Higher food bills squeezing working families

Higher food bills squeezing working families
PRICES HIGH | Stores can see Americans are struggling

October 21, 2007
BY ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

NEW YORK -- THE CALCULUS OF LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK IN AMERICA IS GETTING HARDER.

What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven and Family Dollar.

Food pantries that serve the needy report severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking help.

While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.

Merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/612788,CST-NWS-stretch21.article

of the shrinking number that is left, that
are considered middleclass, are being squeezed
out and down.

As evidence by the recent down turn in the market, the uber wealthy are making less money. It is now time for the middle class to pay the bill for the wealthy elite.

I recommend that people do indeed start gardening, it doesn't matter how small an area you have. You can get an incredible amount of food out of a small plot of land. When you do garden, I recommend that you pay the extra few cents to get heirloom seeds, as by getting these plants you can save some of the seeds that you grow to plant the next year. A lot of modern varieties of veggies that you get are hybrids or GMOs whose seeds won't be fertile.

I would also recommend that people invest in canning and food preservation equipment. Look around flea markets, talk to your parents, and you can probably find a pressure cooker for canning that while old, is still fully functional and cheap. We got our cooker from the in laws, it's over fifty years old, but is solid and works great. You can also pick up dehydraters for cheap too in flea markets and such.

If you have a place that gets eight percent shade year 'round, you too can grow all sorts of mushrooms, including shiitake and oyster. The initial sporing of logs is a bit of work, but after that it's pretty easy(and tasty)

Put a fruit tree up in your yard if you can. Apples and pears generally start bearing at five years or so, though they don't have a real serious crop until ten years out.

Specialize a bit in something if you have the room. Grow an overabundance of peppers or whatever to trade with your friends and neighbors who have an overabundance of something else.

Make sure that you do drip irrigation to water your garden. Saves on water and those water bills. Soaker hoses and mulch are cheap.

Subsistence farming will return to America.