massive floods in the US, deaths of livestock, farmers going bankrupt--what to do? Grow more food

Chris Kott wrote:I am pretty sure that most of the processed industrial waste they market as food is made from corn, and all the factory-farmed beef that should be out grazing on pasture are also fed corn.

Is it naive to hope that its only the shit we really don't want to be eating anyways that will have issues?

-CK

Unfortunately, yes. It IS naive.

I've been trying to tell people in real life, neighbors etc about this. Their answers are often things like "I don't eat much beef anyway." Good, but the people who do will be buying more chicken, and feed for them is coming in low too, so the prices will go up there, and more people will be buying chicken.  "Oh, well I eat pork too."  Good, but so will everyone else, and again, feed and more demand, the prices WILL be going up. Doesn't matter WHAT you eat, people who don't usually do so will be if they can't afford or get what they prefer. When the garbage food gets too high priced, whatever is cheapest will take the next hit.

This area runs a lot of cows, I talked to someone who said "we were discussing keeping the babies this year instead of butchering them." Oh yes, they will be very valuable little creatures. I also expect to see a lot more deer hunters this fall, and the consequent damage to the deer population. This is going to resonate down some unexpected paths. I can guess some, I expect to be surprised by some. Nature is an interconnected web, and it's pattern is distorted by what is going on with the big farms to start with. No guesses how far the distortion will go. I expect years of fallout from this. You've probably heard the bit about reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone changed the flow of the rivers. How much more impact will this have? I don't think anyone knows, and few are looking very far ahead. Hard to get people to even look ahead enough to plant some garden crops.

Trouble COULD be brewing? I think that ship has sailed.

It's not looking good around here. Food prices are already rising. I'm soooo glad that I planned on a larger garden & more chickens in advance this year. Even with advance preparation the past month has been very busy with planting. Out of space at the moment but there is still 2 or 3 weeks more time to plant here. Trying to get one more area ready & planted before then. Have a strong hunch that neighbors & friends & even some complete strangers will appreciate the quality food more than ever this year. I can't solve everyone's problems but I can help a few. Gives me hope & a warm fuzzy feeling to see others doing the same!!!

I'm seeing this whole situation as a chance to try to educate people who otherwise might not be interested.

I saw this just now and thought it would be relevant. I hope everyone is doing ok

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/17/us/multiday-severe-weather-outbreak-weekend-wxc/index.html

I figured. Wishful thinking, I guess. The processed crap companies probably have contracts that ensure they get what they need, and that would drive the cost up on the rest.

Dwelling on the horror doesn't work, though. We watch horror for fun. When it hits our bank accounts, that's when most people who aren't literally in the flood path start to notice. Even then, we have this disconnect, the same one that makes people subconsciously think that meat comes on plastic-wrapped trays from the grocery store.

As with the, "...then I'll eat pork" comment, it's very Marie-Antoinette-esque. I think it comes from that disconnection. It looks like the masses adopted more than a fondness for monocultured lawns from the French aristocracy.

-CK

On a positive note:


My church agreed to do a public educational food forest right out front in a square of what is (for now!) lawn!! I'm presenting to the congregation in June, they're coming to see my young food forest in August, and we break ground in fall! I've already got the trees in pots for it. We're going to try to get the girl scouts and master gardeners involved

Tuesday, May 21 2019 update on my area: Heavy rain and a few tornadoes, in the last 24 hours about 6 inches of rain, onto already saturated ground. Watch for the Mississippi to jump it's banks again.
I was up near the lakes, and they are deep, even with really solid outflow running.

I can't decide whether to make this a post of it's own, or put it here. I'll put it here for now.

I was reading an article on an economics blog I like, Of Two Minds  and this part of this article struck me. The article is titled “What Would It Take to Spark a Rural/Small-Town Revival?” and most of it I didn’t find interesting. This part I found fascinating and well written.

 2. Globalization has lowered the cost of agricultural commodities by exposing every locality to globally set prices (supply and demand) which are also distorted by currency fluctuations.

The relatively low cost of fuels has enabled produce from thousands of miles away to be shipped to supermarkets virtually everywhere.

These mega-trends have slashed farming incomes while costs have risen across the board. This squeeze as revenues decline and costs increase has driven even the most diligent and devoted farmers out of business or reduced them to hanging on by a thread.

What would it take reverse these trends?

1. The price of agricultural commodities and products would have to triple or quadruple, so that farming would become lucrative and attract capital and talent.

Imagine an economy where ambitious people wanted to get into agriculture rather than investment banking. It's a stretch to even imagine this, but if energy suddenly became much more expensive and crop failures globally became the norm due to fungi, plant viruses and pests that can no longer be controlled and adverse weather patterns, this could very rapidly change the price of ag products to the benefit of local producers.

Another potential dynamic is the decline of global trade due to geopolitical issues and domestic politics, i.e. the desire to reshore "strategic industries" such as food production regardless of the higher costs such a trend might cause.

This is the niche I see permaculture supremely fitted for, and with the adverse current weather patterns going on in the Midwest, more likely to happen than it has been for quite some time.

Well, I bought a years worth of chicken wheat, I feed soaked grains.  I checked my stock of human grains and legumes and I will keep doing what I can on home grown food/garden.  I should get plenty of winter squash and potatoes and fruit to put by and year round greens.  

I got the does settled, lost the dam and kids last month,  at least 2 should kid next month

Otherwise, not much else I can do. -- just hold on Tight for whatever wild ride we get

Pearl Sutton wrote: I also expect to see a lot more deer hunters this fall, and the consequent damage to the deer population. This is going to resonate down some unexpected paths. I can guess some, I expect to be surprised by some. Nature is an interconnected web, and it's pattern is distorted by what is going on with the big farms to start with. No guesses how far the distortion will go. I expect years of fallout from this. You've probably heard the bit about reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone changed the flow of the rivers. How much more impact will this have?

Interesting data point on the unexpected impacts, and it's more due to the constant storms than the flooding on the ground. I have seen no baby birds. What I have seen is a lot of birds building new nests because the last ones (and the babies) were destroyed. So it's the last few days of May, and we have had zero baby birds. The cascade of weirdness begins. The bug population is booming already, and fewer birds are not going to slow them down as much.

So the bug populations are given a chance to bounce back, petroleum agriculture takes a breather because there's nothing to till, let alone spray, and slightly later summers still allow (hopefully) for some kind of bounceback of affected bird populations.

Oh, and the longer the water sits on the land, the more the aquifers get replenished.

And all we have to worry about is displacement, disruption, and potential death in the affected areas, and food shortages and higher prices for what is available.

I have another strategy, going forward: bring back wetlands.

What if, in addition to on-contour swales where applicable, flood plains were actually dammed locally, to convert those areas into year-round bodies of fresh water, complete with the associated food-producing biosphere and water-treating reed bed systems?

If low-lying areas were kept flooded, as opposed to producing long-lived puddles regularly, populations of fish, naturally-occurring or introduced, would keep mosquito populations at bay.

Aquifers would recharge faster, and slow-moving watercourses bordered by reed bed systems and willows and cottonwoods, for instance, would suck excess nutrients out of water systems, shade shallow riparian areas to lower overall temperatures and increase the water's oxygen-carrying capacity, and pump moisture into the air in arid situations.

Overflow swales in areas prone to heavy-metal production might be planted in fuel, fibre, or select fruiting perennials that could benefit from their presence while sequestering dangerous levels of pollutants in their structures.

In this way, flood plain that could only support minimal development and activity due to increased seasonal flood pressures could be made more productive passively, in a great diversity of ways, and the new interconnected bodies of water and channels could be used in more traditional ways, such as fishing and shipping, though hopefully with a more permacultural focus.

This whole situation is a result of a lack of understanding and foresight going back over a century, and a lack of willingness for those on the planning, or governance, level to do their jobs properly.

I truly feel for those directly affected, and for the rest of us, whose wallets will take the hit. But if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

-CK

I am putting this here because it seems as good a place as any.

Yesterday morning we had a freak weather event- raquetball sized hail, at the beginning of winter, in the middle of the night. I had never seen hail outside of afternoon summer storms-- and NEVER this size. Nobody I know, old or young, has ever seen anything like it.
We were lucky, our house was fine and my crops can be replaced (anything with a leaf bigger than my palm was shredded), my car was halfway out the carport and its hood was damaged, but it`s paid for and I don`t care about it having a pretty complexion. My husband`s business was heavily damaged because water got in after the roof was destroyed, but we'll figure it out.
So many people lost their roofs, a number of people driving during the storm had fatal accidents, could have been much worse. I can`t stop thinking about what would have happened if the hail had fallen as everyone was walking to work, to school, to the bus stop.
Meanwhile, the rain keeps on and the forecast is for rain through next wednesday. Bad news for people with plastic sheeting covering their roof.

I came across this update and would like to share it here:

"In the 18 states that grow most of the nation's corn, only 58% of the crop had been planted as of last week — a far cry from the 90% that would ordinarily be planted by that point. In states that grow nearly all of the soybeans, less than half of the normal crop had been planted. "

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-midwestern-farmers-floods-china-20190530-story,amp.html

(CNN)There's never been a wetter 12 months than the period that recently ended, reported the National Weather Service, which has been keeping such records for 124 years.

CNN: "The continental US just had the wettest 12 months in the 124 years on record"

I'm replanting things for the third time today. Cold, drown, and fungus keep taking them out.

Harvested some peas & spinach yesterday. Plus had some space from failed potatoes. Planted the last of several types of beans, corn, & watermelons in those areas today. Ironically, we need some rain.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, we're in drought, Sydney is on water restrictions, and the dams that supply many rural towns are expected to be empty sometime next year.

USA, stop hogging all that water and send some our way!

For the Environment:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-02/fears-for-future-of-menindee-birds-as-drought-continues/11161210

For Farmers:

There's this, too:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/30/heat-wave-drought-wildfires-bake-southeast/1286350001/

I think that there is something about this year's events that are significant to the natural farming community, at least where I am. The narrative we had been told was that the Southwest and California would continue to suffer from drought, and the Pacific Northwest would get worse over time. We were told that the Southeast would get worse storms but stay wet, and that the Northeast and Midwest would be bastions of stability climate-wise. I think this year has really shaken people psychologically, because we're seeing that nowhere is going to truly be stable and dependable for largescale food production in the coming decades, though there's things we can do (using things like permaculture) to mitigate that to some degree

It's not even summer yet, and we're already having evacuations because of fires. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/wildfire-season-flares-up-fast-growing-blaze-causes-evacuations-in-grant-county/?utm_content=bufferb1cf3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=owned_buffer_f_m&fbclid=IwAR2uz80zr8NxsprhBjWWAjylflS4P2ATh1dTZflJFPWicjpRSZ73nhRdAEA

Several hundred residents of Grant County were advised to evacuate Tuesday because of a fast-moving wildfire that started late Monday evening and grew to more than 5,000 acres by noon the next day, according to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.

Whipped by wind and fueled with dry grass and sage, the fire on the east side of the Columbia River grew 1,000 acres in just a few hours early Tuesday, according to the sheriff’s office.

“This one is big,” said Derek Gregg, the chief deputy of emergency management for the Grant County Sheriff’s Office. “This is not the way you want to start out the fire season.”

....

“With snowpack under half of normal and a hot, dry summer ahead, we’re looking at another record-setting fire season,” said Hilary Franz, the state commissioner of public lands. “We had a wet winter that made grasses grow thick and tall. Now, a dry spring has turned these grasses into fuel for wildfires like we see today.”

I was going to pull a quote from this article, but there's just so many horrible things happenings, from record tornado, to destroyed fields, to people leaving refuge after refuge as more areas flood.

'So much land under so much water': extreme flooding is drowning parts of the midwest

Here's a quote, but it barely touches on the devestation:

The Mississippi has been in flood for 80 days with little sign of returning to normal anytime soon.

Across state after state, people say the same thing unprompted: they have never seen anything like it. Many can point to previous great floods but there is common agreement that it is rare to see so much water for so long across one state after another.

To compound the misery, about 270 tornadoes were recorded in May, including a record 13 straight days of twisters in the second half of the month.

Every one of Oklahoma’s 77 counties is under a state of emergency as the state is battered by some of the worst flooding in its history, tornadoes and powerful winds.

And, in other news, polar bears are starving and entering cities:

'Starving' Polar Bear Wanders Into Siberian Town

Officials said it was the first time a polar bear had been spotted in Norilsk in four decades.

The incident is reminiscent of a similar occurrence earlier this year. In February, regional officials declared a state of emergency in Belushya Guba after more than 50 polar bears invaded the Siberian island settlement, causing a panic among its 2,000 residents. Officials described the situation at the time as unprecedented.

I got 1.78 inches of rain in one hour Monday morning, and it all went to the overfilled dams...

Something else that is relevant here is mold, everything is getting wet, and everything molding. I'm fighting with really bad health issues that are being REALLY complicated by the mold that just won't stop growing. I found a book I like about what to do with health issues caused by mold exposure, and I gave some to some medical people, others are getting copies of it. I'm the canary in the coal mine, I get sick before others do. We are all realizing they are going to be treating a lot of very sick people.  The book if anyone needs it: See this image Follow the Author Neil Nathan  Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness

Something that saddens me about the article Nicole linked:

“They were an older couple and apparently they had lived there for 40 or 50 years. We see them moving a U-Haul in two days before any of the rest of us knew what was going on,” he said.

Duvall, 43, and Gaines, 49, soon found out.    
...
The couple got about three hours’ notice to leave, from police who banged on the door. They filled a couple of suitcases and some small bags and fled. By then, the water was touching the back of their home.

“I grabbed my important papers,” said Gaines. “That was really it.”  

This is WHY I pay attention to things. I would have not only been the person with the Uhaul, I would have been trying to tell everyone else to be prepared to deal with this, one way or the other. I have been trying to tell my neighbors to plant more than just one tomato plant, the prices ARE going up, but they look at me like I'm an idiot. "We have had floods before!" I'm planting extra to share, but there's a limit to what I can do too. There's a term "Normalcy bias" that means people will assume everything will be fine, until their noses are rubbed in it, and I hate to see people refusing to look, I fear they will be blindsided like the folks in that article.

This is a mess.  :(

India is in dire straits

India is running out of water, fast

At least 21 cities in India, including capital New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting around 100 million people.

...

The city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu state is now virtually out of water, while it has been hitting temperatures over 41C (106F) for nine of the last 10 days; on June 10, it was 43C (109F). The average for June in the city is 37C and the record 43.3C.

Millions of people have been forced to rely on water from tank trucks in the southern Tamil Nadu, which had a 62 percent shortfall in monsoon rains last year.

....

Deficient rainfall during the 2017 northeast monsoon and a failed monsoon in 2018 have resulted in the depletion of groundwater levels and the near drying-up of major water bodies. Four major lakes around Chennai - Chembarambakkam, Poondi, Red Hills and Cholavaram - are almost dry.

Chennai water crisis in India leaves millions reliant on filthy wells and expensive trucked-in supply

New Delhi -- Millions of people in the South Indian city of Chennai, the country's sixth largest metropolis, are facing an acute water shortage as the main reservoirs have dried up after a poor monsoon season. Some schools in the city have cut working hours and dozens of hotels and some restaurants have reportedly shut down due to the shortage.

The city of more than 4.5 million has been left to rely on wells and water brought in by truck. Thousands of wells dug across the city are leading to a rapid drop in the ground water level, and raising even further the concerns of environmentalists.

New wells are being dug as deep as 1,000 feet. Much of the water they produce isn't even fit to drink

....

The report also said 40% of India's 1.34 billion people would have no access to drinking water by 2030. More than 600 million Indians are facing "acute water shortage" already, according to the report. .  

Pearl Sutton wrote:I got 1.78 inches of rain in one hour Monday morning, and it all went to the overfilled dams...

Something else that is relevant here is mold, everything is getting wet, and everything molding. I'm fighting with really bad health issues that are being REALLY complicated by the mold that just won't stop growing. I found a book I like about what to do with health issues caused by mold exposure, and I gave some to some medical people, others are getting copies of it. I'm the canary in the coal mine, I get sick before others do. We are all realizing they are going to be treating a lot of very sick people.  The book if anyone needs it: See this image Follow the Author Neil Nathan  Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness

Something that saddens me about the article Nicole linked:

“They were an older couple and apparently they had lived there for 40 or 50 years. We see them moving a U-Haul in two days before any of the rest of us knew what was going on,” he said.

Duvall, 43, and Gaines, 49, soon found out.    
...
The couple got about three hours’ notice to leave, from police who banged on the door. They filled a couple of suitcases and some small bags and fled. By then, the water was touching the back of their home.

“I grabbed my important papers,” said Gaines. “That was really it.”  

This is WHY I pay attention to things. I would have not only been the person with the Uhaul, I would have been trying to tell everyone else to be prepared to deal with this, one way or the other. I have been trying to tell my neighbors to plant more than just one tomato plant, the prices ARE going up, but they look at me like I'm an idiot. "We have had floods before!" I'm planting extra to share, but there's a limit to what I can do too. There's a term "Normalcy bias" that means people will assume everything will be fine, until their noses are rubbed in it, and I hate to see people refusing to look, I fear they will be blindsided like the folks in that article.

This is a mess.  :(

I have Lyme and also lots of trouble with mold, etc...  It rains ALOT here, when we arent having a drought year, and high water table.  While I have done many things to mitigate one of the things that helped was making my crawlspace under the house a "conditioned crawlspace" you can find descriptions of this on the web site Build it Solar.  SO before doing this the soil under my house was wet all winter due to my groundwater level in winter being basically zero, I get seasonal springs coming out all over in the garden too.  So I had a company come in and encapsulate the soil, it is covered with a polyethelyne(maybe I dont remember) tarp like material ( not PVC or anything that outgases which I would be allergic to) that goes up the foundation walls and all piers and is glued so no ground moisture can enter under the house.  I also ripped out a few ceilings years ago and still do not have drywall in the laundry room ceiling, which is unvented, so got rid of that mold. Fixed the bathroom venting.  Fixed the plumbing leaks.  Mold loves drywall, if you have mold rip it out.  You can fix the problem then put back up plywood instead to cover the wall or ceiling.  Anyway, if you need to brainstorm maybe I can help, maybe not, you can always Pm and get my number

Debi Baker: I'm currently in a rental, while we build a house that I designed to not mold. Tons of drainage, no crawlspace, no sheetrock, etc. The heavy rains this spring have both delayed construction starting, and made me very ill and it affects my IQ, making it harder to get the house going.

Nicole Alderman wrote:
Every one of Oklahoma’s 77 counties is under a state of emergency as the state is battered by some of the worst flooding in its history, tornadoes and powerful winds.

And in hyperlocal weather news, last night the county sized blue/purple/[I'm colorblind] spot modeling rainfall through Monday morning at 10:00AM showed 6.2 inches predicted in the moderately large town forty minutes away.  The center of the spot is a darker/heavier/worse color and is right over my house.  It's now twenty hours later and (a) the rain chances have diminished and (b) it ain't raining yet and (c) those models fail to come true far more often than they come true.  But seriously?

Pearl Sutton wrote:Debi Baker: I'm currently in a rental, while we build a house that I designed to not mold. Tons of drainage, no crawlspace, no sheetrock, etc. The heavy rains this spring have both delayed construction starting, and made me very ill and it affects my IQ, making it harder to get the house going.

So sorry about the delays !  yes, no crawlspace at all will get rid of that particular moisture problem ! And, yes, I have trouble thinking that comes and goes do to exposure to this or that or too much activity, so I get it, projects take a while.  Good luck.  Luckily my house was basically salvagable

Over THREE FEET of hail in Mexico, in the middle of summer. WHAT?! I didn't even know hail could come down that thick, let alone in summer in Mexico.

Freak Summer Hailstorm Hits Mexico's Guadalajara

"Hail more than a meter high, and then we wonder if climate change exists," Jalisco state Gov. Enrique Alfaro Ramírez wrote on Twitter. He added that authorities were working to help citizens whose homes were damaged.

People in Guadalajara, Mexico, woke up on Sunday to a thick blanket of ice over areas of their city, after a freak hailstorm that damaged houses and left cars partially buried.

This is particularly strange because it's the middle of summer. In the past month, temperatures most days have hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit or over.

Authorities say more than 450 homes were affected by the heavy hail, including some where the ice pushed through doors and windows, according to the local El Informador newspaper.

Guadalajara's mayor, Ismael del Toro, told the newspaper that 10 people had been treated for symptoms of hypothermia.

It's always freezing above 16,000 feet so in theory hail is possible almost anytime anywhere. Thunderstorms can get considerably bigger than that. Hail reaching the ground is very strange for that far south though. Guadalajara is on the edge of some mountains with lots of rock around. Plenty of opportunity for updrafts to let the ice form. Especially with thunderstorms in the area. I'm guessing they got a break with the storm moving past before it completely collapsed. Microbursts with ice = additional not fun. Another flood is bad enough. It's a big fairly modern city but there are large parts that are much less so. It could be really bad for them.

Manila is running out of water too, and many of India's cities are critically low, as mentioned

https://www.scmp.com/video/asia/3017131/millions-manila-experience-water-shortage-citys-main-reservoir-hits-critical-low

This link has updated information on the crisis in India:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-intl-hnk/index.html

Today (July 5, 2019) in the Midwest, we got more rain. The roads in Missouri are flooded all over, the Dept of Transportation map is a mess DOT map MO.  

The mosquitoes are out in force, I had to put a bug net on my bed so I can sleep. We have decent screens on the house, but it doesn't help much. I'm expecting a surge in mosquito-borne diseases. We are already seeing a surge in mold related illnesses.

The days it's not raining the heat index is high, at least one person has died of heatstroke in my area when his ATV got mud bogged down in his pasture, and he didn't manage to walk out.

The farmers are cutting hay as fast as they can, when they can, it's growing incredibly fast. Tractors stuck in the fields is a common sight. I have learned my tractor can at least sometimes pull my truck out of the mud.

I'm on my 5th planting of some things, the funguses and wilts are taking out plants as soon as they come up., if they don't drown first. The only produce I'm seeing in the grocery stores is from Mexico.

It IS still a mess.
Eyes open, no fear. Grow more food, y'all, it might matter a LOT.

And a short update, I don't know much yet, there's ergot running in the grasses and grains in the Midwest. All the rain is making it very happy. If you are in this area, I'd look it up, watch for  it. In your hay it will kill animals. I don't know yet how long it survives, if bales can be contaminated, or how to check. Anyone who knows more, chime in, or start a thread on it. I might start one...
edit:  Ergot is bad this year

I found these signs plastered all over the canned vegetables aisle at my local Walmart. A canned veggie shortage that Walmart thinks will persist for more than a month? I feel like we’ll be seeing a lot more signs like this, by and by.

How are things back there now?

I don't know about wallyworld but I saw fresh blueberries for $6 per 8 oz at local grocery store today. Most years they are about $2 I think. As far as I know blueberries aren't even grown in the places having the flooding problems. Not looking good.

Here in Ohio I have had 11-1/2 inches of rain in 3-1/2 weeks.  We had a strait line wind the other night that did this corn damage. My trees are not quite tall enough to slow the wind down yet.  I've been raising this line of corn for 13 years.  I think I may need to pick my seed from shorter stocks with more air roots with this kind of weather.  Its a good thing we harvest by hand.  I can't imagine what it would look like if I could have planted in April like we used to when I was a kid.  This was planted the last week of May in the mud.  We are getting asked by a few new market customers for more peppers and tomatoes because, their plants wilted from drowning.  Tough year here for sure.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we’ve been really lucky. It’s been a mild summer (the first in years) and my trees seem really grateful for the reprieve. Our corn and hot weather things aren’t doing much, but some people are getting lucky.

How are things looking in other parts of the country, especially the Midwest?

James Landreth wrote: small kitchen gardens will insulate them from the price pain.

Very few small kitchen gardens produce sufficient calories for the families that grow them.  Without sufficient calories, we starve.  

Tyler Ludens wrote:

James Landreth wrote: small kitchen gardens will insulate them from the price pain.

Very few small kitchen gardens produce sufficient calories for the families that grow them.  Without sufficient calories, we starve.  

What you say is true Tyler, but I think the point James was making applies more to crop shortages, rather than a complete absence of food. Suppose crop shortages caused food prices to go up 35%. My garden doesn't have to produce all of my food. If I produce enough food to offset that 35%, I'm no worse off than I was. That being said, I agree with you completely that growing enough calories to live on is much more difficult than some people seem to think. I don't grow anywhere near enough calories to survive on.  I hope to one day, but I'm not even close yet.

James Landreth wrote:Here in the Pacific Northwest we’ve been really lucky. It’s been a mild summer (the first in years) and my trees seem really grateful for the reprieve. Our corn and hot weather things aren’t doing much, but some people are getting lucky.

How are things looking in other parts of the country, especially the Midwest?

A huge problem here is the corn crop being so far behind. A primary industry here is dairy. That of course means cows, and that means thousands of acres of corn. The saying is "knee high by the fourth of July". Lots of the corn crop isn't knee high yet.