Preparing for Hard Times

Jonah House Catholic Worker Food Storage

Lately, every time I unfold the morning newspaper I’m struck by how bleak things are looking. A year ago I had never heard of “Peak Oil,” buying local seemed like a good idea but not a necessity, and our house was worth thousands more than it is now.  There were those that warned that oil prices could top $100/barrel, but not that it would just keep going.  Concerned voices like those of Wendell Berry and Vandana Shiva had prophesied widespread hunger if the WTO and World Bank continued to strong-arm impoverished countries into abandoning growing food for themselves in favor of growing for the world market; but not that the price of grain would sky rocket this year (the price of rice nearly doubled during the first three months of 2008) causing the worst food crisis in over 30 years.  Was anyone predicting grain rationing here in the U.S.? Or the scope of the mortgage crisis?

Besides wonder and fear, one response among those of us not yet terribly affected is to start thinking about what the world might look like in a few years if we keep going in this direction – and to start planning for it.  Sharon Astyk, of the widely-read Casaubon’s Book is sharing her knowledge of food storage in hopes of helping others be prepared for what seems likely to be continued rising prices and possible scarcity.  In my initial de-cluttering phase a week ago, I came across Chile Chews’ decluttering dilemma – how to figure out what should stay and what should go in light of a future of scarcity. Shouldn’t we be keeping extras of things?  Is now the best time to be selling that hand-mixer clogging the kitchen drawer?  Or getting rid of the extra scrap wood in garage or the outdated coat? 

On a larger scale, the soaring price of food commodities is apparently encouraging some investors to prepare for the future by speculating on commodity futures in a way that is actually tying up food and causing the price to rise higher. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how this works.  Greenpa rants about it eloquently here and has a lot of interesting links to recent articles on the food crisis. As lame as my mind is when it comes to understanding commodities and investments, I do understand this:  Cargill, a major agribusiness firm, reported unprecedented profits earlier this month. How can suppliers and producers be profiting outrageously when people (some as close as a two hour plane trip away from me) are starving?  Even I can put two and two together. It's runaway self-interest, and it's wrong.  

Back to the smaller scale, all this started me thinking about the complications involved in preparing for a bleaker future.  A lot of it depends on what we believe about human beings, and about being human.  When I think about going full steam ahead and canning as many spring vegetables as I can, dessicating buckets of rice, storing water under my bed,  and making sure we have enough chickens to actually feed our family should we actually be entering into an economic depression, I’m faced with a dilemma.  What about the family next door?  What if D and K do not do the same, and their little girls are hungry?  Wouldn’t we quickly deplete our stores by sharing with them?  Would we NOT share with them? Would they build a taller fence to protect their chickens and their fruit trees? I like to think that in hard times, we would pool our resources. D is handy and could build a larger coop and we could let our chickens multiply together; I have a sunny yard for vegetables, they have fruit trees, L and B across the street have a sunny roof, solar power, and a hybrid car, H down the street hunts and fishes…  Could we help each other? Would we? 

If cooperation and sharing is the answer, than building those relationships now is an important component of real security - along with obtaining and sharing needed skills with each other. Learning to preserve food, to grow food for actual sustenance (not primarily for taste and beauty as I do) are part of it - and so is learning how to put our heads together now to solve common problems in preparation for those times when the problems may be a lot bigger.

Is this a naive view of a future in the throes of scarcity?  From a "Christian" bent (I bend that way), folks are supposed to share, trust each other, treat our neighbors like brothers and sisters, and "worry not for the morrow"...  But "Christians" seem to be some of the worst at actually following through on this (my husband's take on this is here).  We're only human we'll say.   

Which points to the biggest question: What does it mean to be fully human? Are we "all in this together? Or is it "every [hu]man for her/himself? The question of "what will become of us" during hard times is deeper than "how will we eat."  Is it possible to follow Gandhi's instruction to be the change you wish to see in the world during hard times? What do you think?