Month: April 2015

Food When There is No Food

On: By: crier

It couldn’t happen here. That’s all in the past.

Most people alive don’t remember famine, war, or disease in the United States of America wiping out large swaths of US peoples. War, plagues, famines, and food shortages are things that happen across the oceans, or at least across the borders.

You don’t have to live in an exotic location for natural and manmade disasters to strike.

In 1816, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted pushing massive amounts of ash into the air. The global weather turned so cold that crops across the US died due to frost in June. Pennsylvania had river ice in July and August that year. Many people starved to death the next winter. Luckily, that could never happen again in the USA because Indonesia no longer has volcanos.

In 1861, Democrats decided to go to war instead of accept the Republican Congress’s and Republican President’s call for an end to slavery. They started a civil war that maimed and killed 100,000’s of Americans. Armies confiscated citizens’ food for their troops and many Americans died because of starvation. The war Democrats started killed more Americans than any other war in American history, including World War II. This of course could never happen in America again, because extremist Democrats now embrace Republicans as their beloved fellow citizens and have no desire for their political enemies to curl up and die.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu swept the globe. One quarter of all US residents had the disease. On average, every household in the US had a death due to the disease. Restrictions were placed on stores, and other places people interacted publicly. As bodies very literally piled up, towns restricted transportation in and out of their city limits. The scene across the US was reminiscent of the European Black Death of the  Middle Ages.

Can you imagine what would happen in our modern society where most people rely on food shipped from all over the world to make it to the grocery store they buy from in the next town over? Don’t worry. It couldn’t happen again, because no one ever gets the flu or any other disease these days.

In 1934, a five hour dust storm hid the Statue of Liberty. “Black blizzards” swept the plains during one of the worst droughts and environmental disasters America has ever seen. Plagues of grasshoppers and jackrabbits destroyed farms all over the Dust Bowl states. Doctors gave prescriptions for food for malnourished and starving children across the US. Long food lines and hunger were common place everywhere in the country.

Of course this could never happen again, because humankind has learned to live as one with the planet, and droughts don’t happen anymore.

In 2015, … all is well, unless you live in California where water is running out, or along the southern US border where the government posts signs warning they can’t protect you if you get closer than 80 miles from the Mexican border. Most of us don’t live in either of those locations. So we’re fine.

No unexpected disasters are expected to happen any time soon.

However, if you have an understanding of history, and it’s constant repetition, you might want to consider being prepared for times when food is not plentiful. Even in the modern world, grocery stores end up with empty shelves.

The above examples are of big nationwide and global events, but regional disasters happen all the time. A town, or small region, can get cut off from shipping lines during floods or winter storms. Mudslides block roads and highways. Even workers striking can shut down stores.

A disaster doesn’t need to be global in reach to be a big deal for you and your family.

Some areas of the US are prone to hurricanes, earthquakes or other common natural disasters. Having at least a couple of weeks of food and bottled water on hand only seems prudent in those areas.

Unfortunately, not everyone behaves like a model citizen when natural and manmade disasters strike. As seen during the latest hurricane to hit New York City, looting can become common place and food may be stolen.

Learning what plants in your area are edible could prevent suffering for you and your family, if your food is stolen (or confiscated). If you are a land owner, plant some non-obvious edible landscape items. With any luck, you’ll never have to look at them as a food source, but they will be there giving you peace of mind if bad things happen.

Having more than a couple of weeks of food and water on hand, may come in handy at some point. Hopefully, no major global disasters will strike in our lifetimes, but history tends to repeat itself. Knowing even a little about the past tells us that the future is likely to have surprises that involve food shortages lasting longer than a few weeks.

California Drought Affects Us All

On: By: crier

With the drought in California reaching critical status, we could see much higher prices for all kinds of products. Believe it or not, a shutdown of food production in California could lead to shortages of many food products across all of North America.

All of North America feels the effects of California’s drought.

In the last half century, California has become the agricultural giant of North America. Most of the vegetables, nuts, and fruit consumed in America come from California. Milk, grapes, and almonds are among California’s lead exports. California grows nearly all of the America’s olives, kiwi, pistachios, prunes, raisins, and walnuts, among other products. Even the majority of our strawberries—1,400,000,000 pounds of strawberries—come from California.

Currently, much of that food production is grinding to a dusty halt. News anchors gleefully talk of “potentially higher prices,” while the reality of potentially empty shelves, gets swept under the newsroom rug.

Now there are arguments about who is causing the drought in California. Environmentalists claim it’s all man made global warming’s fault. If only there were less humans, then none of this would have happened. Their ultimate solutions usually sound similar that of savages claiming human sacrifices to their volcano or sun god will remove his wrath.

Others point out that environmentalists have successfully blocked every major reservoir and dam project in California for 40 years, and that during this drought 70% of California’s water—because of regulations—goes straight into the ocean. They also point out that environmental regulations have prevented desalination plants from releasing water reserves from an entire ocean into the drought stricken state.

In the here-and-now, California has a major water crisis, no matter who is to blame. Californians are rationing water, and the shutdown of food production is spreading. Much of California suffers, and even if the water became plentiful again today, the damage to agriculture will take years to heal.

As many critics point out, California knew this was coming. You can’t experience 40 years of massive population growth and make it illegal to build supporting infrastructure and then feign surprise when population expands past the old infrastructures capabilities.

California pretty much doubled its population from 20 million in the 1970’s to nearly 40 million in 2015. However, in the 1970’s down to the present, environmentalists have managed to prevent water and other infrastructure projects from keeping up with population. Certainly, rain has decrease over the last decade in California, but the effects could have been mitigated with proper public works projects.

How does this apply to the rest of us?

California regulated itself into worsening this drought. The same regulatory mindset that stifled California’s public water works projects, resulting in the destruction of California’s agriculture, has spread to most of the states in the union, and definitely has a chokehold in Washington, D.C.

It’s easy to blame government, but voters (better known as all of us) put every one of the politicians in government, whether through a direct vote, or voting someone in that appoints the regulators.

Don’t expect voters to change who they vote for any time soon. Our generation is already indoctrinated, and the upcoming generation will have more thorough indoctrination than ours. Children from an early age are taught directly or indirectly that humankind must diminish (or die) to save the planet. Our children begin their indoctrination into the dimish-or-die mindset in most kindergartens, and have it enforced by most teachers all the way through college. Hollywood laces movies, cartoons, and documentaries with the mindset. Video games base their backstories on this mindset.

Environmental regulation without regard to human needs is destroying agriculture and food production in the US. Don’t believe it? Check out the last few years of news on Nevada’s endangered desert tortoise and what it’s doing to ranches. And that’s only oneexample.

We can point the finger at California and say, you destroyed your own food production, but the same mindset is busy setting up a similar agricultural collapse across the entire USA. Stacks of new environmentally friendly regulations are created every year. So much regulation is created that many farmers see the EPA and other government organizations come in and shutdown their farms and ranches or make them so unprofitable that they give up.

It’s only a matter of time before most Americans see empty shelves at the grocery store. Devout socialist and environmental regulators will ensure that, and unfortunately, that is the privately (if not publicly) stated goal of many of the activists behind the coming regulatory caused shortages. They want to save the planet through regulations, and don’t see why humans shouldn’t suffer.