One piece of the puzzle to solving hunger is to have community gardens. A lot of us have gardens or balcony veggie pots.
My family used to have a quarter-acre garden. We threw out bushels of tomatoes and sometimes apples when we had excess. I harvested 150 potato plants mainly by myself. I enjoyed digging down and guessing how many potatoes were under each plant top. Gardeners know the potential.
I know of only 1 community garden in my rural area and its not close. There are tens of thousands of acres of farmland within 10 miles of me.
What's stopping us from having more community gardens ? Liability is the big one.
Unless I know and trust a would-be gardener on my hypothetical community garden, I'd have to make them sign a waiver of liability. But the waiver wouldn't prevent them from suing over some issue.
Insurance cost, attorney fees and possible liability damages are a business risk. One way or another, the risk is too high for me and other people I know at this time. In addition, we simply don't have the time to properly manage the membership of a garden even if the risk was low. There would have to be someone else to be the manager, which is another business risk.
There would have to be a change in the law for widespread adoption of community gardens, in my opinion.
As it is, nearly all the people that I trust to have to be a member of my hypothetical garden community in fact already have a garden. So, among friends, we share our extra foods. Once in a while, in a good year and with spare time, I've helped donate food to the local hospital or nursing home.
I can't speak for other community gardens. Please sound off in the comments or in your own diaries.
in view the availability of land, there's no excuse for community hunger in much of the Lower 48 of the United States.
Meanwhile, up in Alaska, its getting a bit severe. For most of Alaska, spring planting won't start until May or even June. Kudos to CNN for covering the story. CNN: "In rural Alaska...."