How to Solve Four of Americas Big Problems

1) Hunger
2) Homelessness
3) Unemployment
4) Energy

(1) Hunger

This one is simple. Grow and raise more food. Now I know you all just chucked in your head and thought some negative thought like, "Its just not that simple". But it is. The next time you go outside your home, whether it be for a drive or a walk, take a look around town. How many bushes are there on your street that are being watered daily or at least every other day? How much grass do you see? Not just at the homes, mind you, but at the store fronts also. If all of those decorative plants and grasses were replaced with food-producing plants, your town, our town, all towns could be producing most, if not all, of their own food.

Now we all know that the longer the food travels in some air-polluting big rig, and the longer it sits in some price-gouging store, the more the nutrients that keep us healthy are lost. Think about it this way. Most fruits and vegetables lose about 10% of their nutrients each day. So if it takes seven days for them to get to the store (and the normal amount of time is longer), and then let’s say it takes three days before you buy them from the store. By then you may as well be eating your cat’s litter box, for it has more nutritional value than the fruit you just ate.

So to stay healthy and just to not be hungry, grow food locally, buy local food, and eat local food. If people start growing food at home, the new techniques of hydroponics, aquaponics, and vertical gardening will not only allow each home or urban farm to produce enough food for its members, but each will have excess to trade for products they are not producing themselves.

So far we have covered food in the towns, but to fix this large of a problem, and other problems we are facing, we must think bigger. Every time you leave your town and get on the highway, you drive past endless opportunities to grow more food along the side of the road. There is also room in the grass-covered center dividers of many highways. We the taxpayers are already paying someone to come and mow it down. Would it not be wonderful to see endless rows of food instead of useless grass? Now you may be thinking, “But who is going to work theses crops alongside of the high way?”. Well the answer to that brings me to tomorrows topic, which is homelessness.