You know things are interesting when the front page of the Wall Street Journal carries a story about people cutting up whole chickens.  Under a catchy headline “Consumers Are Giving Inflation The Bird—With A Whole Chicken,” the article explains how people are saving money buying whole chickens and cutting them up themselves in their own kitchens.

             I’ve been advocating this as a food-cost saving strategy for decades and now we’ve arrived, culturally, to where this advice finds listening ears.  This is merely one of probably many adaptations that people will make as the wheels fall off of western culture.

             Some 1 million flocks of backyard chickens came into being in 2020.  Also in 2020 Lehman’s sold 10 years’ worth of canning jar lids in 1 year.  These are amazing adjustments and they portend interesting days ahead.

             It all makes the Chinese proverb “plenty of food, many problems; no food, one problem” profoundly prescient.  The article even mentions growing backyard gardens.  We’ll know we’ve turned a corner when Home Owner’s Associations allow gardens.  And clotheslines.  And chickens.

             Although the article doesn’t say it, home butchery reduces more than cost; it reduces supply chain issues.  All those parts and pieces must be inventoried and packaged separately.  That’s cost, plastic, and warehousing logistics.  Keeping up with a whole chicken is a lot easier and cheaper than keeping up with it in 10 pieces; and a whole let less packaging.

             If cultural crisis creates this kind of response, then bring on the cultural crisis.  It’s due and we need it.  One additional point:  if you think this is a great response, just imagine if people depended on fake proteins from billion dollar laboratories owned by the kingpins at the World Economic Forum.  If liberating yourself from the parts and pieces chain sounds like a good idea, who would ever think becoming dependent on laboratories is a good idea?

             Food independence comes from more democratic participation in the food chain, not less.  If cutting out the fabricators is this exciting, imagine cutting out the abattoirs and even the growers.  Here’s to taking back our provenance.

             Do you know how to cut up a chicken and if so, how did you learn?