I’m sure you realize that the food safety system put in place by the U.S. government does not favor you, the person wanting to eat that food, so much as mega agribusiness.

What are you going to do to keep your own food chain more safe? Eat local. Even if you aren’t ready to eat out of your own garden, you can take steps to eat in line with your values. It can be a challenge to eat local, but people around you are making it easier all of the time.

You might start by signing up with a CSA, which is short for Community Supported Agriculture. You can buy a share of the harvest in these local farms. Sign up soon for the upcoming season. Local Harvest offers a comprehensive list of CSAs. Check the list for farmers’ markets and restaurants, too.

Eating local doesn’t guarantee the safety of your food, but it takes you out of the longer chain where safety is more difficult to ensure. Supporting local food helps keep your local economy and community strong.

Who knew vegetarians have different survival needs than omnivores?

Vegetarians in Paradise, a Los Angeles magazine, asked readers to respond and make suggestions for vegetarian survival kit.  The only vegetarian-specific suggestions I find there are “powdered rice or soy powder” and “canned beans and bean-based soups, tetrapak soup (Imagine), individual packs of soymilk, vegan (Clif) energy bars and crackers. SELECT LOW-SODIUM ITEMS, AS YOUR DIET MAY CONSIST ENTIRELY OF THESE FOODS. Since you may not have access to fresh fruit or vegetables for a while, also keep some vitamins or (my choice) Emergen-C packets on hand.”

One reader suggested single-serving prepared foods from Dr. John McDougall.

What this tells me is that there is no one-size-fits-all list of survival supplies.  Whatever list you create, whatever you stock on your shelves, make sure your emergency supplies fit your lifestyle, your preferences, and your specific needs.

Book Wish List

I have about 800 books on my wishlist. I’m not sure I have time left in my life to read 800 books, but I intend to try.

One of the highest books on that list is Albert Bate’s Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook. Amazon does not yet have the book, but publisher New Society does. “This book,” they tell me, “is about having your catastrophe and eating it too.”

One of the reviewers called it a post-petroleum Whole Earth Catalogue. All of the reviewers say that the book approaches the situation with good humor and optimism.

Topics covered include:

• Rebuilding civilization
• Changing your needs
• Water and waste disposal
• Energy and transportation
• Equipment and Tools
• Food storage and First Aid

I’ve added this to my emergency preparedness shopping list.

To follow yesterday’s idea of Homeland Security through eating local, the US Department of Agriculture is playing a little 1984 Big Brother doublespeak mind game with “hunger” by renaming it “very low food security.” Twelve percent of Americans (35 million people) suffer from this condition. TWELVE PERCENT. They way the Department of Agriculture redefines the issue, “very low food security” is a result of lack of money to buy food. These Americans just have “multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” “Hunger,” on the other hand, is a more serious condition “beyond the usual uneasiness.” Usual? Usual to those writing the report? Usual as in, they’re used to it so don’t worry?

The annual USDA report used to be released in October. One presidential candidate from Texas in 1999 said he believed the report was fabricated and aimed at his candidacy. This year the report was released mid-November, just before Thanksgiving–and a week after mid-term elections.

I wonder how much money was spent as the Committee on National Statistic of the National Academies to “to ensure that the measurement methods USDA uses to assess households’ access — or lack of access — to adequate food and the language used to describe those conditions are conceptually and operationally sound.” Not everyone is happy about the latest addition to US doublespeak.

So, if you hear the words “food security,” it might not mean what you think it does.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday this week, several guests talked about How Food Finds Its Way to Your Plate. After an interesting discussion of processed foods in our diets (particularly corn and soy), they talked about local foods.

“What about terrorism?”

[This is 38.5 minutes in, if you want to listen to this section.]

Concentrated corporate agriculture, the guest says, leaves our system more a target. The Department of Homeland Security ran a war simulation on how the U.S. would respond to an act of agricultural terrorism. Officials concluded that intense concentration of agriculture and long-distance shipping make us quite vulnerable to both malicious and accidental food contamination. Eating local decentralizes that target.

Then, one guest mentions a poster she has in her office from the New York Farm Bureau:

Homeland Security. Buy local. It matters.

Apparently farmers aren’t all that impressed by the security of imported agricultural products. Earlier this Fall, in the New York Farm Bureau’s newsletter Grassroots, an author wrote in Talking Points:

“homeland security.”

Actually, it’s a great idea. Maybe we should try it.

Yes, wouldn’t that be a good idea. Better yet, let’s you and I buy local, encourage our local economies, and make this less an issue.

Print your own “Homeland Security – Buy Local” poster from the New York Farm Bureau.