Rural America and Food Deserts

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Originally Posted by PimTac

You vil eat what we tell you to eat or else.


Stand still Laddie!
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
You vil eat what we tell you to eat or else.
You can have all the corn you want.... except the one we need to make ethanol.
smile.gif
 
Making "junk food" harder to obtain like alcohol or tobacco is wouldn't be "telling people what to eat."

* Age limit for purchase.
* Not served in schools.
* Not eligible for food stamps.
 
Good grief.

Plant a garden, for crying out loud.

Food doesn't come from grocery stores, it comes from the ground in rural / semi rural areas. Like Kansas. How has the USDA managed to forget this? Instead of studying food deserts, maybe they should shovel that money to county extension agents to encourage people to engage in ... hold the phone ... agriculture!

The couple of sacks of okra, corn, and tomatoes I got from clients last week did not come from supermarkets - and you can tell that just by looking at it.
 
Originally Posted by Win
Good grief.

Plant a garden, for crying out loud.

Food doesn't come from grocery stores, it comes from the ground in rural / semi rural areas. Like Kansas..
Brilliant. That will take care of your veggies during Summer. What about the other 3 seasons and what about protein? Should everyone grow their own pigs and cows and chickens as well? You need economies of scale for these things to make financial sense. I have a few plants of different veggies on my patio, but I do it for fun rather than to actually sustain myself. The cost to grow them at such small scale is higher than what I'd pay for it at the local grocery store.
 
I thought the premise was USDA is labeling rural areas food deserts and DG was making it worse? If you have a grocery store, sure, go shop there. DIY if you don't.

As for the other three seasons - it would be done the way it always has been.

Freeze.

Can.

Pickle.

Dry storage in a root cellar.

Legumes ( peas and beans ) are a good source of protein, albeit incomplete. Meat is still needed.

Swine and cattle take some room, I'll concede that. Chickens don't ... Neither do goats. Goat dairy products are way better than cattle.

Financial sense? The other dollar store, the REAL dollar store, Dollar Tree, sells seed packs 4/$1.00 in Spring ...
 
Originally Posted by Win
Financial sense? The other dollar store, the REAL dollar store, Dollar Tree, sells seed packs 4/$1.00 in Spring ...
As if that was the only cost to successfully grow produce. Have you actually grown anything before?
 
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Have you actually grown anything before?


My undergraduate was Animal Science which was the livestock end of it - crop production was a different field.

But I'm pretty adaptable. I'm sure I could do it if there were no grocery stores around
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted by Win
But I'm pretty adaptable. I'm sure I could do it if there were no grocery stores around
smile.gif


smile.gif


Yup. If you drive long enough, you'll eventually find a grocery store. You'd have to have a fairly long drive and burn decent amount of gas to make backyard agriculture a viable alternative. My guess is you'll end up having to go to the store for some items anyway, in which case you might as well pick up everything else that you need while you're there. If you have a big enough fridge, you can probably make do with only 1 or 2 trips per month.

Originally Posted by Mr Nice
My grandparents in Europe had a small vegetable garden, a few pigs and some chickens.
Mine did, too. Still, it was only partially meeting their food needs. They still went to the store to get milk, bread, butter, flour, salt, sugar, etc.
 
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by Win
But I'm pretty adaptable. I'm sure I could do it if there were no grocery stores around
smile.gif


smile.gif


Yup. If you drive long enough, you'll eventually find a grocery store. You'd have to have a fairly long drive and burn decent amount of gas to make backyard agriculture a viable alternative. My guess is you'll end up having to go to the store for some items anyway, in which case you might as well pick up everything else that you need while you're there. If you have a big enough fridge, you can probably make do with only 1 or 2 trips per month.


Indeed. That's including fertilizer, soil, land (assuming you have enough land to make enough crops to last more than a month), assuming the weather is viable to even grow anything, and the materials/tools to even start the crops.
 
It's no wonder when disasters strike a portion of the population stands there and laments "what will I do? What will I do? Help me Uncle Sam.

People can't plant, people can't cook, I scratch my head.

It's all ending in under twelve years anyway.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
People can't plant, people can't cook, I scratch my head.

It's not as much about "can't" as it is about at what point doing these things becomes a less costly alternative.
 
I thought the point of the article was that DG comes to town, puts the surviving local grocery store out of business, and then the only means of getting fresh produce and meat is to drive to some store at a distance greater than whatever USDA deems for a "food desert." Which can be problematic for some people.

In that scenario, a home garden and a few chickens seems to me like a perfectly reasonable alternative to supplement your food supply, and the USDA, whose whole reason for existence should be agriculture, might try encouraging that, rather than declaring places a food desert. Labels are a non solution to a problem.

Unless things have drastically changed, every state land grant university in the nation has a local county extension office staffed with employees of the local university school of agriculture, whose primary purpose is to extend knowledge of the art and science of agriculture, and keep people in the field up on the newest techniques and knowledge. These offices can help folks with things like this. Most people probably don't know they exist, but their taxes are paying for them.
 
Originally Posted by Win
In that scenario, a home garden and a few chickens seems to me like a perfectly reasonable alternative to supplement your food supply,
Correct. I am just saying that I, personally, wouldn't bother with such home garden if the nearest "proper" grocery store was 10-15 miles away. It would have to be a lot further away for me to consider starting and cultivating such a home garden, but each person needs to make their own calculation here depending on their means of transport and what they're willing to tolerate, as well as based on their gardening skills.
smile.gif
 
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by PimTac
You vil eat what we tell you to eat or else.
You can have all the corn you want.... except the one we need to make ethanol.
smile.gif




The corn used to make ethanol is NOT the same corn people consume. Livestock like it though.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
It's no wonder when disasters strike a portion of the population stands there and laments "what will I do? What will I do? Help me Uncle Sam.

People can't plant, people can't cook, I scratch my head.

It's all ending in under twelve years anyway.

Is that the next predicted Armageddon?
 
Originally Posted by mk378
Making "junk food" harder to obtain like alcohol or tobacco is wouldn't be "telling people what to eat."

* Age limit for purchase.
* Not served in schools.
* Not eligible for food stamps.



Yes that is... Telling people what to eat...

And for moonbats who love that type of authority... It is like bugs going to a porch light.
 
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by PimTac
People can't plant, people can't cook, I scratch my head.

It's not as much about "can't" as it is about at what point doing these things becomes a less costly alternative.




Seriously. A whole, whole, whole lot of people out there can't cook... Or know how to grow anything... Ever see that show about failing homesteads... Yeah... Those people were completely clueless.

A lot people in these days cannot do for themselves... Power goes out and they do not know what to do...

When I was a kid... Mom knew how to cook on the woodstove... Home made biscuits off the woodstove. Plus chilli and beef stew... Darn good too. We had already preserved canned vegetables from a real garden. We had chickens for eggs.. It was not the end of the world if we did not have power.
 
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