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ZetaTalk: Growing Food
Note: written Nov 15, 1999.


Anyone who has a stock of food who does not find themselves at odds with the authorities will still be subject to theft from gangs or hungry neighbors. In fact, it is as dangerous to stock up and be traced as holding a hoard of food as it is for a rich man to walk with gold jewelry down a dark path known to harbor thieves in the bushes. It is almost a welcome sign, saying come take this from me. The word would go out that this person or that person has a stock of food. Windows will be broken and people will ccome in with bags over their heads so one doesn’t know who is taking the food stores away, and the person who has a lot of stock will find it has been stolen from them. So, in the end, hording is not a solution, even for those people who think they are clever and have very carefully hidden their food. People who are starving and frightened will aggressively attempt to find where the food has been buried.

It is much safer to be able to produce food on a regular basis. Those people who have seed, or who know how to and are growing algae in water, for instance, will find this cannot be readily taken or carried away. Growing plants, algae or fish, cannot be carted away as easily as grabbing a bag of rice or cans of food. Such food stuffs will spoil, is hard to catch, is wet, smelly, and takes time. Those who are frightened or those who would steal and rob are not inclined to spend the time to harvest. So somebody with algae in a fish tank or gardens in their basement will find that it is not as worthwhile for a thug or a hungry person to break into the basement to take a tomato as it is to break into a garage where someone has stored many sacks of flour or potatoes, something that is dry, compact, and easy to carry away.

In addition, the person who is growing their own food regularly will find that even should they be attacked by hungry people, that they will be able to recover. Even should their hydroponics beds be ripped out and run off with, with someone grabbing their carrots or tomatoes or cabbage or green peppers or the fish in the tanks, they will have baby fish on the side to restart their fish tanks and seed and to restart their gardens. The person who has just stored food cannot recover, and their food is usually gone. Therefore, we recommend the capability of growing food, in many and varied ways to where the cycle of life is at hand and a temporary disruption of a garden is not a devastation. These people will not be raided. It will be the hoards that will be raided. Therefore, we have encouraged growing seed and helping people learn to grow, and helping people understand the simple things about them with which they can feed themselves, such as insects and the foods found in nature, the minimum that they need to survive. This kind of knowledge is more valuable than bags of potatoes or barrels of wheat in the garage, because knowledge cannot be taken from a person, and it is therefore more valuable.

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