Food Availability

Spent some time chatting with one of the local farmers on Saturday. He's getting near retirement age and ready to quit. Of course, ethanol came up. He says that, right now, hog farmers are spending twice as much to raise a pig as they can sell it for. It costs 50% more to raise a cow than the farmer can sell it for. That's what ethanol is doing to the farmers. So the grocery prices have sky-rocketed, and they're not anywhere close to as high as they're going to get ... even IF farmers stayed in the business of farming.

If young people don't go into farming, and the older farmers retire or give up, where will our food be coming from in another 20 years? How much will it cost? Are Americans willing to spend ¼ or ½ of their income on food? What would that do to our economy? Are we willing to ignore the oil in Alaska and the Gulf, and instead use our food-producing soil for production of inefficient fuel? We're afraid of being dependent on the middle-east for oil, but we're willing to be dependent on other countries for the food we need to stay alive??

I remember a conversation about 20 years ago where people were talking about a drought-year. They said the farmers were complaining, but that didn't matter to non-farmers because they could just water their lawns and gardens with a hose. And they buy their food at the grocery store. Not like those farmers who grow their own. These ding-dongs even suggested that the farmers might have to start buying food at the grocery store, too, if it was a bad year and they couldn't grow their own. Are we really that clueless about where food comes from???

Every now and then, I think it might be better for our family to be content here (even if there's no income) because here I at least have a couple of acres of dirt. Well, actually, clay. But it's theoretically possible that I could have a big garden and raise chickens and keep a Jersey cow. I keep thinking how the people in the country suffered less during the Depression than did the people in the cities.