NeverLNG, I agree with you. This is one of the reasons I argue that cooking the food may be more important than growing it - that is, we manifestly have a nation in which people go hungry because they can't cook cheap basic staples. Shifting diets radically and rapidly is going to be a huge social project - and it has to be undertaken, because hunger is already here and rising *FAST*.

Think about what icelanders will have to do if they are to eat the food they can produce locally, and perhaps what basics they can import. Cooking is one of those small things I mentioned in comments yesterday - and it is huge. The hand that stirs the pot, shapes the world.

Sharon

The CSA farm in my area has programs to teach people how to cook the vegetables they grow.

Yeah, it's kind of a lifestyle change, learning to plan meals ahead of time. I didn't have a clue when I picked up my first CSA box. Fortunately my Grandpa, who grew up in the depression, was able to help me out. I think a local depression era recipe book would be an excellent find.

While "traveling" we got a lot of boxes of mac n cheese from food banks. We had a little propane burner and we ate off frisbees in the park, then threw the frisbees. Those were good times. The other day I picked up a pre-packaged donation bag at the supermarket and guess what was in it, mac n cheese.

Akin to cooking and perhaps more important, is preservation. I mentioned a garden I grew this year in an earlier post -- since that post I've had additional harvest but I also purchased a nice rear-tine tiller off Craigslist for $350 so my net for this year is -$172.51, or +$621.89 if I depreciate my hard goods over 5 years at a simple rate of 20%/year.

These figures are a little misleading however, in that they represent what I produced rather than what I consumed. I planted too much summer-squash/zucchini ("soft squash" hereafter), and although I love this kind of veggie, the 55.454 kg was too much for me to deal with. I ate a pound a day for a month -- but gave away the lion's share. In the absence of significant cold storage, I just couldn't manage this volume.

In contrast, winter squash (65.978 kg), requires nothing but an unheated room (no canning, drying, freezing, or refrigerating) and as such, represents a much better investment despite its lower per unit value, e.g., the value of my soft squash was $140.15 while the value of the winter squash, despite greater production, was only $109.02.

Let me get a point here. Aside from losing knowledge about how to cook, knowing what to grow is also very important and I made some mistakes in my garden. Certain vegetables preserve well and produce a lot of food: winter squash for instance, but are rather cheap (lower profit). Other veggies such as snow peas have a high value (my 6107 g were worth $80.48), but are impossible to preserve in a low energy fashion (freezing is the only option and I'm not interested in that).

I think one of the factors working against effective local farming, is that the price of those vegetables which can be stored without resorting to massive energy usage (cold storage), are also the cheapest in the market. In my garden, about 1/6 of the space was devoted to winter squash, and 1/30th devoted to snow peas. I'll enjoy the winter squash for a few months now while the snow peas were a transient (but delightful) experience. Still, the snow peas were really good "money" makers.

It seems to me that in order to succeed in our current market situation, that a market garden would need to focus on high value produce -- most of which is hard to store without high energy usage. A different way to think about this, is that with our current pricing structure for vegetables, a market garden designed to provide luxury items might work, but one growing staples is likely to be a poor investment. Sadly, it is the production of staples that would make a real difference.