Considering Personal Food Security…..

There  are certain terms or  buzzwords  that  are so vague in todays vocabulary  they really  cannot be easily defined. But we hear them all the time, and use them as well.  These terms or words create an aura or image in our  minds. One of the words thrown around today in   agriculture is the term “sustainable” .

A  farm  or business can be  “sustainable”. Certain farming  practices are “sustainable”. A lifestyle can be described as “sustainable”. The picture that the word itself connotes is an image of warm and  fuzzy goodness, yet what does  it specifically mean?    The same can be said of the term “certified organic” as it relates to food. There is hardly a consumer alive that  can give you a good definition of what ”certified   organic” means, but the little  sticker  that  comes with the term makes a lot of people feel positive about  purchasing it- even  when they have no idea what it means.

Let us  go back to another term of which has been a  buzzword  over the last couple of years. The term “food security” is thrown around a lot. Farmers, politicians, university ag extension folks….we are all working towards “food security.”   As best as I can define it is  it means a large  enough food supply that does not run out, leaving  communities  and folks without food. We are all working toward community “food security”….

We have been blessed in this country to  not only have a seemingly bottomless bin of food available to  us, but a  staggering amount of choice that is not afforded to most of the world population. Fresh strawberries in January, 3 different sizes of portobello mushrooms, 3 different types of cucumbers….. Raddichio….  (How many you have raddichio as a staple in your daily diet?)  This is just in the produce section on the 1st of February of my local supermarket.  Its really very hard for the normal consumer to believe all this choice and bounty  could  actually disappear.

But we just have to look in the rear view mirror a couple of years ago  when the first round of Covid hit to see how fragile our food systems actually are.  A lot of choice disappeared from the shelves. It went beyond produce because  things like pasta, bread,  and grains  disappeared from the shelves as well, even toilet paper!   I found masking and the flu itself  inconvenient,  but the condition of the food shelves in our local grocery store was very disconcerting to me.    

Climate change is making it more challenging for  farmers to actually grow and produce food, prep it, pack it and get  it transported to areas of population . The federal government is being proactive in trying to acknowledge the fragility of food our supply by writing and funding  policy.   They are working to   encourage more local, small scale and midsized farms . They are making efforts to connect farmers into community  food hubs.  They are funding “sustainable growing practices”, meaning growing methods that protect soil health such that food can be continually produced on those soils into the future. And in many instances they are underwriting grant monies that encourage farmers to  increase farm efficiencies, food safety and productivity through capital purchase and system upgrades. These are helpful, on point and a good start, and originally these efforts were only directed towards large  commodity producing farms (think  corn ,soy, wheat, potatoes) they are now directed toward the broader agricultural demographic.

 But policy and grant money are not enough.

 I  think that the  biggest missing spoke in the wheel of food security is the consumer.   

There is much that the consumer can do to assure at least a small measure  of personal food security  amongst  home owners and it  is not being talked about. The responsibility for your family’s food security should not be laid totally at the feet of the farmers and federal  government. Its  time you got involved and invested with some  thought and personal effort.

I can think of three things a family can do to prepare for a serious food shortage.

 1)       Grow a garden of vegetables.  Grow food.  

 2)      Process food

3)      Alter  cooking and eating  habits  

 Grow a Garden:  Pretty hard to grow food if you live in Manhattan. But most people have the ability to grow a vegetable garden of some dimension and produce something  that  can be part of a personal food source. There are roof top gardens,  container  and community gardens in urban areas . There are ways of integrating vegetable plantings into ornamental landscapes. Of course growing vegetables is not easy, it  can be fraught with failure ( I can personally attest)  and it  can take a bit of time to accumulate the skills and knowledge. But it can also be immensely rewarding  and in being connected to the food web on a personal level  it will make you understand it’s workings better. A good garden  center can help you get started, and there is  bottomless information from the University Extension Systems, the  internet , Master Gardeners and local gardening clubs.  From small efforts, bigger things  can emerge.

Process or put up  Food: People think the responsibility  of fast food lays at the feet of hamburger stands, but in reality we should attribute the onset of fast food to a guy named Clarence Birdseye whom less than a hundred years ago figured out how to flash  freeze fish and produce. People didn’t have to can foods, they could just buy frozen broccoli and beans at the store year round. (I confess to still buying   little bags of petite baby peas to mix with my frozen corn.) This allowed people more variety in the winter, and so people gave up trying to grow and process those vegetables for their families.  Over time more food was processed  (Friday night is Swanson TV dinner night!!)   and we all fed ourselves a greater portion of food from the supermarket grown in some distant valley  by a Green Giant, and less off the home soil. Many food producing skills were lost over time such as   raising chickens, a pig  and meat birds, along with the  methods for  canning, freezing  and processing sauces, condiments, pickles and jam.

But you can supplement your diet with home grown herbs, greens, tomatoes and vegetables that don’t take up much space. There is a seasonality to gardening and at certain times in the  height of the harvest season you can also  buy wholesale quantities very reasonably from local farms or even stores that will have reduced  prices. We often wholesale  bushels of beans, corn, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes to folks whom wish to “put  up for the winter”. You can talk to the local produce suppliers and in working within their time frames and a little sweat equity on you can generate a lot of good food for the winter months very reasonably.    I really am  always grateful  in  the winter months that I took the time to freeze corn, tomatoes, berries, broccoli   in the late summer and that Anne puts up some dill pickles, salsa and dilled beans. Having these foods  in the cellar with onions and  potatoes gives me the secure,  gratifying feeling that is much like seeing the garage filled with the winters woodpile.

 Again, time is the biggest expense. Despite the fact that  Americans  only put a fraction of their personal family food as opposed to 80 years ago, it is not a lost art. And we have many new tools in our kitchens that were not available then: immersion blenders, food processors and affordable freezers. At a  glance at Amazon just revealed  better than four  pages of pressure cookers ranging from $70 for a 4 quart pressure cooker to a 21 qt canner for $500.  And the internet information on putting food up is overwhelming as well.

Alter your  eating  habits: We all loose weight in the summer, and I bet its statistically provable that we all eat less during the summer. The days are longer, warmer and we are more active than we are in the winter. (My couch time next to the wood stove with Kevin the Cat is definitely a  higher  percentage of the day in the winter as compared to summer). In the slower winter months try  utilizing things that lessen your dependence on fresh  western produce. Whereas dried beans and rice were staples of the American diet hundred years ago, who among us can actually admit to using inexpensive dried beans or lentils in their cooking today? There are winter storge crops that we can put up and utilize besides onions and potatoes such as salsify, carrots, beets, cabbage and winter squash  (which also lends itself to processing and  canning). They are considerably less expensive than buying  the processed version in the  winter from the supermarket.  Learning to cook with these less-than-sexy ingredients can help develop a sense  of independence when the  shelves empty out during extreme weather events and pandemics.

All this does not  mean that you have to eat like  a Russian monk and give up your Driscolls Blackberries in February and  banish the  Portobello mushroom from your diet. But I think it is wise for us all going forward in this era of climate change to consider what we eat and how  we might eat in the event  of  future food shortages and how we might lessen that impact.