Crackpot Gardens in The Local Community?

Severe flooding has devastated huge tracts of Queensland and Victoria, leading to the loss of lives, livelihoods and homes. Without doubt, this is a national tragedy, and it's going to affect us all.

Food shortages, people. Both long and short term. Oh, sure, there will be enough food, it'll just cost more. Considerably more. And there's nothing we can do but pay more. This time. But, if we change how we do things, we can ensure that next time Australia is hit by some kind of natural disaster, and it certainly will be, we can navigate out way through the mire of food shortages.

It's a simple idea. Every community has a school. Every school has huge amounts of wasted land. Vast expanses of grass that no one is allowed on. Every school should have a huge community garden, which the members of the community can work in (after appropriate background checks), and the produce is available to all members of the community.

The benefits to such a program would be many. School children and their parents would learn more about healthy eating, and as gardening can be hard work, they'd get plenty of exercise. Poorer members of the community get access to free fruit and vegetable produce. Older people get a chance to interact and participate in the community, letting the younger generations benefit from the experience of the older, and hopefully wiser, generations. People new to a community would have a place and a task to aid integration and new relationships in their new community.

Imagine if this had been in place in Brisbane. Many school gardens would have been lost to the floods, but others would have survived, and that food could be distributed to those in the worst affected areas, allowing them to eat, healthily even, without the population resorting to panic buying and price gouging.
The means of survival, food and clean water, have to be localized, so when services break down, as they inevitably do when the proverbial hits the fan, each community has a measure of self sufficiency, and the ability to lend a good Aussie hand to the communities around them that have been hit hardest.

Of course, this means that some will never contribute, but still have access to the produce. I don't have a problem with that. Everyone needs basic food and clean water, regardless of their individual contribution. We feed those in jail. We should feed everyone.Its about the ability to survive.

Please not the picture above, of a spectacularly well built, attractive young woman, is that not testament to the benefits of this simple plan? No? Well, it got you to read it.