Click for more detail
This year, the most anticipated planting in my family’s garden is a watermelon called the “Golden Midget.”
It should be clear why. It looks delicious (see the inset picture).
Golden Midget This Watermelon was bred by Elwyn Meader and Albert Yeager in 1959
In addition, I like it because of its functional characteristics (and its hilarious name): it’s small (3 pounds fully grown), fast (70 days until it’s ripe), tasty, hardy, and easy to recognize as ripe (the fruit turns yellow). Also, I’m hoping to get two plantings of it this year.
NOTE: I was lucky to find the Golden Midget at the Seed Saver’s Exchange, a site dedicated to the propagation of heirloom vegetables. It’s well worth a visit, due to a solid selection, fair pricing, and fast service.
Real Choice
If you haven’t heard of a watermelon called the Golden Midget before, it’s not a surprise.
It’s one of the 1,200 heirloom varieties of watermelons we don’t often see, if at all. To get a visceral sense of what we are missing, take a look at the picture on the right (click if you want more detail).
This picture is of a list of the mouth-teasing watermelons being grown at the vegetable research extension at Washington State University.
All I can say is wow.
What choice. I feel terribly deprived.
Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. You’ll see pretty much the same thing with other vegetables. Lots and lots of variety. Each with a different taste, color, size, texture….
A huge amount of variety that we can’t buy at our supermarkets (and even farmer’s markets).
The ‘Soviet’ Supermarket
What is available? A single type of watermelon.
Mutare Zimbabwe supermarket. Less is more.
This draconian restriction of choice should conjure up an image of what a supermarket looked like in the now defunct Soviet Union.
Like our supermarkets, the early Soviet supermarket restricted the choices available.
Why did the Soviets put a restriction on choice? Because production and demand was centrally managed. A small number of bureaucratic decision makers found it was more efficient to plan, estimate, produce, ship, and stock fewer varieties than more.
Eventually, as we well know, this centrally managed production system broke down. When it did break down, the supermarkets didn’t offer just one choice per category, it offered no choice at all. The shelves were empty, like those today’s Zimbabwe (seen to the left).
Are we in the same situation as the Soviet’s today? The draconian restriction on choice we see is a good indicator we are.
- We have a centrally managed production system (see graphic inset). Few producers. Few suppliers. Even fewer retailers. Even our demand is centrally managed (although brand marketing creates the illusion of choice and desire).
Managed Demand
- Few alternatives. Supermarkets and box stores have killed off nearly all alternative retail outlets. Local producers have been squeezed out of existence (that’s changing rapidly as the old system breaks down).
- This bureaucratic system frozen in place by a brain-dead financial mono-culture and a vast panoply of government regulations, laws, and subsidies.
What’s the End Game?
Failure and opportunity through creative destruction.
As with all extremely centralized systems, particularly those that attempt to operate at a global scale, our centralized system will break down. When it does break down, the result will be very similar to what we’ve seen numerous times before: empty shelves.
As that happens, local production will step in to replace it, accelerating its demise. How fast depends on you.
As a first step, get resilient. Vote with your hands and start producing rather than merely consuming.
Give yourself the gift of choice and don’t get left behind. The rest will take care of itself.
Your in favor of real food abundance analyst,
John Robb
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The Seed Savers Exchange website isn’t working if you can call them… did you crash it with all the traffic? LOL!
Yikes! Might have. JR
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/contents/
The Hombrew Industrial Revolution talks a fair bit about supply-push distribution. The focus there is on manufacturing, but it’s relevant. I figure it’d be something up your ally too.
Try rareseeds.com they have great varieties. I got these melon seeds for something called a tiger melon that’s bright yellow and red on the outside. The radishes I grew from their seeds are the size of golf balls and fairly hot. Just harvested 2 lbs. of them.
Only thing, this heirloom baby red corn I got from them failed to grow 3 times. Might have been too cold/shady though.
Nice, thanks for the field report PP.
Three garden plots: Cary Pocket Garden, a plot a Whole Foods (mostly in the shade, a good experiment) and at home (full sunlight).
Nice article, and exactly right.
When I looked at the “Managed Demand” graphic, it was a little unnerving — until I looked more closely and realized that there is no “real” food contained in any of those company brands.
If you remember the first Batman movie, Michael Keaton figures out the Joker’s plan of causing illness by showing that combinations of products were causing the problems, and not anything in and of itself. I have often used that metaphor to describe to people the massive health problems that arise from choosing the “food” in that graphic vs. a more natural diet.
My family eats none of that junk, and our health is accordingly good.
My main concern is on the natural and organic side, because those companies are also being brought under a few companies. If you have access to a graphic that describes the consolidation taking place there, please let us know. The tentacles of these mega-corps are reaching aggressively into this market and I’m sure the same things will happen as in the graphic you shared.
Keep up the great work!
p.s. Got here from Simon Black’s Sovereign Man email this morning.
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Ed, If I find one, I’ll let you know. However, if you find high quality local sources, the chance it will be tarnished by an industrial process is lessened. Thanks much. JR
There’s a graphic of the major corporations who own organic brands available here: http://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/
You’re right, those tentacles are aggressive.
Always best to grow one’s own and/or purchase direct from local farmers!
Not sure about your geographical neck of the woods, but where I live in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, we are crammed full of farmers’ markets, mom ‘n pop grocery stores mostly owned and operated by Hispanic folks, small local family-owned chains of grocery stores, and big national chain grocery stores.
These stores stock a huge variety of the biggest, freshest fruits and vegetables (local and imported from elsewhere in U.S. or south of the border) you’ll ever see outside of your own garden, plus made-in-store breads and cakes (though some breads have just been baked, dough made elsewhere), local dairy products, local wines, fresh fish and meats.
It’s true that on the shelves we find canned and processed foods, but no one is forced to buy them. One problem in Oregon is that planners are trying to force us into apartments and transit-oriented development (read more apartments), in order to leave more land available for agriculture. Oregon farmers produce something like 300 different crops and livestock. I believe Calif is similar in variety?
Is your state or region not like this?
We also have garden stores where we can buy everything for creating the perfect vegetable and flower garden, including the world-famous Nichols Garden Nursery in Albany, Oregon. https://www.nicholsgardennursery.com/store/
Sounds great. It’s definitely not what is going on in most areas of the country. JR
John love your resilience work. Hope you will write about wild edibles as a means to achieve sustainable food security without the effort of cultivation. We are surrounded by delicious free food if we know what to look for. This morning I had a green smoothie, the green part being wild purslane, lambsquarter (wild spinach), wood sorrel, and amaranth (all prolific edible weeds) from my yard. Its there for the pickin.’ If you’re new to the subject, I recommend the book “Edible Wild Plants” by John Kallas to get started.
Thanks much. Charles, do you want to write up a 1.5 pager on that? Simple primer + sources to dive into? I’ll help you edit it. Sounds like a great topic, but (of course) it will be region specific.
I’ll see what I can come up with, John. Sounds like a fun project.
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