From Sharon Astyk’s wonderful blog:
What I Store that Isn’t Food
Sharon July 15th, 2008
Several people have asked me to write about my non-food storage more than I have (there’s a post here on the subject, which includes links to someone else’s recommended list). This is one of those places where I start looking like a doomer wacko, I realize, but I do think that it is worth talking about.
Right now, every shipping container that crosses the ocean has the equivalent of a 9% tariff on goods coming in from rising oil costs. That doesn’t include the cost of the oil in the products itself – it isn’t just food whose price is rising out of the reach of ordinary people. At the same time as food and gas eat up more of our budgets, it gets harder and harder to buy other stuff.
Now a lot of us have more stuff than we need – but often, it isn’t the right stuff for a low energy world. For example, most of us have winter wardrobes that are not designed to live in a house with minimal or no supplemental heating. And yet, that’s a real possibility in the northern parts of the country this coming year. Think about – most fuel oil companies have a minimum delivery of 100-150 gallons of oil – otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to run the truck. Most small companies can’t afford to grant credit anymore, because of the sheer number of people defaulting on payment – and many smaller companies have gone out of business. Natural gas is expected to spike as well, while utilities will be renegotiating their shutoff policies. Many people won’t be able to afford winter heating bills in the several thousand dollars, particularly advance payments on the order of 5-600 dollars for oil. So they will switch to small electric space heaters – and grid use will spike as well, during the coldest weather. We may see blackouts, because of this, but eventually people’s power will get shut off as well, unless mandates against shut offs are strictly enforced. So many people will be living with minimal or no heat. They need warm stuff for this – and most of them probably don’t have it, since all buildings have been 70 degrees for most of their lives.
Beans and Rice and Beans and Rice and Beans and….
Sharon July 15th, 2008
In my last post I talked about the fact that the diets common in the rich world *appear* to be very diverse, and that diversity, and the idea of constant “choice” are something we emphasize a lot. Eating out of food storage, and eating cheaply both seem to constrict our choices dramatically – and thus we may feel deprived.
Now the truth is that as Michael Pollan showed so well in _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ the classic American diet isn’t diverse at all – it is almost all corn based. Corn is as central to our diet as it was to any Native population – the difference is that the corn is processed into corn syrup, Confinement meat, alcohol and other crap that isn’t good for us. We really haven’t changed anything – we’re eating corn 3 times a day, just like our ancestors, but we’re eating the worst possible form of corn for us and the planet. It would not be a loss of diversity to go back to eating corn or some other staple grain more often – and it would be a gain for the planet.
But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re used to the idea of eating a varied diet, and eating a lot of staple foods doesn’t necessarily line up with our mental image of what we or our families should be eating. In fact, it is pretty much precisely what we should be eating – we’ve seen this several times. There’s the Western Diet Paradox, in which immigrants from cultures with staple style diets made up of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes and small amounts of meat become less healthy and have shortened lifespans when they move to the US, and start eating a typical American diet. Or there’s the research from WWII, which showed that the British got healthier during periods of restriction in which they were eating more grains, and fewer meats, fats and sweets.
Food Storage on No Budget
Sharon July 15th, 2008
The people who most need a food reserve are the people who struggle the most to get it. As food and energy costs inflate, and the safety net for the poor begins to break apart, the lower your income, the more urgent it is for you to take advantage of economies of scale, to buy food at lower prices, the more necessary it is that you have some reserve to tide you over in hard times. But that’s incredibly tough if hard times are already here.
And often, the people who have the least ability to take advantage of these resources are the ones who need them the most. Millions of really poor Americans are homeless, or effectively so, living in subsidized motels or other housing that has no cooking facilities. Millions of American working families combine two, three or four jobs and leave the cooking to younger children – or simply have no time to cook or shop at all. Millions of Americans have budgets that already don’t reach the month, and can no longer put together an extra $50 to buy beans and rice in bulk or pay for a CSA share upfront than they can fly to the moon. And these are precisely the people most likely to lose a job, have their kids go hungry, and find that their barely-making-it budget is a no-longer making it budget.
Now much of the time when I’m speaking of food, I advocate ethical practices. Because most of my readers – not all by any means, but most – are comparatively well educated (whether autodidactically or otherwse), and most of them have some ability to pick and choose their foods, either because they are middle class already or because they have carefully and consciously managed to leave some reserve in a small budget by the choices they’ve made. I want to be clear – for those with enough money to do this, ethical food is still the priority – the dollars we spend now on food are investments in future food systems – the systems we will need to feed us in difficult times. We can’t afford to throw that money away on systems that won’t be there, if there’s another choice.
