With rising food costs, and rising demand, and with 1/3 of this country’s corn crop under flooded fields, it isn’t too late for anyone with a yard, or some large flower pots, to grow a little food (either from seedlings available at garden shops, hardware stores, home improvement stores, or even in some cases, from seed). It may be a good year to grow a few tomato plants, because the recent salmonella-related tomato recall. I have a garden. I’m thinking of planting more, due to the storm damage. (More as a symbolic act, than that thinking it will actually be enough to feed me, or that it will make a difference in the world. But if lots of other people did it, too, especially this year, it could make a difference.) Even though we’ve had a lot of rain where I live, I don’t have any flooding in my yard. So my garden seems to be doing well with no effort on my part. The biggest effort is carrying my digital camera out there once in a while to take pictures of its progress. There’s really nothing to do. I don’t even have to water it. Or if I do, it takes about a minute.

Here’s a video of a volunteer farm that donates its produce to area food banks and soup kitchens in Virginia:

My food bills haven’t gone up noticeably, because I tend to buy organic or specialty foods, like soy or rice milk which tend to cost more than conventional food anyway. And I tend to buy only what I need — except at work where I’m tempted by impulse junk food availability. I also bring my lunch to work instead of buying it in the cafeteria. So I’m not feeling the pain, except when I hear the news. Even the high gas prices are (for me as an individual) more of a psychological blow, since a 10 cent increase only adds a dollar to my weekly 10 gallon fill-up. I can eat less store-bought cookies to make up for that, if that extra dollar to get to work bothers me enough. Or, I could start taking the train. Maybe I will when gas hits $4.50. But my main frustration with gas prices is that with road construction, everyone sits on the tollway during Rush Hour. So I probably waste half a tank just sitting in traffic.

This may also be a good year for people in this country to finally decide to “eat less meat”…
“Flooded farms in nation’s breadbasket pressure prices”

And higher feed prices will eventually drive up meat prices because many livestock farmers are likely to slaughter some of their livestock, reducing meat supplies, said Darrel Good, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Illinois.

“Rather than holding back some animals to expand the herd, they’ll just send them to slaughter. Nobody wants to panic, but everybody’s concerned,” said Good. He added that it was too soon to know the effect on retail prices.

If the farmers don’t expand their herds, and if they start farming fields they’re paid not to farm by the government, which would make groups like Ducks Unlimited unhappy, there could be a reduction in “livestock”, and a reduction of habitat for animals that hunters like to kill. It sounds like a win/win for everyone except the conservationists, and anyone concerned about commodities prices….

“As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program”

That is just the beginning, warns Ducks Unlimited, a politically potent organization with more than half a million members in the United States. Ducks Unlimited is concerned about the three-quarters of a million acres of grassland that were removed from the program last year in the so-called duck factory in the Upper Midwest.

“We foresee a dramatic reduction,” said Mr. Ringelman, a conservation director for the association.

I’m all in favor of wildlife habitat, as a safe place for the wildlife. I’m just not in favor of preserving it for the benefit of the hunters.