Agricultural Decline and Survival Gardens

The facts on the Agricultural decline: 36 days for most Americans to earn enough disposable money to pay for their year's worth of food; 150 years ago, 50% of the American population lived on farms or ranches, producing not only their own food, but food for this country and for export. In fact, we used to feed a large part of the world.

Today, less than 2% of the American population live on farms or ranches. 98 percent of the population do not produce their own food to any substantial degree. However, we have seen a recent turn to the popularity of home gardening,...in the cities and suburbs people are growing vegetables for many, and sometimes multiple, reasons: To defray the rising costs of food; to give themselves a sense of accomplishment that comes with planting a seed then months later harvesting something to eat; and, to practice farming skills that may be a priority in a major economic collapse or what others call for SHTF.

I think the idea most survival preppers have is to grow food to augment what they have painstakingly stored for the coming collapse. For a small family, harvesting just a couple cucumbers, squash, and corn each week could go along way when combined with rice and beans stored in bulk for emergency purposes.

It should come as no surprise that world wide food production is diminishing (part of what is driving prices up), .....and that the nutritional content of these foods is less and less. Hell, that's a great reason right there to grow your own.

When Peak Oil hits, the availability of food will decrease and the prices will increases (law of supply and demand my friends).

I recently took a bunch of excess squash, cucumbers and pomegranates to work to give to the secretarial staff. They were amazed that I grew it. While none of them know my beliefs and practices pertaining to Survival Preparation, two of these ladies (both middle aged single women) asked how hard was it to grow vegetables? Now, I'm thinking "you got to be kidding me?", then I realize that most people have never grown anything but flowers and weeds. So I spent about five minutes explaining to them how to plant a couple squash plants (success early don't you know) and made a list of what to buy, how to water, and more importantly how to educate themselves by reading.

So if you haven't started your own garden, then what are you waiting for? If you are like me you have limited room,......so what? four or six squash and cucumber plants is better than nothing.