Food Insecurity

You hear a lot of stories on the news about the rising cost of food and how some people are starting to be severely impacted by the high prices.    Many are forced to do without a lot of items at the grocery store and many others are having to depend upon food banks to get by.

    Luckily, we have never been threatened by food insecurity, but nevertheless, it always makes me feel better after harvest in the fall, to have a bulk of potatoes stored in the crawl space under our house, “just in case”.  It is, I realize a false security, because one would have to be pretty desperate to eat nothing but potatoes day after day.  That said, I will still cling to any security I can muster.

    I have often thought about how vulnerable McBride is because of its remoteness and isolation.  The food in our two grocery stores has to be shipped hundreds of miles to get to us, and as a result it is already more expensive than food in large urban centers.

    There is also another vulnerability about food that we face.  There is only one highway that comes to McBride.  That highway goes through mountains and across deep river canyons.  If something were to happen to bridges either east or west of us, we would be totally shut off from the supply of food we depend upon, as well as all other manufactured items.  Fortunately the Robson Valley does have an agricultural base, so I guess in a pinch, local farmers could supply us for a while, and like I said, we do have that supply of potatoes under the house.

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