Ten year financial planning is what most financially successful people use to stay wealthy. Their meticulous planning affords their families financial freedom for generations. How many of us plan our food strategies out for our family? Just like most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, most also live biweekly to monthly on their food supply.
Every holy book references a dreadful day of famine to come. Present times have made those holy texts come to life. With farmers having to turn their crops over or use them as compost, to farmers wasting tons of milk, to the May frost; we can all agree that a plan needs to be hatched for the survival of the people. Farming is the foundation of most grocery stores.
While Third World countries have been plagued with food scarcity for a long time, food shortage is knocking on America’s door.
Many Americans may feel exempt from living in a famine, but the truth is poor and oppressed Americans have lived in nutritional famine for decades. Having access to hot Cheetos and Faygo soda isn’t food access. Having access to fried chicken spots, rib tips and fast food joints, yet no fresh produce is already famine. Food desserts plague poverty-stricken areas and poverty-stricken areas are the epicenters of COVID-19. Do you see the connection?
Most health gurus are coming into the knowledge of “intermittent fasting” and living a plant-based lifestyle. In the monumental book, “How to Eat to Live,” by The Honorable Elijah Muhammad he instructed his followers to eat earth-grown food and eat it only once a day, for good health. The book is a how-to guide to enjoying good health. His books were published in the ‘60s and the pages jump out more today than ever!
Could the concept he gave nearly 60 years ago, intermittent fasting, be the answer to preventing some famine in America and all over the world? The best thing we could all be doing at this moment is to start growing and preserving food. Successful people plan. Everyone needs to become a grower in their own right. Map out a food strategy for your family and your community. Countless YouTube videos could turn one into a gardening guru!
Many of our elders recount when the White House had a garden and almost every American household grew food for its family. COVID-19 appears to be pushing us back to that. As COVID-19 destroys the economy and the world, I would quicken us all to start growing food in the time of food scarcity, the best things to have stored up are those that provide nutrition.
The late, great, poet and hood scholar, Tupac said: “let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we think, and let’s change the way we treat each other.” COVID-19 appears to be doing just that! If we only had food grown from the earth, we could change the way we eat overnight!
La’Kiyah Muhammad is an urban farmer and teacher for Kheprw Institute and the garden coordinator for Kheprw’s Growin’ Good in the Hood Garden. She is an advocate for poor and oppressed people and a mother of three. Muhammad is the owner and operator of Earthly Clean Products.
