Last October, Bush proposed, and Congress approved $750 billion in bailout money under the TARP program. Some of this money was used for bonuses for already-high-paid Wall Street executives, and much of the rest is unaccounted for. Also untraceable are billions in Federal Reserve funds used to prop up various banks deemed “too big to fail.” All together, several trillion dollars have been dedicated to restarting the economy, and the engine hasn't even turned over yet.
In October, I was running for Congress here in Mississippi’s 1st District. I said that any bank that was too big to fail was too big to exist. It needs to be broken up under anti-trust statutes. I also said that the bailout would not work and would probably make things worse. I wish I had been wrong.
Now, the corporations have come calling hat in hand for another helping of taxpayer money. This time, it is even more important that we examine our situation with the help of a diverse group of economists and thinkers…not just Wall Street bankers. In short, we need a panel of experts (i.e., not politicians) to quickly but comprehensively analyze our economic difficulties and design a plan that addresses short-term needs, but not by neglecting long-term realities. As I said repeatedly during my campaign, we need solutions that work on multiple problems at once.
Short-term needs
Short-term thinking is what got us to the point of economic collapse. The faux conservative belief in the infallibility of markets and the evils of regulation are to blame. Plenty of blame belongs to the Democrats too. For now, Greens are completely innocent of the mess in Washington. In fact, we predicted the outcome of Reagan’s policies in the 1980s and the failure of economic globalization.
The only short-term thinking we need now is how to protect Americans from the results of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton economic policies. In the near term, millions of Americans stand to lose their homes. They must have shelter. Food shortages are probable in the next year. The people must be protected from starvation. With oil production in Mexico and Russia now in decline, oil prices are set for another spike. Memories are short, and nothing much was done last year to prevent future price rises. People need public transit so that they can show up for work if they are lucky enough to find a job.
Long-term causes
The fundamental causes of our economic collapse are the following:
1. Ecosystem collapse
2. Oil depletion (Peak Oil)
3. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
4. The housing bubble
5. Deregulation of the financial sector
A decade from now, historians will have figured out the relative contribution of each of these factors. For now, I do not know which is most significant. The proximal cause is the housing bubble, made much worse by foolish investments in risky derivatives and other financial instruments that were enabled by deregulation. As for the rest, I do not know whether ecosystem destruction, oil prices, or the tremendous cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (indeed of the whole military-industrial complex) is most to blame.
Ecosystems are particularly underappreciated as a source of our economic woes. Yet, we’ve known since 1972 that there are limits to growth. Even if there had never been a scientific study of the feasibility of infinite economic growth, common sense should have warned us that a finite planet cannot support unending growth. A few prescient economists and systems thinkers like EF Schumacher and Kenneth Boulding saw the train wreck ahead: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." (Boulding) And, the poets warned us too---Abbey likened belief in economic growth as the source of human progress as “the ideology of the cancer cell.” No doubt Ed Abbey would think recession therapy an appropriate treatment for the suburban strip-mall tumors spreading across the landscape, sapping the vitality of wilderness (needed for our soul) as well as farmland (needed for our body). Yet, come October 2008, the US government was more willing to threaten martial law than to even consider a steady-state economy or ponder how to design an economy that satisfies human needs rather than the vanity of the rich.
A recovery plan that fails to take all these factors into account runs the risk of making things worse. And, unless the plan is designed to end the folly of growth as it’s currently defined, it’s doomed to failure. Whether that final failure is now, or at the end of the next business cycle or the one after that, is not something anyone knows for sure. Such massive uncertainty, carrying with it the potential for human suffering on a scale never before experienced, should make us cautious. What we're doing is too important to get in a hurry.
That’s why it’s just as essential today as it was five months ago to study the problem carefully. So far, that hasn’t been done. Until then, not one more dime for the banks.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
We are All Gazans Now
In the last days of the Bush presidency, Israel launched an attack and invasion of Gaza that ranks among the most heinous crimes ever committed by one nation against another. It is unethical, immoral, and illegal to rain destruction on a civilian population because of something their government does. This is the law of the United States, and we ourselves, in days past when America was a nation of laws, helped write international law and codes of conduct for warfare. It is not true that “all is fair in love and war,” but it is true that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” No matter that Hamas attacked Israel with crude rockets. It matters not whether they used rocks or nuclear weapons, Israel is not justified in attacking civilians.
Before considering the ethical problem in any more detail, we should think about our national self-interest. Israel is "our strongest ally in the Middle East." Are we so sure of this? What has Israel ever done for the US? Other than buying our military hardware, I can think of nothing. In fact, Israel never apologized for the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which killed 34 American sailors and wounded 173 more. Had Palestinians, Iran (or Cuba!) attacked a US ship, it would have been an act of war. During the Gaza war, the Israeli Navy rammed and almost sank an unarmed vessel carrying former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and others on a fact-finding and humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. Israel has amassed a nuclear arsenal of unknown quantity and quality, but analysts have said it's the world's most sophisticated. There is no doubt that Israel could attack the US itself with nuclear weapons if it desired. In fact, Israel's treatment of Palestinians and our unconditional support of Israel, are the underlying causes of the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet, over the last 8 years, the US has deepened its commitments to Israel. For every bomb rained on Gaza, a new terrorist was born, and the target is not only Israel, but also the US.
All nations have the right to defend themselves. This includes Gaza and Israel. However, targeting of civilians is prohibited under international law. Israel intentionally bombed and bulldozed churches, hospitals, and schools in Gaza. Israel used white phosphorus against civilian men, women, and children living in one of the most crowded places on Earth. Israel may have used napalm and depleted uranium. They blocked journalists from Gaza so that the world wouldn't know what was happening there. The Israeli army attacked UN and Red Cross facilities. Fully 25% of the casualties were children. During this terror, the people of Gaza had no place to go.
Response to a threat must not be disproportionate. In response to a few crude missiles shot into southern Israel that killed a few tens of Israeli settlers (most of whom were there illegally in the first place), Israel launched a bombardment and invasion of Gaza that killed hundreds of people and injured thousands more. These are crimes under international law, and they are crimes against humanity itself. Israeli government officials and military leaders who authorized and carried out these acts must be prosecuted for war crimes. Investigations have already begun, and the future of the world depends on justice being served. If no one is ever brought to justice, then future crimes will only be worse.
How ironic that the nation born out of a determination that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again, has itself become an instrument of holocaust. The torment of Gaza has been compared to the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. The parallels are many, only the tortured of 1943 are become the torturers of 2009. Israel, facing legitimate threats, has begun to see monsters in the shadows, and has gone insane.
America should consider the high price paid by our taxpayers and our consciences to support a criminal government whose irresponsible actions endanger the US. We should immediately stop all financial and military support of Israel and instead offer our unconditional support for a comprehensive, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's invasion of Gaza demonstrates that the two-state solution can never work. Israel is too strong, militarily and economically. A Palestinian state would always be a poor stepchild. Only a one-state solution can work: a democratic nation whose people, no matter the ethnic or religious background, enjoy equal protection and share equal power. Such a state would no longer be a "Jewish state," but it would continue to be a homeland for Jews who wanted to live there, and it would also welcome the return of those dispersed in the Nakba (the Palestinian diaspora).
If ending one diaspora creates another one, if atoning for the Holocaust means enacting another holocaust, if Israel's leaders have betrayed the deepest ethical principles of their faith even to the point of becoming the embodiment of anti-Semitism, then it's time to examine the need for a "Jewish state." What is needed is a homeland for all the people of Palestine: Jews, Palestinians, Christians, and others.
Until such a solution is in place, I commit myself to work for divestment by US corporations in all Israeli ventures, sanctions on Israel by the US government and international agencies, a consumer boycott of all Israeli-made products, and a cut-off of all US aid to Israel. These strategies worked in South Africa, where freedom came without a war, to everyone's amazement. As a college student, I worked for divestment, mainly through letter-writing campaigns. This time, our opponent is stronger, but we also have the support of a near-majority in Israel itself, who do not want war and who want to see a just peace. And, we have the support of a solid majority of Jews living outside Israel, many of whom were strong supporters of Israel until the Gaza atrocities. Together, we cannot fail. When justice finally prevails, all the people and countries concerned will be stronger.
That the growing consciousness of humanity is a good thing, a valuable thing, a thing to be cherished above all else, tells me that we must not ignore what Israel has done to the people of Gaza. If the Holocaust led to the creation of Israel, then perhaps the atrocities in Gaza will lead to a new homeland in Palestine.
Before considering the ethical problem in any more detail, we should think about our national self-interest. Israel is "our strongest ally in the Middle East." Are we so sure of this? What has Israel ever done for the US? Other than buying our military hardware, I can think of nothing. In fact, Israel never apologized for the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which killed 34 American sailors and wounded 173 more. Had Palestinians, Iran (or Cuba!) attacked a US ship, it would have been an act of war. During the Gaza war, the Israeli Navy rammed and almost sank an unarmed vessel carrying former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and others on a fact-finding and humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. Israel has amassed a nuclear arsenal of unknown quantity and quality, but analysts have said it's the world's most sophisticated. There is no doubt that Israel could attack the US itself with nuclear weapons if it desired. In fact, Israel's treatment of Palestinians and our unconditional support of Israel, are the underlying causes of the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet, over the last 8 years, the US has deepened its commitments to Israel. For every bomb rained on Gaza, a new terrorist was born, and the target is not only Israel, but also the US.
All nations have the right to defend themselves. This includes Gaza and Israel. However, targeting of civilians is prohibited under international law. Israel intentionally bombed and bulldozed churches, hospitals, and schools in Gaza. Israel used white phosphorus against civilian men, women, and children living in one of the most crowded places on Earth. Israel may have used napalm and depleted uranium. They blocked journalists from Gaza so that the world wouldn't know what was happening there. The Israeli army attacked UN and Red Cross facilities. Fully 25% of the casualties were children. During this terror, the people of Gaza had no place to go.
Response to a threat must not be disproportionate. In response to a few crude missiles shot into southern Israel that killed a few tens of Israeli settlers (most of whom were there illegally in the first place), Israel launched a bombardment and invasion of Gaza that killed hundreds of people and injured thousands more. These are crimes under international law, and they are crimes against humanity itself. Israeli government officials and military leaders who authorized and carried out these acts must be prosecuted for war crimes. Investigations have already begun, and the future of the world depends on justice being served. If no one is ever brought to justice, then future crimes will only be worse.
How ironic that the nation born out of a determination that nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again, has itself become an instrument of holocaust. The torment of Gaza has been compared to the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. The parallels are many, only the tortured of 1943 are become the torturers of 2009. Israel, facing legitimate threats, has begun to see monsters in the shadows, and has gone insane.
America should consider the high price paid by our taxpayers and our consciences to support a criminal government whose irresponsible actions endanger the US. We should immediately stop all financial and military support of Israel and instead offer our unconditional support for a comprehensive, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's invasion of Gaza demonstrates that the two-state solution can never work. Israel is too strong, militarily and economically. A Palestinian state would always be a poor stepchild. Only a one-state solution can work: a democratic nation whose people, no matter the ethnic or religious background, enjoy equal protection and share equal power. Such a state would no longer be a "Jewish state," but it would continue to be a homeland for Jews who wanted to live there, and it would also welcome the return of those dispersed in the Nakba (the Palestinian diaspora).
If ending one diaspora creates another one, if atoning for the Holocaust means enacting another holocaust, if Israel's leaders have betrayed the deepest ethical principles of their faith even to the point of becoming the embodiment of anti-Semitism, then it's time to examine the need for a "Jewish state." What is needed is a homeland for all the people of Palestine: Jews, Palestinians, Christians, and others.
Until such a solution is in place, I commit myself to work for divestment by US corporations in all Israeli ventures, sanctions on Israel by the US government and international agencies, a consumer boycott of all Israeli-made products, and a cut-off of all US aid to Israel. These strategies worked in South Africa, where freedom came without a war, to everyone's amazement. As a college student, I worked for divestment, mainly through letter-writing campaigns. This time, our opponent is stronger, but we also have the support of a near-majority in Israel itself, who do not want war and who want to see a just peace. And, we have the support of a solid majority of Jews living outside Israel, many of whom were strong supporters of Israel until the Gaza atrocities. Together, we cannot fail. When justice finally prevails, all the people and countries concerned will be stronger.
That the growing consciousness of humanity is a good thing, a valuable thing, a thing to be cherished above all else, tells me that we must not ignore what Israel has done to the people of Gaza. If the Holocaust led to the creation of Israel, then perhaps the atrocities in Gaza will lead to a new homeland in Palestine.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
My Grandfather's Shovel
Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect to strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
On Tuesday, I attended a presentation at the college by the Three Rivers Planning & Development District. Naturally, Toyota’s decision to postpone its Prius plant in Blue Springs was the main thing on everyone’s mind. The presenters and probably everyone else in the room were steadfast in their belief that the Toyota plant was only “delayed” and would eventually be built. Still, Randy Kelly, the Director of TRPDD, did say that if Toyota pulled out for good, we “might ought to find our grandfather and learn how to make a garden with a shovel because the entire international economic system has just gone ‘kaflooey.’ ” I think he was on the right track with the shovel part.
It was actually my grandmother who made the garden, as my grandfather had emphysema from years of smoking in his youth that left him winded from walking across the yard. All I can remember him doing garden-wise was sharpening the hoe for my grandmother. I’m sure he made many a garden in his younger years, but he was an old man when I knew him. Born in 1885, he never traveled very far from where he was born, in Union County. As far as I know, he left the state of Mississippi only once, to go on vacation with his son’s family to Tampa, Florida. He wasn’t a very likeable sort of man---gruff and judgmental. He thought the world was a tough place. In one of the few moments we actually conversed, he told me his ambition had been to become a doctor. He must have respected those country doctors who were there for difficult deliveries and farm accidents. Growing up in Mississippi in the late 1800s afforded little or no opportunity for a sharecropper’s son with five siblings to consider medical school.
Enough about the grandfather---what about that shovel? Making a garden with a shovel is the most honorable sort of work. It teaches self-reliance and honesty much better than any factory job, whether making upholstered furniture or building electric cars. As I said before, it's time for some honesty, especially about how we make our living. The source of human life and prosperity is in the sun and the soil, not in the corporate boardroom.
I myself have made several gardens using a shovel, hoe, and garden fork. In fact, I put in a small garden every time I had a backyard. When I was a student at MSU, I made a raised bed out of a few concrete blocks behind my apartment and grew okra and squash. In Baltimore, I tried to grow some things in the backyard of our house on Guilford Ave., but it was too shady, and I was too busy with graduate school to spend much time back there. My best expatriate gardens were in California.
Since my grandfather’s time, things have changed in Mississippi---some for the better, some for the worse. Despite our problems, we no longer have the deep-seated, near-universal racism of his time. I would agree that the progress we’ve made in social relations is an unequivocally good thing. When we eradicate homophobia the way we’ve sent racism into hiding, we can allow for a short celebration. However, the story we tell ourselves about progress has some flaws. Mainly, the notion is associated with planes, trains, and automobiles, and the assumption is that these marvels will only grow more marvelous, and we are just going to enjoy more and more technological wonders. Very few people even talk about basic human needs like food or the strangeness of living in a wealthy, powerful country like the US, yet knowing people who don’t have enough to eat and knowing plenty more whose diets will eventually cause their deaths of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. In fact, in my biology and A&P classes, I find many students who do not even know diet has anything to do with cancer.
Today, the food on an average American plate travels about 1,500 miles from field to table. Pork might come from Iowa or North Carolina; potatoes from eastern Washington or Idaho; “fresh” vegetables from Mexico; and wine from Chile or South Australia. Meanwhile, the happy family sitting at table wears clothes made in Honduras and Indonesia. As important as clothes are, the food is a much more serious issue. Food is a basic human need, second only to water as a matter of urgent importance. That 1,500-mile, global distribution system reminds me of military supply lines. Cut those lines, and the invading army is done for. Just ask Napoleon. Cut our food supply lines, and we’re no longer the “sole remaining superpower.” We’re just as miserable and desperate as any other hungry population.
The precariousness of our food system is not because of the distance itself. It’s because of the amount of oil that’s needed to get it to the kitchen. Our farming system has become utterly dependent on fossil fuels. Oil runs the tractors and provides the raw materials to make pesticides and herbicides, while nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas. While this has enabled increased productivity by some measures---it’s obvious that many fewer farmers are now needed to supply food for increasing numbers of people, it also makes food dependent on oil. If oil runs out, so will food. Oil isn’t going to run out any time soon, but world oil production has peaked, resulting in increasing prices and more price volatility, which is reflected in food prices too. Compounding the problem is the move toward biofuels, which usually means ethanol from corn and diesel from soybean oil. Acreage used for biofuels is acreage that’s taken out of production of food for humans to eat. The words ignore and ignorance are obviously related. Our leaders are not ignorant of our food security situation, but they are ignoring it, which is sometimes known as “willful ignorance.”
Sort of parallel to the story of progress in the American mind is the respect we’ve always had for self-reliance. Thoreau took self-reliance to the extreme, and I admire him for it. Generations of pioneers and frontier people learned to value frugality, live within their means, and even save money. Many a patriarch has died in farm country supposedly penniless, only to leave behind a staggering fortune. Now, progress as we’ve known it has run self-reliance off the road. Many of the students I teach think gardens are quaint, although they’d never use that word. Gardens are associated with their grandparents. In their minds, their futures involve working for someone else to make enough money to buy what they need at Wal-Mart. To them, self-reliance means spending your whole life working at the factory so that you don’t have to depend on government assistance. I guess that’s a form of independence, and it’s admirable as far as it goes. Why isn’t it just as bad to depend on corporations in Atlanta, New York, or Tokyo? When self-reliance is a foreign concept, the land of the free won’t be so for very much longer.
Steve Solomon is the founder of Territorial Seeds, the premier source for quality seeds for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest. In "Gardening When it Counts," he describes in detail how to transform a hayfield (or a lawn) into a garden and how to design that garden to produce food the first time and every time. Not everything he describes will work well in Mississippi. We can grow Southern peas easily, but English peas (i.e., green shelling peas) only with some difficulty and advance planning. We can grow peanuts and sweet potatoes, but Irish potatoes are hit-or-miss. Our soils are eroded and worn out from years of repeat cropping of cotton and soybeans. And, of course, we have our own particular insect pests to deal with over the course of our summers when it may or may not rain for a month at a time. There are other great resources, but most gardening books deal with ornamentals or hobby gardens, not vegetable gardening and certainly not grain production on a small scale. There isn’t a single vegetable gardening book of similar breadth and depth as Solomon’s that’s written for the South. Even if there were one, no gardening book can tell you how to grow food on your own site and be 100% sure of success. That knowledge comes only from practice. So, talk to your grandfathers who knew how to grow their own food when they had to, and talk to the few real farmers still living among us before they die.
Remember, keep your shovels sharp and your hoes sharper.
On Tuesday, I attended a presentation at the college by the Three Rivers Planning & Development District. Naturally, Toyota’s decision to postpone its Prius plant in Blue Springs was the main thing on everyone’s mind. The presenters and probably everyone else in the room were steadfast in their belief that the Toyota plant was only “delayed” and would eventually be built. Still, Randy Kelly, the Director of TRPDD, did say that if Toyota pulled out for good, we “might ought to find our grandfather and learn how to make a garden with a shovel because the entire international economic system has just gone ‘kaflooey.’ ” I think he was on the right track with the shovel part.
It was actually my grandmother who made the garden, as my grandfather had emphysema from years of smoking in his youth that left him winded from walking across the yard. All I can remember him doing garden-wise was sharpening the hoe for my grandmother. I’m sure he made many a garden in his younger years, but he was an old man when I knew him. Born in 1885, he never traveled very far from where he was born, in Union County. As far as I know, he left the state of Mississippi only once, to go on vacation with his son’s family to Tampa, Florida. He wasn’t a very likeable sort of man---gruff and judgmental. He thought the world was a tough place. In one of the few moments we actually conversed, he told me his ambition had been to become a doctor. He must have respected those country doctors who were there for difficult deliveries and farm accidents. Growing up in Mississippi in the late 1800s afforded little or no opportunity for a sharecropper’s son with five siblings to consider medical school.
Enough about the grandfather---what about that shovel? Making a garden with a shovel is the most honorable sort of work. It teaches self-reliance and honesty much better than any factory job, whether making upholstered furniture or building electric cars. As I said before, it's time for some honesty, especially about how we make our living. The source of human life and prosperity is in the sun and the soil, not in the corporate boardroom.
I myself have made several gardens using a shovel, hoe, and garden fork. In fact, I put in a small garden every time I had a backyard. When I was a student at MSU, I made a raised bed out of a few concrete blocks behind my apartment and grew okra and squash. In Baltimore, I tried to grow some things in the backyard of our house on Guilford Ave., but it was too shady, and I was too busy with graduate school to spend much time back there. My best expatriate gardens were in California.
Since my grandfather’s time, things have changed in Mississippi---some for the better, some for the worse. Despite our problems, we no longer have the deep-seated, near-universal racism of his time. I would agree that the progress we’ve made in social relations is an unequivocally good thing. When we eradicate homophobia the way we’ve sent racism into hiding, we can allow for a short celebration. However, the story we tell ourselves about progress has some flaws. Mainly, the notion is associated with planes, trains, and automobiles, and the assumption is that these marvels will only grow more marvelous, and we are just going to enjoy more and more technological wonders. Very few people even talk about basic human needs like food or the strangeness of living in a wealthy, powerful country like the US, yet knowing people who don’t have enough to eat and knowing plenty more whose diets will eventually cause their deaths of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. In fact, in my biology and A&P classes, I find many students who do not even know diet has anything to do with cancer.
Today, the food on an average American plate travels about 1,500 miles from field to table. Pork might come from Iowa or North Carolina; potatoes from eastern Washington or Idaho; “fresh” vegetables from Mexico; and wine from Chile or South Australia. Meanwhile, the happy family sitting at table wears clothes made in Honduras and Indonesia. As important as clothes are, the food is a much more serious issue. Food is a basic human need, second only to water as a matter of urgent importance. That 1,500-mile, global distribution system reminds me of military supply lines. Cut those lines, and the invading army is done for. Just ask Napoleon. Cut our food supply lines, and we’re no longer the “sole remaining superpower.” We’re just as miserable and desperate as any other hungry population.
The precariousness of our food system is not because of the distance itself. It’s because of the amount of oil that’s needed to get it to the kitchen. Our farming system has become utterly dependent on fossil fuels. Oil runs the tractors and provides the raw materials to make pesticides and herbicides, while nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas. While this has enabled increased productivity by some measures---it’s obvious that many fewer farmers are now needed to supply food for increasing numbers of people, it also makes food dependent on oil. If oil runs out, so will food. Oil isn’t going to run out any time soon, but world oil production has peaked, resulting in increasing prices and more price volatility, which is reflected in food prices too. Compounding the problem is the move toward biofuels, which usually means ethanol from corn and diesel from soybean oil. Acreage used for biofuels is acreage that’s taken out of production of food for humans to eat. The words ignore and ignorance are obviously related. Our leaders are not ignorant of our food security situation, but they are ignoring it, which is sometimes known as “willful ignorance.”
Sort of parallel to the story of progress in the American mind is the respect we’ve always had for self-reliance. Thoreau took self-reliance to the extreme, and I admire him for it. Generations of pioneers and frontier people learned to value frugality, live within their means, and even save money. Many a patriarch has died in farm country supposedly penniless, only to leave behind a staggering fortune. Now, progress as we’ve known it has run self-reliance off the road. Many of the students I teach think gardens are quaint, although they’d never use that word. Gardens are associated with their grandparents. In their minds, their futures involve working for someone else to make enough money to buy what they need at Wal-Mart. To them, self-reliance means spending your whole life working at the factory so that you don’t have to depend on government assistance. I guess that’s a form of independence, and it’s admirable as far as it goes. Why isn’t it just as bad to depend on corporations in Atlanta, New York, or Tokyo? When self-reliance is a foreign concept, the land of the free won’t be so for very much longer.
Steve Solomon is the founder of Territorial Seeds, the premier source for quality seeds for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest. In "Gardening When it Counts," he describes in detail how to transform a hayfield (or a lawn) into a garden and how to design that garden to produce food the first time and every time. Not everything he describes will work well in Mississippi. We can grow Southern peas easily, but English peas (i.e., green shelling peas) only with some difficulty and advance planning. We can grow peanuts and sweet potatoes, but Irish potatoes are hit-or-miss. Our soils are eroded and worn out from years of repeat cropping of cotton and soybeans. And, of course, we have our own particular insect pests to deal with over the course of our summers when it may or may not rain for a month at a time. There are other great resources, but most gardening books deal with ornamentals or hobby gardens, not vegetable gardening and certainly not grain production on a small scale. There isn’t a single vegetable gardening book of similar breadth and depth as Solomon’s that’s written for the South. Even if there were one, no gardening book can tell you how to grow food on your own site and be 100% sure of success. That knowledge comes only from practice. So, talk to your grandfathers who knew how to grow their own food when they had to, and talk to the few real farmers still living among us before they die.
Remember, keep your shovels sharp and your hoes sharper.
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