Food security and Christmas food hampers

Capitalism is good at concentrating wealth, folks who start a business expect to be rewarded for their risk and effort. Small scale business needs skilled employees and rewards them with a living wage. Large scale business automates and de skills the work to make a higher margin, which works as long as the economy is humming and those long production runs can all be sold at full price. As the economy slumps, post 2008 style, manufacturing looks to lower unit costs, moves to lower wage countries, automates even more, looks for tax savings. This keeps the cost of production down, and buys a reprieve from the slump. It also drives down the de skilled wage, in today’s dollars. I googled inflation adjusted minimum wages in Canada and got the following: in 2015 dollars, the most recent they had, Minimum wage in 1970 was $7.20. In 2015, it was $10.50 (on PEI). Something that cost $100 in 1970, goods or services, costed $532 in 2015. So, wages went up 1.4 times, but costs went up 5.3 times. At a certain point, Mom went out to work, just till the economy improved…it didn’t, not for the unskilled workers. Now you have to add child care to the bills, 'cause Mom is working too, and at a certain point, the family can’t afford to pay for more child care, so limits the size of their family. Here, that has meant school closures and an aging population. Some folks at the low end of wages lose hope, and stop trying. It is lack of opportunity and lack of hope that defeats them. Thankfully, we have land, and farmed while younger. Hubby had a skilled trade, and I had pigs, and a baby, grin.

As long as you have hope, you look for opportunity…lack of hope stagnates the economy.

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I’m going to add something to this, but I’ll tell you my biases, so you can adjust accordingly, grin.
First, I’m a person with good health, reasonable energy levels and boundless optimism. Aside from that, I was a credit councelor many years ago,
and saw what lack of hope did, and what changes people made with even a glimmer of home. You can disregard any of this that doesn’t fit what you see.

Most 20 and 30 somethings can’t cook. Most of them did not take nutrition classes in school and may not know what a good diet actually is.
Many folks earn just above minimum wage and can’t do the calculations to see how to make thing better.

I’ll give some examples, scrambled, so no body can be identified.

Buddy has trouble making his truck payments, and needs it to get to work. Two days a week, he uses his truck at work, and gets paid reasonable mileage.

He finds the office part of his job stressful, so started buying a Timmy’s coffee on the way to work. This grew to another at 10:30, more at noon, one at 3, and sometimes one on the way home. After a bit, he was getting calls about late truck payments, and came for budgeting help with us. Turns out, his coffee was just about his truck payments. So…the advice his Grammy might have given him, if he lived closer, fell to us to give. Buy a giant thermos, a tin of Timmy’s cofee and a travel mug. Have beans Saturday night instead of meat, that will cover the cost of the coffee maker and other stuff needed for his Timmy’s. Truck payments get made again on time. Part of buddy’s issue though is low wages that meant he could not buy ready made coffee and make truck payments. Lack of hope meant he couldn’t figure out what else to do.

Here is another example, where the person still has hope. This lady has saved her egg money and bought a brand new styrofoam incubator to
hatch a few more chicks, as the eggs are selling out every week. Another person asks if there is room for a dozen eggs from his flock, and how much would it cost to have some hatched? Always room, grin. Soon, the guy mentions he has a styrofoam incubator of his own, but hasn’t had much luck with it, would the hatching lady take it for the hatching bill? Sure, all it needs is a coat of paint and a new wafer, total cost, 35 bucks, hatching bill and wafer. If eggs bring in 40 cents for each one set, and the machine holds about 50, it’s not too long till the second incubator is paid for, and the hatching lady is looking for another one, number 3. 20 years later, the hatching lady retires and sells off the now 11 incubators, having had a good living in the mean time.

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Those of us who already love gardening and cooking know that our investment of time and resources will be worth it. The benefits may not seem as appealing to a beginner.

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Up to us to spread the joy, huge grin…

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Thanks for this thread @jocelyn . I totally agree with @VSOP about “tragedy of the commons”. I’m a former city boy and lifelong gardener and foodie. And I do a pretty good job at maintaining my optimism (/idealism). I do think there is more interest now in backyard gardening, small livestock raising, cooking and healthy eating than at any other time in my lifetime. Attitudes have changed a lot since Americans started becoming aware of the state of our food and our farms and I think this trend is likely to continue. It certainly makes me proud to see my 5 year old daughter explain to her mom what certain things are in the garden and to constantly graze on different herbs, greens, veges and berries in the garden.

To speak to the original topic, here’s a cool project going on in my vicinity - The Wetherby Edible Forest http://www.backyardabundance.org/AbundantLandscapes/WetherbyEdibleForest.aspx

Cheers.

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I live in the country, and am older, so not driving into Town as much as before. Still, folks in the country could grow more too. Many don’t know how, don’t know how to cook it if they did, and have no idea what wild foods are yummy.

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Many people have told me they stopped gardening because it’s too expensive. When queried, they lay out the cost of a tiller, plants from the store, fertilizer, spray, fencing, all on a huge plot. By midsummer it’s all weeds and they give up. But thats how they’ve always done it, so it’s the only way. Never mind fruit or anything you have to wait years for.
I wouldn’t want to garden if that’s the only way I thought it would work.

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Well, I will certainly concede that gardening is uneconomical…

It would be different if my gardening were closer to a small-scale farm, but planting, weeding, harvesting, etc, by hand just doesn’t make a bit of economic sense when you consider the value of my time relative to the value of what I produce. Of course that has nothing to do with why I do it… it is a hobby and something I enjoy. Eating the food is a treat, but a lot of what I grow is just flowers anyway.

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Garden centres have to make a living, so they advertize stuff, and hope some buy it.
I’m a low inputs type gardener myself, grin. I wanted to get rid of a patch of seedling plums where some were not good enough to keep…
so, cut them down and planted potatoes thickly where they had been. Spuds close canopy and shade out the regrowth, I pick off some of the plum shoots, expanding spuds break up the ground a bit, and fall digging makes it rather mellow. I get rid of the plums that didn’t work out and get at least 2/3 of a normal crop of spuds. Then, we both like blueberries, yumm, yumm…
So, I bought a tub of highbush blueberries at the grocery store, 'product of Novs Scotia" on the package…humm just across the strait from here, probably seeds in there from varieties that would be hardy here too. So, we eat all but 3 berries, squish those three in a saucer of water the float away the fruit and save the seeds. This spring I put out 13 smallish high bush blueberry plants from those seeds, bigger than the tiny ones at the garden centre in 2 and a half inch plugs. The garden centre ones were $17.98, plus tax, EACH. Mine were three berries forgone and not eaten, plus a bit of time which I enjoyed, watching them come up and grow.

Then, it’s squash time, don’t need to buy those cute little pots, peat pellets or what have you. For me, spring clean up of the ditch in front of the house yielded lots of paper/plastic cups and the soil in the ditch itself made lovely compost…got all my squash ready to go out tomorrow…and all are in bud already.

I need to do a few more chestnut grafts outside tomorow too, if it’s not raining too much. We’ve had frost till just the other night, late this year, so I’m late too with garden stuff.

I broke a few really low shoots off a new quince tree I got in the mail, have them in a glass of water…wonder if they will root…

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I agree it is a lot of work, and prob not the most economical. But it is rewarding to grow your own stuff, to know how and where it was grown. With disease and varmit pressure it makes it frustrating, but it is worth it to go out and pick a fresh tomato, or cucumber, or whatever is available.

We also do it to can (preserve) and store food for any lean years that may come. I’ve been doing this now going on my fourth season, and I’ve learned a lot, so hopefully all that on-hand knowledge will yield better results this year.

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I agree it’s totally possible to garden without buying a lot of stuff. Save seeds, take cuttings, make compost, use mulch. But that is not the traditional way around here, so few people don’t. Both my brothers-in-law ooh and aah over my garden each year but never change the way they do theirs.
I’m cheap and lazy/busy. I scrounge coffee grounds and cardboard almost daily from Starbucks, and use wood chips to mulch everything possible. Spent the Boogers’ morning nap today calling arborists for more mulch.

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Everybody’s reality is different. We have been here long enough and have enough land to be able to have perennial vegies, tree fruits and tree nuts. That gives a lot of food with little on going labour. Then, there are raspberries, blackberries, saskatoons, hazelnuts, currants, grapes and the like…all low labour once bearing. I live in the country, so mulch comes by making sure I have a five gallon bucket always in the car. When they chip the tree trimmings under the power lines, they blow the chips back in the ditch some of the time. If they are too far from the district heating plant to make make haulage to town worth while, the chips get blown into the ditch. When I notice a new pile, or windrow, I take a bucketfull each time I’m that way. They last several ears, so no hurry.
It’s partly a life stage thing too, no kids home any more, here.

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Thanks for starting this thread Jocelyn. A great topic and it certainly touches on a lot more than just getting folks to grow a little food.

I have no new ideas to reverse major societal trends and complications, but I think we do get chances to win folks over one at a time.

I think the biggest thing is to just help people find success with things they can enjoy. Ever year I start about 300 tomato, pepper and herb seedlings which is about 15x what I can plant. Most go to a PTA plant sale to support my kids school, but I also give away dozens to friends and neighbors. When someone wants a single tomato plant I always give them one of the easier cherry tomatoes. If they want more than one plant, they’re getting at least one cherry in the mix so that if the others fail or that one big beautiful beefsteak gets eaten by a squirrel they still have handfuls of Sweet 100 or Sungold tomatoes to enjoy.

They are also going to get at least one basil seedling. It is super easy to grow and when people eat fresh basil from their garden or growing in a pot on their patio, they’re always amazed how great it tastes. No need to wait for anything to fruit or develop, they can eat a leaf off it the day I give it to them. Having a salad? Drop in a few cut up leaves. Pasta? Grab a few more. This year I also started giving people seed potatoes, since if the soil is okay they’re easy to grow, fun to dig up, especially with kids (surprise!) and I haven’t found the squirrels, birds and chipmunks digging for them … yet anyway. They aren’t necessarily a lot better than what you get in the store, but when 1 potato turns itself into a dozen more magically, that can be pretty exciting. Mostly I just want them to have a small success so maybe they can build on it if they find they enjoy it. One good experience can go a long way. One person I gave a 5 gallon pot with a sweet 100 cherry and a couple of basil seedlings planted in it 2 years ago just finished putting in a couple of nice raised beds in their front yard. That’s a success, but there are certainly a bunch of folks who failed to water, got bored, etc. Oh well, just cost me a few seeds.

On the other side, I have a plot at a community garden and there are long waiting lists for it with people desperate to get in. But every year at least half the plots that new gardeners get have gone to weeds by mid summer … and these are only 8x18 plots so not a lot to keep up. People read the hype about growing this and that, put in things that they’re not ready to maintain, etc. and find it is more work with less reward than they had idealized. Since you (and I and probably most on this site) grew up with some type of family garden, we learned from others and already understand both the perils and possibilities. But when a newbie with little more than Youtube, over-wrought nursery write ups, and idealized blog posts to go on finds their cucumbers have all died from wilt, their squash died from borers and their finicky heirloom tomatoes have blighted out, it turns out to be a lot less fun than they were lead to believe.

You mentioned hope and besides food security I think gardening can do a lot of good for folks in need of hope as well. Whenever I start worrying about the state of the world, etc. I always find it best to retreat to the garden. Seeing a newly sown row of beans breaking out of the soil or a graft magically taking and growing vigorously… wonderful!

I’m know I’m oversimplifying it. Not everyone will be inclined to garden no matter what anyone does to help and encourage. TV is an easy way to zone out and gardening is work even if you enjoy it. Unfortunately a lot of younger people have grown up so far removed from fresh food production or even eating fresh veggies they may not know what they’re missing or be interested in finding out. If a recent study found that 7% of Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows we might have a long uphill battle to move the needle.

But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. And I sometimes find I enjoy cultivating the gardeners as much as the garden.

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Yah, that’s it, cultivating the gardener, grin. Good for you.
I give away a lot of little pear trees too, same idea.

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I thought a lot about this back in 2008. One of the conclusions was that almost nobody has enough spare, high-quality farmland to grow a (quantitatively meaningful) fraction of their food. And most of those who do have the land don’t have the time, and most of those who do have the land and the time don’t have the knowledge, and most of those who have all of the above have enough money that they’re not motivated to deal with the drastically-constrained diet that would result. Here are a couple posts I wrote about it almost ten years ago (!)

This one includes a calculation of how much land is needed to grow enough of various foods to feed a person for a year. The conclusion is that to feed a family with home-grown food is going to require a garden of at least an acre, unless they are willing to eat nothing but potatoes (also a discussion of the impact multiplier of feeding grain to animals):

Further discussion of how much land it would take, how much land is available, and other factors:

And a proposal that people who are serious about this should grow high-value crops, optimizing for dollars and pleasure rather than calories (I think that’s the approach a lot of people here seem to take):

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I work on the idea that one tomatoe plant is easy to care for, and the resulting vine ripened tomatoe is VERY yummy.
If you are going to plant trees anyway, why not food trees? Two walnuts are easy to care for, just mow around them…we have 3 kinds, all very yummy and very little work…just pick up the nuts when they fall. The Christmas walnuts (regia) fall free of the husk, so even easier than most.
Start folks on the easy stuff. Rhubarb? Most folks like rhubarb.

If folks grow anything at all, it saves them a few dollars and gives them some actually fresh food.

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At least in America, most low income families are short on affordable fruit and vegetables, not calories. While the industrial farming techniques used to give us those cheap calories is causing lots of problems, most people can reap more of the benefits of gardening more quickly by growing their vitamin crops (fruit and veg) than their calorie crops (corn, beans, and potatoes). That not only will improve their lives more in the short term, but is much less intimidating. Better to have everyone gardening a little than no one at all!

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yah, each grow a little, somthing they like :slight_smile:
When we were first married and SOOOOO busy, it was just asparagus and raspberries, all I had time for. Worth every second syphoned off sleep time. After a bit, it was rhubarb too…
It grows over time.

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In Metro Vancouver (BC, Canada), municipal governments are very pro-community gardening. There are small community gardens in every city and lots of people living in apartments or condos who are on waiting lists to get a plot. There are even some groups who grow food in community - type gardens as a business. I think they share some of the harvest with the homeowners and sell shares of the rest to consumers interested in buying and eating locally grown organic fruits and vegetables. Some people are also growing and donating their excess to food banks and soup kitchens.

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My old church up in Powell River set up a community garden on the spare land next to the building. Saw it last I’m I did a Father - Daughter trip up to Powell River to help my buddy build a huge garden on his property (~13 acres but mostly forested). We also brought him 5 fruit trees, 12 blueberry bushes and several trays of vegetable seedlings. Jam packed my CRV.

Anthony

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