I just read Art's post, "TV Alert - The Great Famine".

Interesting... in more ways than one.

Art posted that on 4-6.

On 4-7, I was driving home from Seattle and heard a brief bit on the radio news channel about some group that was soliciting clean plots of land that could be used for community gardens. I think they said they had found over 20, so far.

About 4-4, I received a letter from the USDA: "NASS [National Agricultural Statistics Service] is currently conducting a national survey to identify potential farming operations in the United States and to gather basic agricultural information." And they wanted to know if my single acre grew "...vegetables, has any fruit or nut trees, have cattle, horses, poultry, hogs, bees or aquaculture products..."

At first, I thought it was just a ploy to see if they could figure out a way to tax me a bit more. Then, after hearing the bit on the radio, and now seeing Art's post, it makes me wonder if something more ominous is afoot...

Nearly all our states are broke, the federal government is broke or close to it. Food prices are going up faster than the price of gas. I see more garden beds than even last year, more 6-cow, and 12-sheep suburban 'ranchers', more chickens. The media keeps emphasizing the rebounding of the Stock Market (easily manipulated, like it or not), but there are more empty houses and more vacant storefronts all the time, wherever I go on my job.

Is there a bigger, more worrisome picture developing here?

Our food production is highly centralized, in CA, the Midwest, eastern WA, etc. Virtually all of it is highly dependent on petroleum, for sowing, harvesting, processing and delivery.

Sue

We require information, collectivization is inevitable, resistance is futile. Only kidding, its probably more to do with S510 legislation, where if you produce, keep and use your own seeds, you need to be Federally licensed and have to keep strict records for inspection by Monsanto, oops I mean the USDA.

Or it could be that the USDA want to make some calculations on the nuclear fallout contamination i.e. a little hush hush sampling - no questions asked with plausible denialability.

It would certainly make me wonder if my Government starting asking what vegetables were being growing in my garden. Bizarre..

Perhaps the radio jock in FEMA region 6 could find out for you..

Sounds like a general survey done using a 'shotgun approach' -- i.e., any property owner whose address isn't in a registered town/city gets the standard form. They know it won't apply to everybody, but it often costs more to build specific and accurate lists than to do a mass mailing.

I ask all my students why they are atending my foraging classes. It used to be mainly vegans and raw-foodists. Now 95% of the people say they are afraid of what's coming...

-Blast

Yes, you caught on, come mid-summer the black helicopters will sweep across the country at midnight raiding small vegetable gardens and hauling your tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini of to an undisclosed location.

Of course now that they know that you know they will have to kill you. Your only hope is to flee and request refugee status in Quebec. You will safe there because no self respecting federal agent would stoop so low as to learn French, or be caught in Quebec after dark. Stay inside during daylight hours and you will be safe.

I'm immune to such threats because I don't grow vegetables, or much of anything because it all dies, and being old I have all the federal agents mother's phone numbers and know how to work an analog phone system.

LOL @ Art!

Now you've got me wondering. Lots of people are caught in the squeeze. Working but not making enough. The staus quo, at least around here, has turned into an economic slip.

Add in what's happening ing Japan, the environment, fossil fuels, and you may be right. There might something ominous on the horizon.

So that's what that helicopter is doing? LOL!

Does anyone know who Malthus was? In the late 18th. century he discovered that while the production of food grew arithmetically the population grew exponentially. So it's a given that at some point we will either experience famine or cut down the number of people in this world. It will not probably happen during our lifetime, but it will come, inevitably.

There are a couple of plausable reasons.

-Programs to help small and "hobby" farmers, like the university and state extention services, are potential targets for the budget axe. If they have a customer base, they are more likely to be around in three years.
-There are sections of the current administration that are big on what I would call victory gardens. This could be research to determine what percentage of the population is growing their own, possibly for another push to try to get things like chicks and seeds to be allowable items for food stamps. I can remember when I was kid there was debate here in VT if they should be allowed in small quantities.
-The NASS is the Department of Agriculture's census agency. They could just be doing what the law requires them to do.

But of course, as has been pointed out, we already know the real reason. The silent helos will be showing up to give you a bill to pay for your own produce after it has already been grabbed by illuminati agents to be sold to aliens from the planet Vega. After all, they are Vegans.

Malthus had a point, in his day. Really doesn't apply now, as agriculture has advanced and as fewer people need children to work on a farm, birthrates have declined. We are feeding more, with less.

I don't respond to surveys where I can be identified. On the census forms I responded with 2 people live in my house, both adults. The rest of the questions were not answered, nor did the MIB come to my door. The black helicopters know better, I know where they live. And they are not silent, just sound suppresed NOTAR MH or AH6's.

I don't currently have a garden. If I see the fecal matter is about to hit the rotating air device, I would get a few rabbits, some heirloom seed and some chickens. That and what I have stocked would keep us for a bit.