Food Is A Double National Security Issue

By Neenah Payne

America talks a lot about “Homeland Security” — but ignores the key role food plays in national security. Food is a national security issue in two ways that are not immediately obvious but which now threaten our survival as a nation in surprising new ways:

1 – QUANTITY: Americans have long associated food lines with the Soviet Union and the Great Depression. We are not used to empty grocery store shelves. However, starting in 2020, many Americans saw shortages and CNBC says 40% of Americans waiting in food lines for as long as 12 hours had never been food insecure before 2020.

The New York Times reports ‘Never Seen Anything Like It’: Cars Line Up for Miles at Food Banks:

“Millions are flooding a charitable system that was never intended to handle a nationwide crisis…. Manning, who has worked at the food bank for 16 years, including through Hurricane Katrina, said that he had never witnessed such a combination of need, scarcity and anxiety. “‘Crazy’ pretty much sums it up,” he said…. Adding to the problem, school closings across the country mean that many families who relied on free or subsidized school breakfasts and lunches to keep their children fed are facing even greater need.”

The CNN report Hundreds of Floridians line up for free groceries as growing demand, decreasing supply pinches food banks shows how dire the situation is now. Curtis Stone, The Urban Farmer, warns about more food shortages and provides tips on how to grow lots of food on small plots. See his book The Urban Farmer.

2 – QUALITY: The quality of our food dramatically affects our health which has radically declined. Since the introduction of Monsanto’s GMO (genetically modified) foods in the US in the 1990s, autoimmune diseases have exploded in children and adults here. The quality of our food is much more important than it may seem initially and is discussed further below. Russia is taking major steps to protect its people from the ravages of GMO foods.

Food Banks Struggle To Meet Unprecedented Demand

Thousands line up in cars in Texas to receive food before Thanksgiving shows that the lines were as far as the eye could see from the air in 2020.

‘Will we have enough food?:’ Millions of Americans are now unemployed and hungry. Food banks worry they can’t feed them reports:

“Images of the miles-long lines of cars waiting to get a small box of groceries the San Antonio Food Bank painted a picture of the devastating impact of the coronavirus lockdowns that have put millions of Americans out of work — and have left them hungry. “These lines that are forming that are longer than I’ve ever seen in my life. I just have never seen this kind of demand,” Eric Cooper, the president of San Antonio Food Bank since 2001, told Business Insider. His food bank saw an unprecedented number of 10,000 hungry families waiting to get food during the last week of April. “The end of the crisis is not in sight, just like the end of the line of cars is not in sight,” he said…..

The San Antonio Food Bank serves 16 counties in Texas, Cooper said. Before the coronavirus swept the nation, the organizations served 60,000 people on average a week. Now, they’re serving 120,000 people a week, with as many as 10,000 families showing up to a single distribution. Cooper said some families have begun lining up 12 hours before the food bank distribution time to make sure they’re one of the lucky few to get a box of meat, produce, and more.

However, the San Antonio Food Bank is hardly the only organization struggling to keep up with the demand of the 22 million Americans who have been left unemployed. The pandemic has created a ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances that poses an unprecedented challenge for food banks  School closures and sky-rocketing unemployment due to quarantine and stay-at-home orders have left many families without money to pay the bills and for meals needed on the table…..

In Los Angeles, where more than 50% of the population is now unemployed, thousands of residents lined up outside of food banks. In New York, the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak, food banks are buckling under the weight of demand. Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks across the country and 60,000 partner food pantries, including the San Antonio Food Bank, found that 95% of its food banks reported an increase in demand for food assistance compared to last year, with an average increase of 70% since the pandemic. Feeding America estimates that they could see an additional 17.1 million people experiencing food insecurity if the virus continues to plague the country. Many of those who now wait in miles-long lines have never experienced food insecurity before.”

GMO Foods Threaten Our Fiscal and Physical Survival

When Dr. Zach Bush started his clinic in rural Virginia in 2010, he prescribed really healthy food for his patients. However, he discovered that their guts had been destroyed by Monsanto’s GMO crops. Dr. Bush realized that the food of today is not like the food of the 1970s. The nutrients are profoundly deficient and there are chemicals in the foods — herbicides, pesticides, plastics, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, etc. — that cause Leaky Gut and gluten intolerance.

FREE PDF: 10 Best Books To Survive Food Shortages & Famines

Dr. Bush discovered the glyphosate from Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer which was introduced in 1976. It’s the most effective weed killer that’s ever been developed because Roundup removes both the building blocks and the medicines in our foods.

In 1992, Roundup began to be sprayed on wheat and in 1996 on corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and then sugar beets and 30 other crops since then. That resulted in a chronic disease epidemic that will take down America. It’s not COVID or any infectious disease that is going to kill us. It is this chronic erosion of biology beneath our feet that threatens us with extinction within the next hundred years!

The introduction of Monsanto’s GMO foods in the 1990s caused the sudden decline in American health with surges in autism, cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and a host of degenerative diseases as shown in many graphs like the one below from Why I Tell My Patients To Avoid GMO Foods.

MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff Ph.D, a biologist with more than 170 peer-reviewed academic articles, warns that 50% of children will be autistic by 2032 — putting an unsustainable burden on the American healthcare system and economy.

Why Is The US So Committed To Destructive GMO Foods?

Dr. Zach Bush’s Urgent Prescription To Save America discusses Dr. Bush’s work with farmers in the Midwest to help them shift from chemical agriculture to Regenerative Agriculture which he says is urgent for the survival of America. Dr. Bush points out that we are in the Sixth Great Extinction now and human survival depends on the urgent restoration of our soils to provide the nutritious foods we need.

Dr. Bush says our reliance on GMO foods is causing our healthcare budget to bankrupt us. So, both America’s health and our financial and political survival depend on the health of our soil. He explains that converting to organic farming is not sufficient because most organic farmers in the US are forced to till the soil — which is just as destructive as GMO pesticides!

So, our survival depends now on a quick conversion to Regenerative Agriculture. Dr. Bush is working with farmers throughout the Midwest to facilitate that shift. When farmers switch to Regenerative Agriculture, their yields rise from $40 to $500-$900 per acre and they see improvements the first year! Dr. Bush partners with The Soil Health Academy which educates farmers on how to convert to Regenerative Agriculture. A million acres in the US have been regenerated. The goal now is to convert five million more. Dr. Bush created Farmer’s Footprint to help support farmers in the transition process.

The article points out:

“At least twenty-six other nations ban or heavily regulate GMO crops and foods. The US is alone in the industrialized world in so freely permitting their use and release into the environment…. Shipments of wheat, corn, and soy from the US have been rejected around the world repeatedly. Other nations recognize that there are unanswered questions about the safety of GMO foods.”

When Vermont, Connecticut, and Maine planned to label GMO foods in 2014, Congress passed “The Dark Act” to stop them from providing their citizens with the information to make informed choices. When California tried to label GMO foods in 2012, the companies below opposed the legislation.

Soil Health: Foundation of National Security

Food Independence & Planetary Evolution

“A triple board certified physician, master healer & consciousness, Zach Bush, MD is the founder and director of M Clinic, an integrative medicine center in Charlottesville, Virginia and simply put, one of the most compelling medical minds currently working to improve our understanding of human and environmental health.”

Dr. Bush connects food security to our financial and national security. He warns that because of growing  threats to our health, Americans are losing the ability to procreate: 1 in 3 men are sterile and 1 in 4 women are infertile. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says bees which along with other insects  pollinate almost 75% of our foods are on the brink now. That’s largely because of GMO pesticides. Dr. Bush points out that Einstein is quoted as saying humans will survive no more than four years after the bees are gone.

Dr. Bush ends on a very positive note by showing that this crisis is an opportunity to become enlightened about our connection to Nature and transform our civilization.

Dr. Bush says about the free film below Farmer’s Footprint: A Path To Soil Health and Food Independence:

“This film features the trials, learnings and victories of the four generation Breitkreutz family from Stoney Creek Farm transitioning from conventional farming to regenerative agriculture in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. Using conventional methods they saw their soils degrade and their input costs rise every year. Transitioning to regenerative practices has helped their row cropping operation and significantly reduced the input cost for their cattle. This film tells the story of how they did it.”

Russia Is Going Fully Organic by 2025

Russia is addressing the quality of its food by going fully organic by 2025 — far exceeding the US in food security in terms of food quality.

Putin wants Russia to be an Organic Agriculture Leader reported in 2015:

“Vladimir Putin declared in his annual parliamentary address this week that Russia should not only begin producing all of its own food but become a world leader in organic agriculture. You can watch the portion of his address about agriculture here….What he’s proposing is huge, though. Russia has close to 100 million acres of unfarmed land, and this isn’t barren tundra. It’s fertile, farmable land. Not only does Russia have all of this arable land, but the country banned GMO food production earlier this year. That means Russian farmers can cultivate any crops they want without worrying about GMO cross-contamination from neighboring fields.

“We are not only able to feed ourselves taking into account our lands, water resources,” Putin said in his address, “Russia is able to become the largest world supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which the Western producers have long lost, especially given the fact that demand for such products in the world market is steadily growing.” Wealthy westerners want organic, non-GMO food. Food that isn’t treated with the most toxic pesticides on the planet. And Russia is in a unique position to provide it. He wants the country to become self-sufficient in food production by 2020.”

Putin’s organic empire: How billionaires are remaking Russian agriculture pointed out in 2018:

“Russia last year joined dozens of nations in banning the commercial planting of genetically modified organisms and has since barred GMO imports — putting Putin at the vanguard of an increasingly vocal global movement.”

Russia’s Double Food Security: Quality and Quantity

It’s A Small (Farm) World: Organic Growers In Russia explains:

“LavkaLavka was founded by Boris Akimov in 2009 as an internet business that delivered farm products to urban dwellers…. In August, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin banned all imports of beef, pork, fish, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway for one year. Since then, Akimov’s business has skyrocketed as has the business of other small growers and producers.”

Russia has better food security than America because many Russians have homes and gardens outside cities. The story behind dachas, Russia’s storybook country cottages reports:

“Dachas are a place to temporarily escape urban life and reconnect with nature by growing your own food. According to the Moscow Times in 2019, it is estimated that nearly 60 million Russians own dachas (almost half the entire population). Most contemporary dachas are owned by middle- and upper-class Russians….People go to their dachas to escape the city on weekends and to spend holidays in the summer.”

Grow Your Own Organic Food Easily

What Big Ag Doesn’t Want You To Know: Small Farms Can Feed The World says, “Sustainable, local, organic food grown on small farms has a tremendous amount to offer. Unlike chemical-intensive industrial-scale agriculture, it regenerates rural communities; it doesn’t pollute rivers and groundwater or create dead zones; it can save coral reefs; it doesn’t encroach on rainforests; it preserves soil and it can restore the climate.”

Americans turning to gardening and farming enhance food security in terms of quantity and quality.

Book Recommendations

1. Field Guide to Urban Gardening
2. Container Gardening Vegetables
3. Your Farm in the City
4. Grow Your Own — How To Be An Urban Farmer

Articles

1. Return To The Garden of EDEN Now
2. Are Victory Gardens Returning Now?
3. Create Food Security In Your Backyard
4. Growing Return To The Garden of Eden
5. Growing Power Shift — Power to The People
6. Why The Back To Land Movement Is Growing!
7. The GREATER Reset — Inspiring Vision For Humanity!
8. 13 Simple Ways to Eat Your Yard and Build Food Security 
9. How To Build Food Security For Your Family In Less Than 30 Days – Week 3
10. Home gardens: a promising approach to enhance household food security and wellbeing

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