City Frozen, people not moved

A little more than two years ago, the lights went out and the shelves drew bare. Ice covered the city and most of 250,000 people were left shut in, cold and eventually hungry, many for weeks.

The big box supermarkets which supplied our food line had no way to communicate orders with their international food sources, and trips to the grocer became fruitless. The residents of Springfield could no longer feed themselves. Eventually, the power came back, orders were processed, and it all went back to status quo. Nobody would remember and the markets exhaled.

Just 100 years ago, Springfield lived in the center of what was known as the continent’s bread basket. The community thrived with a variety of crops, neighbors shared resources and the local economy was prosperous. In less than a century, Springfield deprived its resources to the point that it took just three days to go hungry.

The dirt at your feet might seem insignificant, but it holds the ability to sustain life, check that. It used to be able to sustain life. In the midwest, the humus level (the amount of nutrients absorbed in the soil) was beyond 13% in the early 20th Century. That number has dipped below 1% … that’s one percent. If that number is less than 3, it’s unable to sustain life. Why do you think it takes so much Miracle Grow for your ornamental lawn to sprout?

Discovery Group and the Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance have been tirelessly heading the brigade to wake us up. More than 3,500 gardens went up this spring, which is a great start (insert riotous golf clap). On Sunday, a group of inspired citizens gathered at the Library Center to share ideas and receive a tutorial on the notion of Permaculture (or Permanent Culture) – a thoughtfully planned transition to take care of the Earth, take care of the people and share the surplus. In the model, everything is self-sustaining, initial hard work becomes easy maintenance, as the idea is to not waste energy (or anything else).

Speaking of wasting energy

Industrial agriculture burns 1/3 of the world’s oil – oil’s the reason for … well, everything in how we do things now – and it takes 10 calories of oil to create a single calorie of food in that system. Simply, the system isn’t working. Take 20 sq. feet in your back yard and plant some lettuce. Talk to the kind folks next door and have them drop in some tomatoes. Your buddy across the street can plant some carrots. Share the surplus, and nobody buys salad ingredients from the store again. Get the rest of the neighborhood involved, and a local butcher involved, and you don’t need a store at all. The flavor? Forget about it. You know how shrimp is better when you’re on the Gulf Coast? Same thing, it doesn’t get any fresher than never frozen.

Plus, remember that humus thing from before? The process puts organic material back into the soil and that number begins to improve.

It may not be time to panic, but that time isn’t far. We got a warning a couple years ago, but got distracted by not having any of those movin’ pictures on the TV, and nobody flinched.