Food shock – and how to cope with it

Headline stories about inflation conceal the worst of the news rises. But ordinary shoppers know that staple food prices have been rising 10% year on year. We call it Food Shock.
In this major feature we help you deal with rising food prices. Take a look at the 14-part series in our self-sufficiency section – a month-by-month guide to growing your own food. Here is the first one.
If you want to grow some of the food you eat, but also want to minimize the hard work, then you need harvests that produce quickly, harvest repeatedly and require little of your time while they do it.
Mark Keenan spent four years researching the most cost-effective crops – the easiest to grow that would save you most money off your food bill. Here is how he saves up to $2000 per year from your food bill:

The vegetable patch has become a fashionable home improvement accessory, a makeover for the credit crunch era that should add value to your property in the long term.

With the cost of staples such as rice, bread, eggs and meat rising relentlessly, consumers are forced to opt for less expensive fruit and vegetables to make household budgets stack up. So the “home allotment” (its virtues are extolled by Jamie Oliver) is not only proof of your green credentials, its also a source of cheaper food.

But all that sowing, mulching, watering and reaping to grow your own may not be as much of a chore as you suppose, and fruit and veg simply tastes better if you eat it fresh from the ground. It’s all to do with the sugars: the natural sugars in a courgette, for example, will start turning to starch within minutes of it being cut from the vine, a process that will rob the courgettes of much of their beautiful sweet flavour.

Can anyone grow their own fruit and vegetables? The answer is yes. Even someone with a window box or small balcony can cultivate a wide variety of herbs, vegetables – or even fruit. Home allotments are easy to get going and now is the perfect time of year to start.