Claire Moylan's List: Food Security

• Survival seeds in Survival Seed Banks are hand picked for their hardiness, nutritional value, germination rate and of course, storage life.
  
  In every survival seed bank, beyond the seeds, you will find helpful information about growing and harvesting vegetables and instructions for storing seeds. This is a very important step that needs to be done properly, because failing to store the seeds in the right way could mean that you won’t have enough seeds to plant the following year.
  
  In case of some climate disaster like flood or economic crises, the ability to grow your own food could be the only way for long term survival for you and your family. It the food supply runs out and there is no way to fill it again, planting a Survival Garden and using survival seeds will be the best solution.
  

   

  This post will be used to research and log "Open Source" ie; open pollinated and heirloom seed producers who are providing seed at a reasonable (non-disaster ecomnomy) price. The list will be added to as I continue my research.

   

   

   

  ABCeeds - This is a wonderful site with a great deal of teaching for beginners!

   

  https://www.abceeds.com/searchresults.asp?cat=81

• When I was growing up it was not a problem of wether we had food to eat but the problem has always been that of what type of food to eat.the problem of having certain food stuffs only in some seasons and being unable to have them in some other seasons have always plagued us. also the problem of having insufficient food to eat at the end of the year or before planting season all because our food got bad within the year.This is the big problem of preservation. T his has made it that even the good yields that my mother as wel as other farmers succeed to get at the end of the year ends up getting bad all because they cant preserve the food well. this is all because the old methods of preservation are prooving insufficient for the amount of produce that they have now.
  the second major problem is that of farm to market or to home roads which has always disturbed us as we have to carry 50 to 70kgs of bags of maize for kilometers to our homes and to the markets as there are no roads linking the farms and markets. this at times makes this food to get bad before reaching the market if they are perishable or the quality is not still good enough.
• who can advice us on preservation and transformation of certain produce like maize,beans,vegetables,pineapples etc this is because there is no need producing food that will not reach the consumers or that will not be consumed.

• A decade ago, salesmen from as many as 50 seed companies would compete for their dollars. Each would promise healthier plants, richer yields or a better discount.
   
   Today the Leakes have little choice: There are four seed companies in their area, and all sell seeds that include genetic traits patented and licensed by Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed firm.
• The concerns of farmers such as Leake will take center stage in Ankeny, Iowa, on Friday as the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture kick off the first of a yearlong series of public meetings to examine whether antitrust practices in agriculture are driving food prices higher.
• The government is also trying to ferret out reasons for the sometimes vast gaps between what farmers are paid for producing food and the prices shoppers pay at the grocery store.
• Many experts believe that rising food prices start with seeds.
• Yet over the last decade, the number of independent seed companies in the U.S. has shrunk to fewer than 100 from more than 300, said Bill Wenzel, national director of the nonprofit Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering, a network of 34 farm groups.
  
• Today, four companies account for 50% of the world's proprietary seeds for major crops. The leader is Monsanto Co., whose marketing practices the Justice Department is investigating.

4 more annotations...

• According to Robin Shreeves of SustainABlog, the U.S. wastes 30% of it's food at a cost of $48,200,000,000 per year.
• So why in the world would we waste that much money? The answer is visibility. We throw away food incrementally. We never really get to see the total picture of what we're wasting. The big denomination of waste most Americans ever see is one 13 gallon trash can full.

   
• To solve this problem I think the United States needs to implement a waste sorting and accountability law. This would have 4 key components:
   
   
  • U.S. citizens and businesses should have to sort their garbage by reusable food stuffs, non-usable food garbage, recyclables, and non-recyclable garbage
   
  • Garbage dumpsters and outside storage canisters would be eliminated forcing people to keep there garbage inside until trash pickup day
   
  • Trash pickup services would be more very expensive for non-recyclables and non-usable food stuffs, but free for recyclables and reusable food stuffs
   
  • Food shortage agencies would be responsible for picking up reusable food stuff garbage on a daily or twice daily schedule and distributing it to those in need

1 more annotation...

• Rabbits have a much smaller carbon footprint than other animals because they convert calories into pounds more efficiently. According to Slow Food USA, “Rabbit can produce six pounds of meat on the same amount of feed and water it takes a cow to produce just one pound.”