Why You Should Look to Organic Gardening to Survive the Recession

According to an article on MSNBC, sales of fruit trees and vegetable seeds are skyrocketing. W. Atlee Burpee & Co. reports having sold double the amount of seeds that they did last year with the majority of their orders coming from new customers. Classes in gardening are overflowing with novices looking to earn their green thumbs.

Most people in America realize that even if the economy gets better, the price of gas, food and housing will remain right around their current levels. This is because corporate greed clouds the minds of the majority of the corporation’s leaders and corporate responsibility has become nothing more than a tag line. Case in point, the top oil executives were pulled into a meeting with the Judiciary Committee to explain why it is that people were struggling to fill their cars with fuel while they (the oil barons) were raking in record profits quarter after quarter. The oil executives decided to blame the law of supply and demand and offered no solution to the problem of high gas prices.

Add to that the increasing concern over our poisoned food supply. It has been long established that farmers are growing genetically engineered crops but what is not well known is that FDA has approved of the sale of cloned meat and milk which will soon find its way into a grocery store near you. Farmers are claiming that lack of consistent quality in the animals that has fueled this quest of governmental approval to sell cloned meat. However, I think it has more to do the bottom line than the line at the butcher’s block.

As awareness over the state of our food supply increases and the economy worsens, more and more people will turn to organic gardening as the means to keep the food budget in line as well as ensure that they and their family are eating safe and healthy foods. And others will take organic gardening to the extreme by packing up their bags and trading their city lives to becoming full-fledged homesteaders.

Homesteading is the act of creating a sustainable, self-sufficient life by living off the land. Homesteaders grow their own food, raise their own livestock and even use wood, sun and wind energy. They do this as a means to insulate themselves from the ups and downs of society at large which is something that more and more people will be looking into as the country continues to take a turn for the worst.