[Y]ou will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them.
- from "Farmer in Chief" by Michael Pollan (10-12-08)
The article, in today's NYT magazine, resonated with our LDS provident living values for me. In this open letter to whomever is the next president, Pollan says that food production, supply, availablity, etc. will be a pressing issue.
What are some of the ways you are living providently? Any tips on storing more successfully or planning more effectively? Who has the whole water-storage-without-basements figured out?
2 comments:
Water storage nowadays I think is going to be about water purification -- it's unrealistic to house enough water when you think about what the average person needs daily to drink, cook, wash etc. We got a really good filter from www.beprepared.com that cleans 13,000 gallons before it wears out - you can look to see which kill parasites, bacteria etc the one we got is very good but there are tablets and drops too. We also invested in some of the larger drums 15 gallon, 30 gallon, 55 gallon available (perhaps you could house them in your garage). It's hard to find glass, plastics break down in the water and also in your house or garage (uh, mold - know from experience.)
I think the best thing we've ever done food storage-wise is to have our medicine storage--a small rubbermaid container that always has a new, unopened bottle of each type of children's medicine (and some adult medicines) that we could possibly need: children's tylenol, flu medicine, cough syrup, allergy medicine, etc. As soon as I open one of the bottles, I replace it in the medicine storage with a new one--it's so practical, because our kids always get sick at least once a year, and then we're not racing to the drugstore in the middle of the night to buy something to offer relief. If there were ever a time when these things were not readily available, we would at least have enough on hand to see us through a contagious season.
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