The Case for Growing Your Own Food: Why The War in Ukraine Will Mean Worldwide Famine
If you’re like me, you might have thought of growing your own food, but you’ve never done it.
The idea is simple: create a deeper connection with your food.
Wait, food doesn’t grow in the grocery store?
That’s right. And if you eat meat, and you are like me, you may have even considered learning to hunt, but alas, never done it.
So besides the obvious health benefits of growing your own organic fruits and vegetables, and the stress relief of putting your hands in the soil and talking to your plants, now there is an urgent geopolitical reason…
We should all start growing our “victory gardens”!
According to Wikipedia, during the first and second World Wars, “governments encouraged people to plant victory gardens not only to supplement their rations but also to boost morale…to reduce pressure on the public food supply… gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown.”
While all this sounds like a feel-good activity the reality is, the state of our food supply is about to get really ugly, really quick.
Here is the case I heard from David Friedberg:
15% of the world’s calories come from wheat
1/3 of all wheat is produced in Russia
Economic sanctions have now blocked Russia from exporting anything to the West
The world’s food supply only lasts about 90 days
800M people on earth subsist on less than 1200 calories per day
Fertilizer prices are about to skyrocket
Nitrogen is made with natural gas, and natural gas prices just went up 5x as so much comes from Russia
Phosphorus just went up 3x, as ~10% of the world’s supply comes from Russia
Potassium just went up 3.5x as ~25% comes from Russia
Fertilizer will be so expensive that many farmers will pull acres out of production
The price of corn has gone up 2-3x in the last 18 months
The price of soybeans has also gone up 2-3x in the last 18 months
The price of wheat is up 32% this month
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that prices at food in the grocery store are about to go through the roof!
**But the sad reality is that 100M+ people may be severely malnourished due to the coming famine.**
So what can you do today?
Stop wasting food. 30% of America’s food goes to waste either as table scraps or it goes bad in your pantry. Yes, your parents were right, only serving yourself what you can eat will help starving children in Africa. This is why we weigh our compost on our U30X Camping trips. “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed.”
Start planting your own food. How? I think a good start is planting a few herbs in your home, so you can start small. You can even start with this book on sprouts. Also, follow @selfsufficientbackyard on Instagram. And if that’s not enough to get you started consider volunteering on a permaculture farm like Rancho Margot, the place that kicked off my learning about sustainability nearly ten years ago on our Under30Experiences trip to Costa Rica.
Thanks for reading. Subscribe to be part of the new community I’m building!