by Wally Richards
A renowned or maybe infamous statesman, Henry Kissinger is known for, among many other things, his quotes. One of them is:
‘”Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
Those who have been keeping up with what has been happening have seen on mainstream media a energy crisis in Europe with rising costs of fuel. We hear of the implementation of a proposed Cash-Less Society and food is not as abundant as previously due to shipping and supply chains.
An example: I have for several months now being trying to ship a container of Neem Granules and Powder from India. My shipping agents, Toll Global could not find a ship to transport it.
I was able to get my supplier in India to find a German shipping line that would take a container which after all this time will hopefully land in NZ in March.
I was told that most shipping lines do not want to come to Australia or NZ because they are made to sit offshore for long periods of time waiting for permission to come in and disembark their cargo. In the meantime they use up fuel and pay their sailors’ wages for doing nothing.
Now we see fertilisers including urea have either not been exported by China, Russia or from some other suppliers and what is being imported now takes months instead of weeks to get here.
On TV news we see that this is causing a problem for our truckers.
(An automotive grade of urea will be injected into the vehicles’ exhaust stream to “scrub” nitrogen oxide (NOx) from the diesel exhaust. NOx, a major air pollutant, contributes to smog, which causes asthma and respiratory and heart diseases.)
Now here is the country’s food problem in a nutshell. Commercial NZ growers of our vegetables have been using chemical fertilisers for many years and in doing so have killed the soil life in their soils. This makes the soil void of microbes, beneficial fungi and no earth worms.
To grow crops in dead soil is a bit like hydroponics, you keep feeding the plants chemical nutrients to make them grow (NPK fertilisers).
The plants are not only forced to grow, but to also grow quickly which means they do not obtain the nutritional quality plants obtain when grown naturally without being forced. The vegetables thus grown are stressed and weak which makes them targets for every pest and disease under the sun.
To ensure that the vegetables look perfect on the supermarket shelves they need constant spraying of poisonous chemicals to prevent damage from diseases and pests.
This not only ensures that the soil life is continuously suppressed, but also means you are eating produce that is chemically saturated and has little nutritional value or taste.
Food growers in NZ have a problem then, if they can’t get loads of chemical fertilisers to grow their produce you will not see much fresh vegetables on the shelves.
What fertiliser is obtained will be up to 300% more expensive and that has to be paid for by you the consumer along with all the other costs involved in living, taking great price hikes.
Any imported foodstuffs will also greatly increase in price due to shipping costs as well as manufacturing cost increases.
Here is your problem in regards to food security: we are now in the middle of February, 4 months till the shortest day. Every day now till then, there are shorter daylight hours. Plants need sun light to grow, the less hours of sun light the less growth.
Ideally hardy crops such as cabbages need to be planted in summer to mature in winter.
That means the best time to plant your winter crops was in December and January.
It is not too late to plant seedlings in February and even into March but that is it as any planted after that will only slowly grow in less day light hours and later in spring when the hours of light increase they will go to seed. I’ll give you an example I can plant Drunken Woman lettuce (my favorite) now as purchased seedlings and they will be ready to harvest outer leaves in about a month to 6 weeks.
But if I plant the same in say May they will hardly grow and in August go to seed; a waste of time other than used for the chickens to eat or dug under as a green crop to enhance the soil life.
So you need to plant seedlings now for your winter use.
They will grow during the diminishing light hours and reach near maturity going into winter when the growth is very slow but the cold temperatures
keeps the crop in Natures Refrigerator till you want to harvest for use.
Produce that you have ready now you need to harvest, freeze, pickle, dehydrate, bottle and store for the coming months.
Our grandparents knew this and they had larders full of preserved food and gardens full of mature greens to harvest fresh.
My mother used to say, ‘Better Safe than Sorry.’
If you have been using a lot of chemical fertilisers and watering your vegetable garden with chlorinated tap water then you really need to restore the soil life.
Here is a remedy plan I saw on the Internet:
From Dead Dirt to Healthy Soil in 7 Simple Steps
- Stop using NPK fertilizers. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (NPK) fertilizers are commonly used for trees, shrubs, and grass. …
- Stop using herbicides and chlorinated tap water…
- Leave the leaves. …
- Be mindful of disturbing the soil. …
- Use wood chips. …
- Use compost. …
- Use animal manures.
Happy Gardening..
Kissinger ………. not such a great “statesman”; his record is there for the scrutiny. It is suggested that he also had this to say, about eugenics and world population control – https://philosophers-stone.info/2020/03/28/henry-kissinger-in-a-speech-to-the-world-health-organization-council-on-eugenics-february-the-25th-2009/
I use an old but tested mix for my veggies. Shit and mulch very much as you pointed out at the end. It took a couple of seasons to get the ground good but happy days now. Food tastes better when you don’t use all the chemical stuff, but you have to share it with wildlife in all forms.
We have been planting our own vegetables for years now, Sheep and Horse manure and digging in our own home made compost consisting of grass clippings, Leaves and vegetable waste, Etc. Always sprinkle a thin covering of lime between mowing the lawns to sweeten the compost. Best tasting vegetables ever. We also grow our own Strawberries, Tree Tomatos’, Limes, Lemons, Potatoes’, Grapes, Tomato’s Etc.
Nah. who controls the media controls the people.
The council demands much increased rates if people have a little more than a path around their house anyway, so its cheaper to buy food.
But the present media control shows that the government doesn’t need to own tvnz and rnz – so it could flog them off to reduce some debt than cindy has run up.