#1 Green Priority – Food

The global food situation is getting ridiculous. Our planet has the capacity to feed us very well and meet all our nutritional needs with plenty to spare. One of the side effects of global warming is the expansion of available cropland in the northern latitudes. The excess CO2 in the atmosphere is a plus for plant growth, so the only reason there can be for a shortage of available and affordable food is mismanagement of resources.

Locally grown food requires less transportation costs and therefore if we shop for our produce from the local farmers we can save on food costs. If the farmers markets charge similar prices to large chain grocery stores, that transport their produce from around the world, then they will be punishing us for our support of them and for our green efforts.

If every Church, Temple, Mosque and Synagogue were to set up and sponsor community gardens then our seniors and low income families would not have to make the choice of sacrificing their nutritional health for the sake of transportation or heating costs. These organizations have a non-profit status, not because of their religious views but because of their pledge to serve the community and this would serve one of our greatest needs.

On a much larger scale, developing countries still need the help of the global community to provide them with the types of crops that would be sustainable and inexpensively abundant in their climate regions. We have the science and the management skills to work this out. The large populations in India and China can feed themselves if they continue to look for new approaches the food production. Every large building in an urban center could use its rooftop for a garden. Hydroponics and other methods of crop growth are underused around the world. The water from all these melting glaciers is going somewhere; why not create lakes that could provide drinking and irrigation water as well as a place to farm cold water fish. You can grow crops under the windmills on a wind farm and get duel use of the land.

We all need to work together at all levels of this global community to think through this and remove hunger as an issue around the world.