that so far has deterred the deer/rabbits. The deer come by every morning, but ignore the garden.
And I discovered something: hardly any weeds in a raised bed! Could be because we live in an oak & pine barren and there simply isn’t a lot of undergrowth (weeds/grasses) in this Ice Age lake bottom.
Soil is expensive this 1st year, but all we need to do in future is amend. And, we’re old, so really, it’s just tomatoes, some peppers, some sweet corn and some lettuce.
Therapeutic and tasty, as you say.
I live in Arizona. If I went local, I’d starve.
“Most grazing land is not as good as that!”
Yes, two acres is minimum on good grassland. We used the 3 acres/head rule. We were blessed in that each of our pastures had bottom land with a creek or spring where the grass was lush and thick.
In nearby Charlotte county the rule of thumb is 4-5 acres/head because of the sandier soil where grass grows thinner.
Not knowing the land I would advise only one cow a year on it. Wouldn’t do to have 2 and then have to buy hay during the summer.
Then you have to worry about loss to illness, predators and idiot people.
An alternative is culls from dairy and beef farms. Buy a fully grown cow that someone else paid to raise and carry it straight to the butcher. Older cattle also have, IMVHO, more tender and tastier meat than younger cows. We used to put up two cows every year. They were always cows that had come to the end of their calf producing days, usually 10-12 years old.
People who are with us couldn’t believe how tender the meat was.
The big thing on the market now in Europe is Galician Blond meat from Spain that seems to be pulling in premium prices.
Their secret?
The cattle are 8-12 years old before they are sent to slaughter. Galician is pulling in Wagyu prices.
A Galician exporter...
https://www.carneslaiberica.com/en/galician-beef/
The guy is arguing globalism and he has left American producers out of the equation in his article. America is a food export country that produces food far in excess our own needs, so buying American should be a consideration, especially with all the horror stories about unregulated farmed fish, poisoned pet food, and produce that carries hepatitis from food that comes from abroad. We can do both, we can export as well as feed a domestic market, but thats not an option that he covers.
“global food products present substantial advantages in terms of affordability, in particular for middle and low-income consumers.” Is what the guy says.
The article argues globalism and local, leaving the option of buying from American producers out of the equation. You can buy your Chinese fish if you like, I will continue to buy domestic whiting.
Also, nobody actually knows how much of our farmland is foreign held because shell companies obfuscate ownership details to the states, so there is little or no enforcement of existing foreign ownership laws.
buying locally ensures that at least one knows the farmer, and if one wanted could find out the farming practices....
and most of all, BIG farms are run by BIG BUSINESS and very rich people like Gates....
I don't want to support them...
cow manure year round is the value of having a cow ... feed a fish/teach to fish
And so it does. How else would poor people be able to afford produce year round that is out of season in the US? I’m all in favor of US food, but most people cannot afford the luxury of only buying locally grown food. It’s too expensive. Not everyone has access to a farmer’s market, and people who live in apartments are not able to have gardens.
Well things are looking squirrely with the globalists so I for one will be putting things up for the winter this year.
Anyone can do this, our ancestors survived because they did this, and the science involved would make for useful STEM projects and (for example). Faith-based groups around my city are already working on the food-production end of the local food issue; kitchen facilities to enable people to put up their bounty would be doable because all the churches have kitchens that pass regular inspections, plus there is a big industrial kitchen for rent here geared toward food-based startups. All they need to do is to get some people willing to take the plunge and organize the effort.
Its already begun anyway, judging from the way mason jars, lids, and pressure cookers have been selling. We’re not about to stop food export/import, but for people who weathered the great toilet paper and yeast famines of 2020, putting up food bought cheaply for a time when it is no longer cheap in the winter is the next logical step in emergency preparedness.
Plus my hot-pack chicken is a heck of a lot tastier than mres or Spam!
Plus, if the greenies are sincere about shifting us to an electricity based energy industry instead of oil and gas, you can bet that jacked up prices for home heating oil and natural gas are going to happen, even if everything goes to their plan and there aren’t any massive miscalculations of the administration’s part. It sounds like this isn’t going to be attrition, with replacing old worn out furnaces with (cringe) electric ones. Electric heat is expensive, and for people who get very cold winters, something like drastic rate hikes are going to happen, dollars to donuts, to get them to replace their furnaces for something like heat pumps.
Putting up food for the winter would help poor families in particular to weather that particular economic storm. Having shelf-stable food on hand that actually tastes good would be a comfort to many.
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