Eating Peat after economic crisis / collapse

[jaakkima]

Do I need to even write anything beyond naming the topic?

I think about this lots. A lot of running around is necessary to support eating in such particular ways in my life. When transportation becomes too expensive and people are relatively "grounded", stranded, more, what will we be able to do? I see a lot of veggie gardens in the city, but not much in the way of ground for a Peatopolis.

 

[arien]

I like architect Michael Reynolds' ideas, as seen in the documentary Garbage Warrior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNYFlcV9R1w

Ideally, you want to have an escape plan to a part of the world where the division of labour is not so intensified that crises elsewhere radically affect the standard of living. Additionally, owning some precious metals will protect your wealth from the collapse, while junior mining stocks will provide profitable leverage, as people flee fiat currencies.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

You could learn permaculture, maybe keeping chickens or quaill or other animals. You the point is to develop the skills before food becomes scarce, you won't have the room to mess up. Eating Peat is not that difficult if your health is good to begin with. It's pretty easy to grow large amounts of potatoes, some carrots and other things to support the diet using polyculture. Fruit trees, is given support by other plants, require almost no work. Keeping birds gives eggs, goats give milk, and both can mostly take care of themselves. If you build a good permaculture it does not take much time to run it and you can save and even make money with it.

If you live in the city, yes it is difficult. However, potatoes are acoording to Peat "almost a perfect food" and give a very large amount of calories per acre.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I think the closest mountain range is probably your best bet for what arien was talking about. You could easily own a cow and a couple chickens and grow your carrots.

 

[mt_dreams]

It would depend on the type of collapse. If it's economic, no matter how large, most governments have a contingency plan in place to feed the population until they can figure out the next move. If it's say an electronic white out of entire continents, or a first world country trying a revolution against its government, etc, then brace for chaos. Anyone living in a dessert like location can either expect to migrate as an entire population to the closest sustainable river, or hope that all the relatively nearby dam operators collectively flush the system.

Re owning cows, it's a sizable investment in both time & money, and you would have to be doing it before the collapse to make it work post collapse, so not possible for anyone living in a city ... which is most of us. As a whole, if a community starts eating locally after a disaster, I would expect to see goat herding to become common.

In the end though i will not care much what i eat if it's complete chaos. GMO soybean oil, GMO HFCS, insects, etc would become very doable during chaos. Beggars can't be choosers

 

[Such_Saturation]

There won't be any money, that is not an issue. Unless everyone flees to the mountains then you will be pretty much set.

 

[jyb]

Re owning cows, it's a sizable investment in both time & money, and you would have to be doing it before the collapse to make it work post collapse, so not possible for anyone living in a city ... which is most of us. As a whole, if a community starts eating locally after a disaster, I would expect to see goat herding to become common.

Why do you think cows are more difficult to raise? 1 cow may be heavier than 1 goat, but produces more milk and easier to keep fenced.

 

[mt_dreams]

Why do you think cows are more difficult to raise? 1 cow may be heavier than 1 goat, but produces more milk and easier to keep fenced.

If everything's status quo, then both animals will work great to give you milk, I was more referring to a potential collapse society, whatever that is.
If there was ever a collapse like situation, my belief that goats would be prefered is b/c they produce more milk to feed than a cow does, are easier to breed, can be bought or traded for around $100 compared to up to 2k for a cow, do not require much medical knowledge from the owner, easier to build nightime shelter for, easier to transport (think broken leg, etc), will eat pretty much any vegetation, are not as potentially dangerous as cows, and i would imagine people will want to eat all the cows. It's also easier to put a alpha goat who is usually exhausting to milk, towards a meat meal, than it would be for a disruptive cow. For security sake, it will be a lot less stressful to deal with one of your 8 or so goats dying, than it would be for your only cow to die. My response also came out of 'such saturation' mentioning mountain ranges, which is perfect for goat herding.

JYB ur right about the fencing issue, it's pretty much impossible to fence in a goat during the day, but I'm assuming a recently collapsed nation will probably not have many fences. In the end, if the natural terretory consists of mostly grass and is flat, then cows, will work well. If there's not as much grass, goats would be the better option.

I've also heard enough stories, and I'd much rather have to waste some time gathering a
goat who's chasing freedom, than to, say, trying to get a cow who wont budge to move in muddy grass, or have a cow who likes to take a piss while I milk it, or a cow which has random leg spasms. I live mostly in the north, and there's a lot of rockbed with not much natural grass, so some fine mini Toggenburg Goats or similar breed would fit the bill nicely.

 

[freal]

Thats ridiculous, forget about the goat and forget about any biblical collapse. There are a lot of countries in the world which are in that bad situation, some are not that far from US, in Central America. If you are in the rural area you cant just be alone on your farm land, if you own the land you gotta pay taxes, that means you have to sell produce. If not you are forced to be in slum in the city where theres crime, gangs, drugs,... If you are a small farmer you cant compete with big agra. If you are in the slums you cant afford land. You are left in a circle of misery. Add prostitituion, child labor, slave labor, no healthcare, no mimimum wage, the libertarian dream or better said nightmare.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Those Alaskan guys on the Discovery Channel have more than a cow and they do just fine.

 

[pboy]

cows would be a must...then grow root vegetables, herbs...and whatever fruit was able to be grown there. And id try to locate near a spring or clean stream, or find a way to capture rain

it would just be like how people used to live...in certain areas of the world people became extremely efficient at farming, and knowledge of the land, and quick trading across pretty large areas. They of course had generations of knowledge passed down that we don't, so there might be initial chaos but I think it would pan out eventually, and just look like a few hundred years ago. If any technology remained usable it would make it easier, though I think the lack of knowledge of the land around us is a huge issue, and also the fact that theres not much cultures or manners in America, its actually been taught that greed and marketing is good and patents and secret recipes and all that, so there would have to be a lot of learning how to operate as humans in a cultural way again...but I think that would naturally happen pretty quick

I don't think this will happen, and im not trippin at all, theres always a way, that day

 

[LucyL]

What about guinea pigs? They are pseudo-ruminants, like rabbits. Peat doesn't talk about eating them that I've ever heard, but they have to be better than chicken.