Something new

This is a first for the blog, two posts in one day.  The reason is I was just doing a little research on food supplies and found some interesting, read almost scary, facts that we all knew about but that hadn't been put together before.

CA, or as I prefer to call it, The People's Republic of CA, is undergoing the worst drought in recorded history.  Over 1 half million acres will go unplanted this year due to the lack of rain.  The Sierra snow that CA depends on for water is at 15% of it's usual amount and the aquafilers that farmers use to water their crops is so depleted that the soil above them has dropped over a foot so far.  And that means that even if it does rain, the aquafilers won't be able to fill up to the levels they were before.  As an added potential problem, archeologiests digs show that long term droughts have happened in CA before and sometimes last over 200 years!  So what you might ask and the answer is that CA is THE BIGGEST GROWER of fruits and vegetables in the country.  Depending on the crop, CA supplies anywhere from 60% to 97% of all produced in America.  As example it produces 66% of all asparagus, 97% of all carrots, 60% of all peppers, etc.  Add that to the ever shrinking cattle herds and that spells huge price increases and fewer selections at the local Piggly-Wigley store.  Since 2005 chicken prices have risen 9.7%, beef has risen over 19% and pork a whopping 28% increase.  Now think about what the increase in costs for your veggies will do to your food budget?  And don't count on more imports to save our bacon, no pun intended.  Countries like Panama, Costa Rica and Venizuala (SP?) are experiencing world class flooding that is making the crops rot in the field, China's rice crops are in grave danger due to the extreme cold weather there, England is suffering from extreme flooding that is allowing sea water to enter their fields and the salt water is poisoning them forever without time consuming and very expensive efforts to purify the soil and Chili is having a series of volcanic eruptions that is tossing ash onto the ground where the cattle are eating it and dying a long, painful death.  So there will be little if any help from over seas for us, in fact I'd expect maobama to send our food there instead, which will further deplete the amount of food we'll be able to get from the store and raise the prices.  Speaking of prices and the amount of money the average family has to buy food, the average income for American families hasn't risen in over 5 years, in fact its dropped about 5%. 

My point in this is to get you to think about how your going to cope with the increase in costs.  If you haven't begun building your long term food storage as yet, your way behind the curve.  My advise is to get as much as you can, as quickly as you can before the prices go up any higher and pray that it will be enough.  My group was planning a trial garden this spring to see how well our heritage seeds do in this climate, but I think we will need to expand that idea and go for a full-fledged garden and build up our canning supplies to cover what we grow.  I'd suggest you think, and I mean think hard, about doing something similar in your neck of the woods.