[Terrapreta] Food Shortages

[MFH]

Lou

 

I'm not about to tell anyone how many years are on my personal clock, but
I'm sure I don't remember WWII rationing simply because I was at least
several days younger than you were. Maybe even hours..

 

It wasn't only food that was rationed. Materials, (remember when mothers
actually sewed shirts and trousers and skirts on foot-powered Singers, and
Dad's had a vege patch in the back yard), petrol, tyres, nails, roofing
material, timber, saucepans (any aluminium ones were collected for airplane
manufacture). Cast iron gates and fences were sacrificed for scrap to build
destroyers, even hair was collected from barber's floors. 

 

Were they the 'good times' in retrospect? Have we lost the plot? 

 

I remember my Mother had 3 calico bags (washed ex-flour bags) behind the
kitchen door - one was for waste bits of string (because the butcher and
almost everyone else tied the bundle in string), one was for paper, and one
for rags. Recycling is the current buzz-word but 60+ years ago almost
nothing was thrown away. We didn't have a garbage bin collection because
there wasn't any garbage. Nothing was purchased in a tin (can?), any bottles
were valuable and re-used for home-made jam or pickles, there was no
plastic. Any food peelings and/or scraps were boiled with some grain mash
and fed to the chooks or pigs. The hessian bags from the mash were boiled in
the 'copper' in the back yard and used for bath mats, or sewn into coats for
the calves in the winter. We weren't "poor" in the real sense, we just
seemed to do what was normal then. In pre-teen times on a relative's farm my
Aunt would walk 4 miles to the village once/month to buy sugar, salt and
flour, the only things that they couldn't produce on the farm. And a splurge
at the butcher. A couple of chops, a pound of rough steak for stew, and some
corned beef. Without refrigeration the first was the luxury that night, the
stew could last a few days, and the corned beef last a week or so. For the
next 3 weeks it was corn fritters or chicken or the odd rabbit. There was
never even a suggestion that we were missing out.

 

Amongst all this was the cohesion in the community. Someone was sick. No
phones, no email, no Web - just simply the message got out and at 4 am the
next morning one of the neighbour's kids turned up for the milking. No
questions, no asking - just happened.

 

Google, Wikipedia, Email? Sure, I'm a part of this. In particular I've had
an enthralling couple of weeks amongst the TP group. But, the inevitable
but. Where would I rather be?  That's a huge question. 

 

I've been to lots of so-called International Conferences to (try) to sort
out things like tropical rainforest destruction, socio-economic solutions to
the third (or second or fifteenth) world's problems, food security, etc,
invariably paid for by multi-nationals and equally invariably held in 4-star
pubs. One in particular stands out - paid for by the Ford Foundation and
held in BC in Canada around 1994, for the prime aim of making a declaration
about a "Way to Go Forward". Please. 

 

If these sods have so much money to spare, wouldn't it be a massive blast to
get the TP group together in a camp somewhere real?  I did it in PNG in 1994
with 120 attendees all sleeping on mats on the ground in grass huts. We
certainly changed some concepts.

 

The planet is in trouble. Its unlikely that any of us can claim that we
haven't made some contribution to this in the last 50 or so years. We may be
committed to our own directions in trying to resolve the issues, but we need
to recruit squillions of others to reality. And I would need a lot of
convincing that the greatest opponents are Governments and their corporate
partners.

 

Bear with me - just needed to get this off my chest,

Max H

 

 

 

 

 

 

  _____  

 

 

From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of lou gold
Sent: Tuesday, 22 April 2008 7:31 PM
To: terra pretta group
Subject: [Terrapreta] Food Shortages

 

I'll begin with a friendly note to Kevin...

WARNING: These links may be a major diversion from your primary tasks. 
If you want to hold your focus, don't go there.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3782.html
http://business.theage.com.au/japans-hunger-becomes-a-dire-warning-for-other
-nations/20080420-27ey.html
http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world

Food rationing of some sort is coming. I am old enough to remember 
the last time food was rationed in the US -- during WWII. I was too young 
(4-9 years) to understand much but here are a few things that I remember. 

There were shortages but no hunger.

There was massive education to explain the relationship between 
food and the war needs. We actually did little "morality plays" about 
it in elementary school.

In Chicago where I lived there was a neighborhood "Victory Garden" 
on every block that had an empty lot or a bit of free space. 

Government was ever-present and was largely perceived as an instrument 
of a public will that wanted to win the war.

Nowadays and thinking of the future that is arriving as I write, can you
imagine 
yummy soil amendments being delivered to the neighborhoods? etc? and etc? 
Like the old Indian Elder said, "It could be a very good time."





-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com
http://flickr.com/visionshare/sets
http://youtube.com/my_videos 

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