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This article contributed by Dr. Kayla Kaiser 

Start with the solution

 DIY food.  If you get nothing else out of this manifesto, remember that YOU can grow your own FOOD!  Many people are reluctant to try raising their own food.  It’s too time-consuming, too difficult… But why would you trust someone else to do what you can do for yourself? 

What is the problem?

 Large farming operations are producing an undesirable result: an obese population stuffed with beef and corn (and its byproduct high-fructose corn syrup).  Where did the term “Beefcake” come from?  It’s the result of consuming corn-fed beef and living in the meat-packing city of Omaha, NE, my hometown.

 I was educated at University of Nebraska at Kearney, together with the offspring of multi-generational farm families.  In my “BIOL 301: Introduction to Soils” class I was the only chemist among 20 agribusiness majors.   Our university was situated in the western end of the corn belt, surrounded for a 200 mile radius by cornfields.

 What I learned is that it is incredibly difficult for a young farmer to get started unless he or she inherits the land and equipment from a family member.  The annual salary of a working farmer is around the poverty line.  How can we survive and improve the quality of life for our children if we continue to apply the “corporations get richer” strategy in our “free market economy?”  It’s certainly not the farmers who are profiting.

 Food security is a key issue.  Food security is broadly defined as access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.  The number of undernourished people on this planet has increased from 730 M in 1986 to 800 M in 1996.  Rather than making a difference the World Bank, United Nations, USAID and other agencies have allowed the number to swell to 925 M currently.  You might say, well that’s not in America.  Wrong!  One in six Americans is food insecure.  Why?

 The first-world is first-class in leading a consumption-hungry lifestyle. We are facing a future scarce of water and raw materials, abundant in waste, greenhouse gases, depleted soil and fuel reserves. The issue is “fast food.”  When we do not value our health, we feed ourselves cheaply and quickly, disregarding the environmental impacts of our food choices. It takes a great deal of patience to raise one’s own food. If we don’t have the patience to wait for these things, we reach for an easy handout that is nutritient-deficient and loaded with fat and calories that provides few vitamins and essential minerals. Hello obesity! Yes, two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. 

 “Food Deserts” exist in the inner cities where access to grocery stores and Farmer’s markets (fresh produce) is limited, but liquor stores provide plenty of pre-packaged nutrient-deficient cheap grab-and-go options.  In Southern California alone, East Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fullerton, Burbank, Inglewood, Downey, Torrance, Anaheim, Orange, Garden Grove, Pomona, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Fontana, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Moreno Valley classify as food deserts according to the 2000 Census data.

What is being done?

 “Solutionaries” including Oran Hesterman have brought together coalitions of young and old Americans who have a vested interest in improving their own health and leaving a healthy legacy for our growing global population.  Programs such as “double up food bucks” in Detroit and a similar program in Washington D.C. are putting more purchasing power into the hands of those food insecure in our own country, supported by SNAP also known as food-stamps, and channeling it directly into the hands of farmers who are the laborers involved directly in the growth and distribution of a fresh, healthy food supply.

 The Meret program has demonstrated that education and incentives for resource management can be applied to improve everyone’s quality of life because everyone works and eats better.  By paying laborers in food, terraces can be formed by manual labor to prevent erosion.  Simple infrastructure including rocks and wire mesh can create habitats for pollinators to flourish.  Water (ponds, streams) are critical to provide year-round irrigation to food crops.  These simple human-powered solutions can be implemented by many people across our nation (and globally).  Solutions like this have been successfully implemented in the Nile basin in Africa, why couldn’t they work here?

 Funding for agricultural research has declined. It is below the needs of the industry by a factor of 10.  The introduction of genetic solutions are a 10-15 year process, meaning that funding for research needs to be increased NOW to have an impact in the next several decades.  With the rise in global population projected to increase in developing countries, we may stand to stabilize geopolitical turmoil by providing food to the hungry.

 Food prices have doubled in the last two decades.  Why?  This is because agricultural crops are treated as commodities which can be traded.  Those in power hold on to agricultural reserves to drive prices higher.  It is also a great challenge to deliver food to the hungry, therefore educating people to grow their own food is a smarter solution.

How we aim to address the problem

 Raising our own food would address many problems: energy cost associated with transportation of food (the average distance food travels to reach your table is 1,500 miles), environmental cost associated with high-density food production (raising food in your own space allows you to limit or eliminate pesticide use and prevent water waste), and nutritional cost associated with consumption of low-nutrient food that is not adapted to the region where you are ($190 B due to hospitalizations, prescription drugs and lost productivity). 

 Whatever happened to “Victory Gardens?”  It seems the corporations don’t want us to raise our own food.  Not 50 years ago, people raised 40% of their own fruits and vegetables.  Kudos to Michelle Obama, the second first-lady to insist that a vegetable garden be maintained at the White House.  Not since Eleanor Roosevelt has this been implemented, for fear of hurting the food industry.

 We offer seed to those who have space to grow it.  We are practicing backyard and container gardening, following plants through their full life cycle and collecting our own seed.  We eat what we grow and compost the rest.  Although corporations are selling farmers seed which can offer increased yield through disease and pest (chemical and biological) resistance, this seed comes at a cost.  A return to heirloom varieties may offer a return to increased nutritional yield rather than a produce which is large and swollen with water, diluting key nutrients that plants offer.  Local varieties may also be adapted to survive local pests.  Contact us for FREE SEEDS.