food choices

As a European I grew up on grain: oats, barley and wheat. The oats were traditional in Scotland, not only in porridge but also in the form of oatcakes and sweet flapjacks. Barley padded out soups and stews. Oats and barley grew near my home and as a child I presumed that was where my food came from. It might have been true. Wheat grew in England and I presumed that the bread my grandfather made was from English wheat (even though he was a staunch nationalist). The picture on the bag of flour looked like an Englishman. When did the UK lose its ability to feed its people, did it, or was it just cheaper to import the staple grains from elsewhere?
For a while I lived on the edge of a housing development in Oxfordshire. The fields across the driveway were wheat, and in that flat landscape the fields went to the horizon. It was something to watch summer thunderstorms move the grain in golden waves. Those fields are under houses now. What came first – the need for more houses or the farmer being unable to compete with cheaper wheat from overseas?
In his book, ‘The Omnivores Dilemma’, Michael Pollan investigates the US corn industry, a fascinating tale of farm subsidies and agribusiness profits and politics. Now the information may become quickly outdated with the rise in corn raised for fuel. Food First has very interesting reading on the agrifuels subject. (Food First should really be compulsory reading for all high school classes.)
The agrifuels phenomena and natural phenomena – droughts, earthquakes, flooding – have been blamed for the current world grain crisis. There is of course more to it. There has to be an effort to change the way we live: we must learn to live in a way that is sustainable environmentally, socially, economically. The following is from the latest, May 16th release from Food First, please read the whole article on their web site:

‘The skyrocketing cost of food has resurrected the specter of the "food riot."
The World Bank reports that global food prices rose 83% over the last three years and the FAO cites a 45% increase in their world food price index during just the past nine months.1 The Economist’s comparable index stands at its highest point since it was originally formulated in 1845.2 As of March 2008, average world wheat prices were 130% above their level a year earlier, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and maize was up 31%.3’

I’ve been looking for ways I can change my lifestyle. I don’t have a car, or a telephone, or hot water. I do have a fridge and a computer and music. In the food I buy I try to keep it local – at least to Central America, but it is difficult with grains and legumes. Rice and corn grow here, black and kidney beans too. All good. It’s the lentils (Canada), chickpeas (California), white beans (southern US), and wheat (China?) that I enjoy so much and make life a lot easier that come from far away and are therefore reliant on international trade agreements, world economy and the petrochemical industry for transportation and distribution. How do I cut back? What makes it more difficult is the dogs. They don’t eat dogfood (allergic, probably to the wheat or the chemicals sprayed on the wheat to keep it rat and insect free while on container ships as it moves across the world). They like lentils and can digest them just fine, but beans, not really. And for me bread is easy and familiar, it’s so much easier to take a sandwich to school than to make anything else. I could make cornbread. Locally and in indigenous cultures around the tropics flour was made from cassava, malanga, pejebaye and platanos – all of which I have growing in the garden. I could do that. But it’s too time consuming and I couldn’t keep up with my own demand. I already have one full time job and a half time garden.
Maybe I just live with it, consciously understanding that this is a choice and that there are consequences. Or perhaps I try to do without. Perhaps I try for a trial period to see if I can do without my goods from far away. I think I will. Maybe in June, I’ll be finished with my current stash by then. Today is May 25th, that gives me 6 days. Good. That feels good.
Footnote to that:
Yesterday my beanburger was topped with a slice of raw onion. I didn’t recognize the taste and actually had to look to see what was so good. I really am only eating veg and fruit I grow in the garden. I don’t eat out much either.

gardening

When I was foraging food, doing the hunting / gathering thing, I was aware, of course, of seasons and availability. I knew I would have a glut of something as it came into season and then when it was done it would be done. Now that I’ve stepped into the farming epoch, I find my expectations to be very different. Firstly I have expectations. As a forager I was happy when I found something and skipped off merrily with an armful or bagful of bounty. As a gardener I do more work and have less produce. But I have control over what I can harvest. I expect to reap what I sow, I find I expect to reap a lot and quickly too. But this is not the case. Gardening is all about the future: I plant this seed and in two months, at the least, I can eat the casing the seed came in. In the meantime I can dream about my coming bounty, think of what I’ll do with the surplus and on and on. My garden was started slowly in January, at this moment I can harvest spinach and pumpkin (the bananas, cherries, ginger, chilis, turmeric and cilantro were here before). It will be another 2 months before I can harvest tomatoes, chayote, peppers, melon and pigeon peas and another 5 months, minimum, before I can harvest yucca, malanga, yampi, vine and sweet, potatoes. But when one is gardening, when one is grubby with sweat and dirt one isn’t thinking about the future, gardening can only happen in the present moment: there is a separation between the reality of gardening and the concept of produce. One gardens for the enjoyment of gardening, not for the harvest. The harvest is an added bonus, perhaps the initial motivation, but not necessarily the compelling force.
Is that true? I garden because I can, I have use of the land and the time. I want to have organic produce. I want to be self sustaining and minimize my consumption of store bought items. (This last is difficult, I still buy staples and these are rarely locally grown – lentils from Canada for example.) I want to recycle my ‘waste’ as much as possible and gardening is a great opportunity for this. I want to eat local and native foods. And I want to involved in the cycles of nature, to be outside, to be busy, to be in the dirt.
It needs more thought, and at the same time it requires no thinking. I’m off to water things.

Momentary beauty
A bug just landed on my keyboard. It looks like a leaf hopper, but so beautiful: a bright orange with iridescent squiggles of neon green and blue, red eyes. And it’s gone.

self sufficiency . . .

I would really love to be self sufficient, and I know it’s possible here: the local indigenous population has survived for centuries without stores. I have and will have enough fruits and vegetables, the problem is starches and protein. I’d love chickens and have raised them in the past, but here I’d have a problem keeping them out of my beds and maybe even keeping them safe from snakes and marauding dogs. I don’t want them in a pen – there are too many insects I’d want them to enjoy. The starches are the bigger issue. Cereals, no I don’t have the space. I do have a lot of yams and yam type things coming, but not until October. The yampi and air potatoes are annuals, although my malanga and mantioc (taro and cassava elsewhere) can be harvested 9 months after they’re planted, year round. I need to find beans that will produce a good amount. The beans I’ve tried here grow very rapidly but not very productively – 6 weeks between sprout and bean, but not many beans and the plants are the favourite food of everything in the garden. One can’t walk into a store and buy seeds here. I can’t buy them on line and have them sent either: postal service is not reliable and I don’t have a credit card anyway. I have my gandul / pigeon peas, and I hope they will be my answer.
The trouble is not really me, it’s the dogs. They don’t eat dog food and have a diet of rice, corn, lentils, beans and greens and meat. If I had a goat and a couple of hens I would be personally self sufficient, I can even make chocolate here, but the dogs need a lot of food that I can’t grow. And their food – basically the staples – is becoming increasingly expensive. I spend more on theirs than mine.