Food security refers to living without going hungry or having to worry about not getting enough to eat. Food security is achieved by concerning oneself with the security of her community to an extent at least equal to her concern for her own by storing purchased food and developing a garden for producing food at home. According to the Center on Hunger at Brandeis University, food insecurity with hunger rates increased 43% in the United States between 1999 and 2004. In the U.S. many states' food insecurity rates exceed 15% of the population with over 5% of the people in those states actually going hungry. Please visit The Center on Hunger and Poverty for more information on this. With the U.S. Congress cutting food stamps and other support to the poor at this very moment, there is no need to wait for the economic repercussions of the peaking out of oil production to be concerned.

Thinking about food security. Since the measure of food is the kilocalorie, this discussion will concern itself primarily with getting enough calories. To be sure, there is more to food than calories but if one does not have enough to eat, calories are the main thing that person is looking for. In times of scarcity, we will presume that whole foods rather than refined foods will be the main foods available and since whole foods, for the most part, contain all the elements of life we are not going to worry about details such as the specific mixes of vitamins, minerals, amino and fatty acids. Usually it is enough to eat a varied diet.

By thinking about broad categories of food and knowing their approximate energy content, we are spared the trouble of looking up the caloric value of every kind of food in nutritional tables.

How much food is enough? I'm going to define a day's subsistence ration as enough food to provide 1600 kilocalories. This may come up a little short as far as large, hard working men are concerned but it is sufficient for many women and more than adequate for children. In hard times, many have subsisted on fewer calories. This is a good number to work with since 1600 corresponds nicely with the English system of measure as practiced in the United States (16 ounces to the pint and that a pint of water weighs one pound). Let's list some quantities of the various classes of food that roughly contain 1600 kilocalories.

• Dry grains, beans, peas or flour (10% moisture, minimal fat content): 1 pint which equals 1 pound or 1 day's ration if eaten exclusively. These are the flagship foods for long term storage. A year's supply for 1 person would come out to be 350 or 400 pounds. Refined sugar fits into this category too.

• Fresh or cooked vegetables or fruit (90% moisture): 10 pounds (edible fraction) equals one pint or pound of dry vegetables which also equals 1 day's subsistence ration.

• Rendered fats and oils are twice as calorie dense as dry vegetables. One cup easily supplies 1600 kilocalories. Vegetable shortening will keep for several years at room temperature and oils can be stored in a freezer as long as electricity stays on most of the time and remains affordable.

Can hand-scale growers expect higher yields? I'm sorry to report that it's not realistic to expect yields much greater than average commercial yields even on the finest garden beds. Why's that? Crop suitability for any particular area often depends on climate even more than soil. Any given area produces no more than a few crops commercially; the crops that yield best in that area. Even considering the areas in which crops are grown commercially, some areas yield much more than others. Sugar beets, for example, grown in the Salinas Valley of California yield twice what they yield in the Central Valley—only an hour's drive away—even though they are grown commercially in both places. Over the generations farmers have fine-tuned production details to an extent that home and hand-scale niche growers could never hope to match. Large scale farmers are supported by an army of extension agents, entomologists, plant pathologists, plant breeders, gene splicers and fertilizer salesmen all working to increase yields. In many places commercial yields have doubled and doubled again since the 1950s—feats backyard gardeners are unlikely to match, especially if they are growing organically and with heirloom varieties.

In the literature of intensive beds it's widely stated that tight triangular spacing within the beds and the attendant lack for need of space for tractor tires to pass through can substantially increase yields, perhaps by 2 or 3 times. As wonderful as I know intensive beds are, I'm not able to buy into this idea. Here's why: As soon as transplants establish themselves their growth is geometric; that is, their mass will double every few days. An example of a geometric progression of numbers is 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. This will continue until the foliage closes over the soil and forms a canopy at which time the transplant's ability to expose itself to more sunshine is greatly reduced and growth will continue arithmetically. This is to say that additional mass is merely added rather than multiplied, as in a simple progression of numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. In accordance with the agricultural Law of Compensation, wider spacing is compensated for by each plant spreading to cover a greater soil surface area.

At this point let’s consider a riddle I’ve adapted from Dr. Donella Meadows' book, The Limits to Growth. Let’s say that that the growth of a newly planted bed doubles every week until the bed is fully covered. At first, each plant covers but a single square inch and a week later it covers two and on we go. One day our hand-scale farmer observes that her bed is half covered. How long will it take for the canopy to close? Hmmm...you’ve got it! One week. And that one week is simply the most time difference anyone could expect when comparing triangular spacing with square spacing and I would think the time to be even less than that. A single week between the time that geometric growth ends and arithmetic growth starts won’t make a dot’s worth of difference in yield. It’s perhaps more likely that close spacing will reduce yields by causing plants to compete unnecessarily for light and sustenance, and be more subject to disease and fall-down.

To argue that industrial agriculture leaves space unused for tractor tires to pass is at least as unsustainable as industrial agriculture itself. When the corn is little more than knee high, the canopy of foliage closes, cultivation stops and no more tractors go through until its harvest time. One needn’t leave her SUV to observe that.

Four strategies toward food security. Here's a simple plan based on a diet of dry grains, beans, peas, fresh vegetables and fruits. In a rough way, they can be taken up in order.

• First, the strategist buys a variety of grains, beans, peas and flour in fairly modest quantities. Potatoes, with a storage period of 12 to 20 weeks at 40 to 50F, can be included in a more limited way for the sake of having this flagship food in the food security mix. Grains and beans can be purchased from a bulk seller such as Azure Standard. One should not buy large quantities of unfamiliar foods until she has learned to use and enjoy them as suggested in the next strategy.

• Next, she starts cooking and using the foods. She develops simple preparation techniques and regularly serves them to the family. This may require some adjustments, particularly if the family has been habitually eating lots of meat and other fatty foods. If beans and grains are served regularly the family can learn to like them. At this point, larger quantities of regularly used varieties can be purchased, perhaps up to a year's supply: 350 to 400 pounds per person. Of the dry legumes, we enjoy whole green peas best which grow wonderfully when planted in the garden. We store our cache in the sacks they come in and subject them to periodic freezing to ensure that they stay dry and free of insect infestation.

• Then, if one is not already gardening, a backyard or community garden plot can be developed to supply the fresh vegetables and fruits needed to augment the grain and bean diet supplied by the stored foods. Potatoes can beneficially provide significant numbers of calories as well as onions. Here, in Madera, Swiss chard and beets are surefire year-around growers, and among our favorites. Nearly the entire beet plant can be eaten. Beet transplants (as opposed to seeds) will mature on garden beds in less than 60 days making them highly efficient as well as a complete food.

• Fourthly, the hand-scale farmer expands her crop repertoire to include the very grains and legumes she has in storage. Here the flagship crops are the legumes: peas and beans for drying; peas in the cool of the year, beans in the summer. Here, the food strategist is acquiring more skill than actual food; skills that may be needed if the flow of these combine harvested seeds is, for one reason or another, cut off. Meanwhile, the hand-scale grower is better off using her time for income producing purposes and buying her beans in a bag. A diesel-fueled combine can harvest and clean more grain in a minute than a hand-scale grower can clean in a day. Here, food security is provided by the confidence that comes from knowledge and experience, and having the land and tools to carry out the work. If society ever gets to the point that it cannot fuel combines or fuel grain transport to cities, many millions of us will have left this world.

This means that if a human being who can live on a pound of wheat a day decided he’d rather eat eggs, he would have to feed his hens 10 days ration of wheat in order to get one days ration of eggs. For the prudent food security strategist, this is not so much a good deal and it is for this reason that animal foods, at best, are only of incidental value in planning for possible hard times ahead.

My bantam chickens eat a lot for the eggs they produce. If allowed to run free they tear up the beds and roost in the shrubbery where they are easily found by The Fox, who, it seems, I worked a whole year to support before I got a little smarter and put the hens in continuous confinement. Now they need daily attention, and if not given formulated ration from the feed store, produce few eggs. A function they do perform well is to assist in rotating our cache of stored food—the dry grains and legumes discussed above—but these foods need cracking in a blender, a cup and a half at a time, before feeding. Have you ever seen a 70 year-old man chasing a rooster? In the time it takes to butcher and dress one skinny chicken, I can plant a whole 25 foot section of bed—a job I find far more pleasant and productive.

Some will say that animals need to be included in a food security system because they "make" fertilizer. This claim does not square with the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy which says, in effect, that there is no free lunch when it comes to plant nutrients. There is nothing in animal manure that is not in the food the animal eats. Indeed, its value is reduced by the nutrients the animal incorporates in its body and its eggs or milk.

Storing food in freezers. Freezers are a primary tool in my food storage program. I have two old chest types for a total of 45 cubic feet. I do not, however, use them to keep foods that require continuous freezing or even continuous refrigeration, and do not even keep both of them going all the time. I store dry beans, wheat, flour and vegetable shortening in a rodent proof outbuilding—a former 8' x 24' ice vending machine that is only cooled evaporatively in the summer. The sacks of food get moved into the freezers for a while when it starts to warm up. This kills any insect life that may have started and ensures that moisture content stays under ten percent. I do, however, keep brown rice, whole wheat flour and cooking oil continuously frozen because of the tendency of their oil content to go rancid. Electric outages, even for a week or more at a time, would not be a problem. Our freezers are kept outside but under cover, are rodent-tight and pretty much insect tight, even when not operating.

In selecting freezers for this purpose, the automatic defrost feature is best. In manual defrost freezers, ice accumulates on the inside of the box and if power goes off, the ice will melt and water will soak into the bags. When bags are rotated out of the freezer they need to be stacked tightly and wrapped either in plastic or old blankets until the food warms to air temperature. Otherwise, air moisture will condense on the bags and be absorbed which could shorten storage life.

A huge amount of information has been accumulated on internet on storing food and preparing grains and beans for the table and I shall not try to duplicate that. The same can be said for community food security. On this website I don’t want to wander far from our own experience and the science and philosophy that backs it up. Web searches on these topics will bring readers an abundance of information.

Good wishes on your moves toward greater security.