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Thread: survival skills part 2 - growing your own veggies & herbs

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default survival skills part 2 - growing your own veggies & herbs

    this is an offshoot of the survival thread ...

    And to you future farmers of America, that sounds like fun! I can totally see starting a veggie/herb garden, although I guess I hadn't thought of it as a way to save cash. Is it really that much of a difference?
    Traditionally speaking over the past 20 years or so, the answer is 'probably not'. Not wanting to go 'off the reservation', but for a fact the commercial vegetable growers were able to keep vegetable prices at the grocery store pretty low ... to the point where the time and supplies necessary to grow your own garden vegetables didn't really save any money. Thus the major motivation for having your own vegetable garden was 'quality' ... i.e. knowing what pesticides were and were NOT used on your plants, planting specific varieties of vegetables for their nutritional value or taste rather than commercial growers planting specific varieties because they 'look good' in plastic wrap, or because they grow faster, or because they wilt less during their long journey from commercial harvest to the grocery store shelf. These differences also gave birth to the 'cottage industry' of natural foods / health foods ... and it has certainly been much less expensive to grow your own natural food veggies than to buy them.

    However, in the past couple of years, major changes have been taking place in regard to the commercial vegetable growers. Again not wanting to go 'off the reservation', but for a fact the crackdown on illegal alien labor has really increased labor costs for commercial growers. Additionally, the US gov't mandates re ethanol have vastly increased prices for agricultural commodities like fertilizer and pesticides - which have more than doubled in the past 2 years since the gov't mandate was enacted. And of course gasoline / diesel fuel costs for operating farm equipment have also increased.

    While grocery store prices have risen significantly in the past 2 years, those price increases were not sufficient to cover the rising operating costs of the commercial vegetable growers (who typically came close to losing money last year). This means that additional price increases will be necessary this year if the commercial growers are to survive financially. In addition, last year many commercial growers were not able to harvest and process their entire crop due to the scarcity of (illegal) farm labor. If the commercial growers are actually forced to pay minimum wage or higher to obtain sufficient farm labor this year, vegetable prices could skyrocket. In response to this farm labor risk, many commercial growers are also investing in new automatic harvesting equipment to reduce their farm labor requirements - but this new equipment also creates a big new monthly payment that the commercial growers must be able to cover. Add in water cost issues, rising property taxes etc. and you find the commercial vegetable growers beset by an unprecedented wave of rising 'production costs' that must be passed on to customers in the form of higher vegetable prices if the commercial growers are going to survive economically.

    Some of this upward price pressure has been held off by increased imports of vegetables from Asia and South America. However, this has not worked out all that well as transportation costs rise with the price of oil, and as rumblings of E-Coli tainted imported vegetable products attract the attention of the FDA and smart US consumers alike. And with world prices of corn / wheat etc. increasing even faster than vegetables as a result of ethanol mandates, it's totally possible that Asian and South American gov'ts could embargo the export of vegetables to mitigate rising food prices in their own countries. If this were to happen it could create out and out shortages of vegetables on US supermarket shelves in the coming year.

    So the bottom line is that, this year, it should be possible to save a significant amount of money by growing your own vegetables, and particularly so if you compare the pricing of natural foods vegetables rather than WalMart vegetables. But perhaps of equal importance will be the knowledge that the vegetables you grew yourself aren't tainted with tons of pesticides, E-Coli etc.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Circling back on topic, where growing your own vegetables is concerned, one of the biggest cost factors is the choice to purchase small plants to start your vegetable garden versus raising your own small plants from seeds. Seeds cost a few cents apiece (if not a fraction of a cent), whereas small plants grown in nursuries can cost $1 apiece or more. But if you're going to go the lowest cost route of purchasing seeds and then growing them to 'starter plant' size yourself in starter trays / window boxes so they'll be ready for planting time in April or May, you have to start in February or March.

    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 01-06-2008 at 03:46 AM.

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    Default Re: survival skills part 2 - growing your own veggies & herbs

    Don't forget to eat wild food too...



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