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What if we just added grain?

So after spending a long time trying to refine my diet and my idealistic diet to be the most natural, a story very much resembling the personal experience of Daniel Vitalis, I’ve gotten to a stage where I just mellowed out about the diet in many ways, focusing on other things.   And let’s face it, there’s some really big challenges we’re up against, and yes we have the solutions, but the gap is too big for most of us to cross at this point from here to there.

Most of us here are eating “food-like substances” from conventional grocery stores and restaurants.   A trainwreck of a situation.   On the other hand, we’ve got the idealistic restoring the Earth, tending the wild permaculture creating paradise long term goal.   So I propose that we narrow the challenges to integrate with what is available from the wreckage of the proverbial train.

For example:  What if we just added grain into a sustainable food challenge?  What if we could import all sorts of grains (oats are my personal favorite).  With this we could . . . feed ourselves, feed animals, make ferments, sprouts, raise insects, get our calories.   Vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and even much of the meat can be and should be provided from local gardens and small local farms.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, from local gardens, farms, and foraging, we can get almost everything we need to survive without too much problem.   Where to get calories to sustain overblown populations with decimated natural resources is the real challenge.   So why aren’t we starving for calories now?  Because we’re turning fossil fuels into calories.  So the grains are the one thing really that can’t be taken out of equation any time soon, despite the problems associated with them.   There’s just too many people and the Earth has been pillaged of its resources.    We must keep grain, or lose lots of people for the foreseeable future.   At least with the info and understanding that we have now.

In California we also have many existing orchards that would provide a similar input that conventional grain does.   No new unsustainable orchards planted, but should utilize the massive standing calories, almonds, walnuts, olives, etc.

If all communities took on this challenge, we would actually be prepared for the coming changes in the food system.  And it’s so much more fun and tasty to do this way, anyway.   Just because we can’t survive and thrive now without petro grain inputs (as a whole society), doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and not continue to strive toward important and realistic goals.   Instead of trying to figure out how to handle armageddon all at once with finding food, we would instead need to just organize on how to produce local grain, or maintain at least enough infrastructure to continue commercial scale grain production and importation.    Much more solvable than the “oh shit, we’re all going to die!” problem that you’ll have if not addressing any of it.