As Americans contemplate the food future and the recent bare supermarket shelves, the obvious question is this:  what farming system represents the most secure nutrition production model?

             What takes the least petroleum, chemicals, equipment, infrastructure?  In a post-apocalyptic world, what will survive the longest?  Right now we have no idea what December will look like.  Will we go into hyperinflation due to valueless money printing?  Will we collapse into depression?  Will the cities burn?  Will the police walk off the job?  Will starving hordes take to the streets?

             Can we get gas?  Can we get corn?  Can we get electricity?  Reminiscent of Y2K, these discussions pop up in everything from casual conversation to investment newsletters.  I'm not a conspiracy buff nor a pessimist.  But the longer and more serious the disturbances in our culture and our world, the longer the tail will be on this historic episode. 

             All authentic planners imagine the worst case scenario.  So just for fun, imagine the worst case scenario.  No electricity.  No water.  No gas.  Burning cities.  Hordes of hungry.  What then?

             Folks, it won't be fake meat.  It'll be pastured herbivores.  It won't even be chicken or pork.  It won't be mono-crops and chemical dependency or GMOs.  Roundup won't be the farmers' tool of choice.

             Along the coasts it'll be fish.  But in the interior, it'll be grass everything.  Perennials will rule the day:  orchards, bramble fruits, asparagus, strawberries.  Gardens will be self-kept seeds and all fertility will be compost when you can't buy chemical fertilizer and Lowe's is closed.

             I don't dwell on this, but I think it's good once in awhile to imagine a tough situation because it's in that imagination that we start seeing the critical elements of sustainability and survival.  On our farm, with our solar electric fence energizers, we can grow herbivores (cows, sheep, goats) without any petroleum or equipment.  That's comforting.

             Who will eat fake meat when the labs close down?