(Pencil on paper; Feb. 2005)

This is an illustration for an inexpensive home-cooked chili recipe.
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"The Wolf is at the Door" is an old saying that means, "hunger is never far away." For most of us born since WWII, that's been a very difficult concept to understand. It's well known that the U.S. produces over six times what it takes to feed the whole world. Part of the difficulty lies in getting that food to where it needs to be, before it spoils.

For the past 40 years, farmers and the harvesters they employ have had it especially rough. Between periods of unusually low rainfall, we've had floods and freezes. It's worth thinking about because the current troubles with the U.S. economy are the direct results of numerous complex farming disasters associated with erratic temperatures and lack of rainfall.

Presumably thinking that the changes would stop after just a few years, the U.S. government pays farmers subsidies for many crops. The farmers stay in business and prices can stay the same, preserving the illusion of a healthy economy for quite some time.

Now it's becoming apparent that the subsidies can't cover the needs of the farmers because the drought and erratic weather are a worldwide problem that isn't going away anytime soon.

According to UNESCO, the entire world is in a massive drought that's been going on since 1967. That marks the start of crop failures worldwide responsible for famine in many places, including Ethiopia. All of today's major armed conflicts began as natural breakdowns in the food supply of each region. (Famines lead to contraband, the resulting criminal infrastructures to sell it, breakdowns in the educational system, and oppressive governments vainly hoping to keep order amongst desperate hungry people.)

Since WWII, we've been paying farmers less and less for food. Somehow, that's got to change. Only fair compensation for all the growers can give them the money they need to invest in new strategies to cope with the massive changes in climate.

Currently, there's no mechanism in the market that can cause this to happen. Once again, the wolf is at the door.