Food Insecurity, Stability & Building A Self Reliant Plan
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2024
- Everywhere you turn right now, you hear about food shortages and supply chain issues. Because of this, many of us that are aiming to be more self reliant are actively moving towards taking our food security into our own hands. Food security is a bit of an abstract concept though. What does it actually mean?
You can think of food security literally, that is: as securing or protecting your food supply. But that is still a bit vague in terms of how you could take steps towards that. It also feels reactionary, rather than preventative.
Another way to approach it, is as “food stability” or maintaining a steady food supply in the face of disturbance. Disturbances being anything that upsets the different parts, or links, of your supply chain. Because the typical supply chain is long and interconnected, there are many places where disturbances may occur. They can happen in production, transportation, processing, distribution, and access.
Thinking of it as stability is more intuitive to me, because the theoretical concept of stability can be broken down into three aspects, the three R’s, that can actually be measured. Moving from theory to practice.
The three R’s of stability are:
Resistance is the ability to not be affected by change or pressure.
Resilience is the ability to recover from or to adjust to change or pressure.
Redundancy is preventing a single component from causing whole system failure through duplication
An example of resistance is growing your own food. If you aren’t reliant on the global supply chain, then you are resistant to global food shortages. You can also stop consuming a particular type of food that is very prone to crop failure, or has a long supply chain. Another example of resistance would be using cover, like a hoop-house, to protect your crops from bad weather like late frosts or hail. If you get a lot of a particular type of pest in your garden, like squash bugs, you can plant more crops that are resistant to that type of pest, like peppers, and less of crops that are targets, like cucumbers.
If you live in a drought-prone area, you can achieve resiliency by planting crops that can tolerate drought. You can also use plants that grow fast and reseed like dandelions or produce several crops a year like ever-bearing strawberries. One vegetable that we find to be very resilient to just about is kale, you can basically chop it back to the soil, and it will grow back. Choosing vegetable varieties, seed, and wild foods acclimated your local environment is another example of a resilient food source.
To have a redundant food supply you can find many different farms to buy from in case one farm doesn’t produce enough or has a crop failure. You can plant more than you need of the same vegetable, or different varieties of the same vegetable in case some varieties do not do as well or if there are losses to pests or adverse weather conditions. You can have redundancy in storage. We all know the saying: “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, but you also may not want to store all your meat in one freezer or even only rely on freezing, instead can or smoke some meat in case of power failures spoiling your freezer meat. Redundancy is expensive though. Resources take up time and space. With limited resources, keep in mind that your chain is only as strong as your weakest link. Redundancy is most effective when fortifying weak links, or places where many chains come together.
The best way to plan for food shortages is by stepping back and looking at your food supply system in its entirety. By doing so you can see which parts have the most connections or are the weakest links, and therefore need the most effort to make sure you can use the three R’s to ensure that you are prepared for food shortages.
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Another great video. I’m currently trying to convince hubby it’s a good idea to turn our entire back yard into food gardens. He isn’t really ready to give up his beloved grass, but sometimes a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do 🤣
Why on earth would you wait for someone else to be convinced of your desires before you go out and fulfill them?
You are your own person.
@@az55544 I guess out of respect that this is also his house. Just as he respects the areas that I have already turned into gardens. I have no doubt that in time I will have all the gardens I desire, but I don’t want him to feel that his thoughts are not important.
Ask him if he's okay with eating grass 💩
Wonderful ,message and very well presented.
Thanks
Great video. We are making huge steps to grow all (or most) of our food. Cheers!
Good stuff!
I never heard of the three Rs like this, great concept!
Thank you, so very well explained.
Hi, It's the friendly brewer you guys met at Outspoken brewery! After telling my wife about our talk she is SOOOOOO excited to take you guys up on your offer, if it still stands! Looking forward to hearing back from you guys - Cheers!
Of course it still stands, go to our about page to find our email 🙂
This was great!!
Great explanations Amanda ! Best days to you all on the Wilderstead 👍
Thanks!
Excellent video. Can't wait to start our garden this year.
Awesome… it can’t come soon enough!
You make me smile 🤣 - very original, didactical but simple on the point, Essentials - principes - and unforgettable - your redundant rocks and the 3 R,s 🤣 worth ..and cap and dog 🤣 - I had 3.
Greetings from Germany ...
We have a lot of rock redundancy; here if there is ever a rock shortage we are set! 😂
@@Wilderstead
I m shure you will !
But - I m shure - you are much more resistent and resilient because of practical cleverness combined with a good Humor sense and redundant
Because you both worked in same direction - or as I remember a well known book says - the double Cord
....don t break as fast as the Single one ..good according to nature s basic - double - Helix and double setting of Chromosomes and...so on 🙂 best wishes for you both ...three ! 🐕 😊
Great video. Looking forward to a productive growing season.
Us too!
You guys keep motivating to do more with my garden! Well explained. Sounds like Kale is a good starting point for me ..HA!
Awesome! We got some seeds for ya if you do!
Killing it Amanda... great job. Working on the three R's now.
Great!
EXCELLENT video!!
Thanks
Such a great object lesson. Thank you for sharing this. It will help a lot of people make sense of preparing.
Thanks!
makes me want to go listen to Bad Religion. They had a song called the resist stance that I always enjoyed. Keep em coming please :) Thank you.
Crank it up!
Great video 👍 Blessings 🌹
Thanks
Some great advise , stay safe and warm
Thanks, you too!
Great lesson! Nice video!
Thanks!
Very well presented Amanda, you Rock! ;)
Thanks Tim! Rock and roll!
that's some tasty dynamical systems theory! delicious video
You know it! Just wait until I get into weak interactions and complexity 😉
Great job! I love the 3 R's, how about a vid on the highest calorie veges you can grow? We're going to need it this summer as we work through higher food prices/shortages. headed to Winco to the longest dated canned veges/meats we can afford to bridge the gap.
We were just talking the other night about the calories breakdown, so we may just have a video of that yet!
Great video and information! Also... I can't seem to grow kale for the life of me 🤣
Thanks! Weird, we can’t kill the stuff! 🤣
Well presented! A little disappointed I'm not one of the R's😂😂
Did I forget the most important R? 😉
Funny how hunger motivates pretty well everyone.
Survival!
Except for the growing internet ""meat"" purveyors.
They have plenty of """meat""" delivered to the doorstep like the wind andddddd not suffering any hyperinflation prices. Ummm....Something isn't making a connection.
Yess the 3 R's for sure.
Interesting indeed!