Food Self-Sufficiency Contest

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There are, however, two fatal flaws in this cozy assumption: [1] The extremely low-cost supplies of energy and materials on which corporate farming is based are actually quite limited, and will be exhausted someday. [2] Even if these non-renewable resources were . . . not limited, the chemicals and other ill-advised agribiz techniques of modern farming increasingly threaten and damage nature's life-support processes and, therefore, cannot continue to be escalated—perhaps even used—indefinitely.

As deposits of fossil fuels and raw materials dwindle, then, the unnaturally low supermarket price (which many of us already complain about) for food . . . must rise to more accurately reflect the true cost of that food's production. At the same time, the increasing damage—air pollution, chemical poisoning of the soil and water, etc.—done to the environment by our "advanced" industrial society will steadily make that environment less productive. This, also, will force up the price of food.

In our opinion, there is a good chance that these trends will eventually push the price of supermarket food completely beyond the reach of many people . . . and our society will then have to find another way to feed them. And that "way" may very well be a reversion to the "self-sufficiency" of our forebears. We also believe that, as the biosphere is increasingly damaged, such a transition to food self-sufficiency will become more and more difficult.

The longer we delay in starting the switch back to individual and family food self-sufficiency, then, the harder it's going to be to make the change. And, as we personally have learned from firsthand experience, the transition is anything but easy right now.

Our place had a usable house on it when we bought it. We have, therefore, been able to concentrate-all our efforts so far on food and energy production. We do, however, hope to build a dwelling of native materials sometime during the next few years. Goodness knows, we have plenty of rocks!

For 100 years before we bought it, our land was farmed to exhaustion with corn, cotton, sugar cane, and small grains . . . and getting anything at all from our soil has been a struggle. But one way or another, we've produced almost all our own food since we moved here . . . primarily-in the early days because we were willing to eat whatever we had. (We lived on little but canned black—eyed peas and green beans our first winter and, as a result, those legumes still have a special place in our affections.)

Foraging was very important to our survival when we first moved to the farm and it still provides a significant portion of our diet. A big bowl of crisp watercress mixed with tiny wild onions is hard to beat in the spring long before the first lettuce is ready to pick from the garden. Black walnuts and hickory nuts are real staples on our menu and we canned 50 quarts of wild blackberries last year. We also harvest elderberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, grapes, persimmons, and other volunteer vegetables and fruits. They're all good.

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