You must be wondering if the editor of your local newspaper has completely whacked out. Who but a nut would even suggest the thought in the above headline?

Stick with me.

What made me think of this topic were two items that arose last week. The first was about the scant use of the Royal City Community Garden. The second was about the Mattawa Area Food Bank.

The two aren't related.

But lightly-used community gardens and food banks, in general, could be. In our effort to erase hunger with food banks, we may be creating a future problem of people not being able to feed themselves when the need arises.

We are now at a point where probably 99 percent of the people depend on someone else to produce their food. Imagine the chaos if that supply were to be cut off by war or famine.

No, don't imagine. Just read the reports of the Carnival Cruise ship that went dead in the water for five days recently with 4,000 people aboard.

The efforts to feed people with food banks are noble. I would never suggest closing them.

But maybe they need an educational outreach. People should be encouraged to use their community gardens or any available small plots of land to grow food.

My brothers, sisters and I did that wherever we lived. In addition, we produced our own beef, pork, chicken and eggs and, sometimes, milk.

I went to school often with egg sandwiches. Sometimes they were fried, sometimes they were salad. Just about every breakfast featured eggs.

In other words, we fed ourselves.

In addition to growing stuff, we gleaned fields for leftover fruit and produce. We drank a lot of grape juice, ate lots of grape jam and butter and doused our pancakes with grape syrup.

Just about every lunch and dinner included potatoes, and mom made great soups that featured onions, carrots, cabbage and/or cauliflower.

From jars in our pantry we ate pears and peaches and strawberry and raspberry jellies. And we made cherry, pumpkin and apple pies.

The empanadas were out of this world.

When we saw a mound of snow in a corn field at winter time, it was gold. On December, January and February Sundays we brushed away that snow and harvested corn that was never picked by the machine. We used it to feed ourselves, the steers, the hogs and the chickens.

And we made our Christmas tamales.

My father was 88 the last year he was a full-time gardener. He died at 89 knowing his eight children would forever be able to eat. He had taught them how to feed themselves.

Yes, yes, applaud yourselves and your food banks. It is only right. But if you haven't done so already, add a program to encourage people to feed themselves.

It is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish every day. Some day you won't be there.