Preppers, Foraging vs Farming
Kevin Felts 05.04.17
There is a thread on the forum that is discussing foraging vs farming. When we apply history to prepping, we see that modern society is based on agriculture. Without a reliable food source, modern society can not function, much less exist.
It was only after agriculture was developed that people were able to live in one place for an extended period of time. Before agriculture, foraging and hunting would deplete food resources within a given range. Once the food sources in an area were depleted, our ancestors would pack up and move, or they would follow the herds.
Why is this important?
In the Prepping community there is this idea of bugging out to the wilderness and living on the land.
Foraging vs Farming
Foraging is surviving.
Farming is thriving.
When humanity is faced with an extinction level event, (nuclear war or viral plague), do you want to survive, or do you want to thrive?
It is not a matter of if, but when humanity faces an extinction level event. People will be foraging, fishing, trapping, and hunting. Wild food resources will be depleted.
During the Great Depression, deer and wild turkey were hunted to extinction in various parts of the nation. When Hernando de Soto traveled through Texas in 1541, he noted there were flocks of wild Turkeys a mile long. By the 1930s, the east Texas wild turkey was extinct. Populations had to be reestablished by importing wild turkeys from other parts of the nation
During the Great Mortality (Black Death) of 1348-1350, starving people ate cats, dogs, and sometimes each other* (The Black Death, by Johannes Nohl, page 165).
Yet, preppers think they will be able to sustain themselves in a wilderness?
Food After a Collapse
After a collapse of society, foraging will play an important role. However, to rely entirely on foraging and hunting would be foolhardy.
Society can not be built on foraging.
When setters arrived in the United States, what did they bring with them? A book on foraging? Or, did they bring seeds, fruit trees, chickens, cows, goats, horses, and pigs?
Settlers brought what they needed to establish a functioning society. We should follow their lead.
