Prognosticating recap

The news the past couple of days has included a few articles about some farmers in Tennessee who have switched to mule-power for their farming needs. A Google news search for '+farmer +mules' yields 49 news results. I wonder how many news results there will be for those search terms in two months, after oil hits $200/barrel.

Farmer Trades Tractor For Mule Power
"McMinnville, Tenn. - A Middle Tennessee farmer is trading his tractor for another form of horsepower. Warren County farmer Danny Raymond recently bought two mules, Molly and Dolly. The mules will help rake hay, mow, and cultivate corn. Raymond said high fuel prices forced him to make the switch. "Oh it's been really tough. I mean you got your gas prices," he said. "Then gas prices cause the price of fertilizer to go up. It just makes more sense," he said about switching to mule power."

Searching for '+farmer +horses +plow' yields 12 news results. Here is one:

Horses help local farmers cut costs

"Jeff Johns had the horses. He had land that needed to be plowed. And he had worries that rising fuel costs would eat into his already thin profit margin. So he's doing what farmers did long before the tractor came along -- he's using his two draft horses to power a plow. And he's loving every minute of it."
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Exactly two months ago I posted a blog entry that noted indicators of an imminent unraveling of the normal cycle of things. The bank insolvency issue (not a problem that has gone away just because it's sunk off the news cycles), higher fuel costs, increasingly staggered food and commodity deliveries...will all accelerate in the coming months. Eventually, there will be a break point, I'd written, when those who failed to spot the inevitable and did not turn to simpler ways will be down on their luck, while the Amish will be in ascendancy. Why? Because we do not know how to generate our own power, live without electricity, farm using simple methods (successful farming means not going hungry), make soap, dip candles, kill a hog, or perform a myriad of other hand tasks. But the Amish do. They always have. For the Amish, no-technology and fuel free farming has been the only way. Who ya gonna call...when the grocery store is empty and we can't get a 1400 mile salad any more? The Amish/Mennonite community farmer's market, and other Christian-community living farms, that's who.

I wrote:
March 22, 2008:
"The US is now the world's largest debtor nation, and for a country with the world's largest economy, if (when) we default, the world economy comes with it. The cycle of things will stop. I don't know how to build a home, make a tool, grow some food, coordinate with my neighbors, create fire, or use a horse for transportation. But the Amish do."

Listen to the Watchman:

Ezekiel 33:3-6
If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

Jeremiah 51
12Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set up the watchmen, prepare the ambushes:

The day of the Lord will soon come. Selah

victory garden vs. 1400 mile salad

"Food miles"

The majority of Americans participate in a complex national and global food system. Most of their food production and processing occurs far away from where they live and buy their groceries. It was not always this way; prior to World War II most of the agricultural production and marketing systems in the United States had a strong local or regional base, and farms supplied that base with a wide variety of crop and livestock products. Changes occurred rapidly after World War II as agriculture became increasingly specialized.

The introduction of new technologies allowed many states to focus their agricultural production on just a few crop and livestock enterprises in order to have an economic competitive advantage. As late as the 1950s there were 25 to 30 different crop and livestock commodities produced on at least one percent of the farms in the Midwest; by the end of the 1990s there were only 15 or fewer commodities produced on at least one percent of the farms in the Midwest. Today, most of the food for sale in grocery stores comes from farms in states or countries through a system that is, for the most part, invisible to the consumer.

I remember teaching first grade in an inner city in the 80s. I'd ask the kids where milk comes from. "The store!" they would invariably answer. Our field trip to the apple orchard was a revelation to them. They literally did not make the connection of food and the land until that moment when they saw the apple hanging from the tree. All they ever saw was cellophane wrapped items in a mini mart. The food production chain was invisible to them until the last stop.

Using fresh produce as an example, carrots grown in the San Joaquin Valley in California and transported to supermarkets in Des Moines, Iowa will travel approximately 1,400 miles. Chilean grapes transported by ship and truck to Des Moines, Iowa markets travel 7,270 miles. That's too many miles! We don't have the oil anymore to indulge in such extravagances as off season carambola fruit!

We need to grow our own food again. 'But I don't have acres of land!' you protest.

Almost half of all vegetables grown in the United States in 1943 came from victory gardens. A poster campaign ("Plant more in '44!") encouraged the planting of Victory Gardens by nearly 20 million Americans. Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. After WWII though we reverted to trucked-in agricultural products until by the 1970s we relied on exotic foodstuffs as a measure of our wealth and position in the world.


And then there's this guy, sustaining himself and his family with food grown on his California suburban housing lot no bigger than one tenth of an acre... It CAN be done. And it should be. Soon will will have to. Get ready now, you will be happy you did.