Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska What % of food consumed by Alaskans is imported

What percentage of food consumed by Alaskans is imported.....??? Yes, I know everyone on this forum, harvests 100% of their food off the land, sea, airborne, etc. But most do not.

Wife is gluten intolerant. We have to use almond flour and such. Most of the rest is from up here. I do like imported bacon from time to time. Alaskan beer is generally pretty good but their whiskey's do not compete with those from Kentucky.

What does Alaska grow that could be turned into whiskey?

Barley

sour mash whiskey ?
Barley grows great in the Mat Su Valley

Taters if y'all want good Vodka

Got a fk ton of Vodka ingredients growing at my shooting range property, (If I had the time & knew how to make it)
The moose hunt is on & I gotta dig the fkn things out before the frost, SOB I ain't got da time ....

Pics show a test dig on Aug 17th & they's a lot bigger and way more of 'em now, yeehaaw !

Last year I got over 80 buckets of spuds and gave away more than 60%, looks like I'm looking at more than 100 buckets this fall, gonna be lots of happy folks with a bunch of fresh spuds for free again & I'ma spend my winter cleaning dirt from muh fingernails as my consolation prize !

Thems German Butterball taters are the best tasting spud I ever had and normally are about $3.99 a lb in the grocery store

German Butterball


Pink Lady


Russian Red


Red Cherry


Banana

Pard I need to get some from you for potato seed.

Sure thing bro, err.. I mean pard ? I'll set some aside for ya, which ones ?

That’s a lot of spuds.

Nice job on the spuds, Swampy

Very nice taters!

Farmer friends here in Delta raise malting barley for a distillery in Fairbanks.

Pard a handful of the Russian reds and red cherry would be great. Thanks Pard!

I knew Alaska raised potatoes but I didn't know about the barley. We buy potatoes locally called Alaska Gold. Would be a shame to turn those fine potatoes into vodka. The Three Bears store in Wasilla had plenty of liquor when I was there and the Thrifty Liquor store in Fairbanks had a throng of patrons in the parking lot when we headed to the airport close to midnight.

As to the barley, is it a problem to keep the moose from eating it while its trying to grow?

I'm just guessing the regions of Alaska make a big difference in what grows. Alaska is a big [bleep] place..

Yeah, we’re kind of a big deal. 😉

That is gorgeous soil fella...you could feed the world with soil like that.

That is not to scale and cheating AK!

There are more than 20 degrees of latitude difference north to south across AK while there are less than 18 degrees from El Paso to the Medicine line. The Aleutians should cross well south of El Paso.

Overall, state wide, probably 95% or more of our food is imported. Taters, cabbage family, carrots, barley or oats, greens , raspberries, wild strain jam strawberries, onions all grow well up here, in areas suited.. Add passive and high tunnel greenhouses and there are a few more.

Weed grows well in interior and elsewhere too, I think, outdoors. That's apparently important to many.

22* here this morn- my "southern" strawberries are ripening no more, likely, even lately covered with plastic against frost. Not sure if I'll do them any more. Lotta work for little product, but they sure are good! I replant every year with imported 2 tear old plants. Dig the grass and stiff out, thin the jam strawberries ever 3 or 4 years. Those went crazy this year with virtually no care. Grass is taking over - so, next spring, again. Maybe. Hate to mess with success.

Blue berries, salmon berries and a few other "wilds" are available for all you can pick. Blueberries are pretty much statewide, salmon berries not so much.

My brother grew oats for hay, out of Fairbanks. He said the moose didn't do a lot of damage, just kept the same few areas grazed down all summer long.. They likes it young and tender. I never observed it personally, but then I never looked.

If transport goes down. 90% of our population is dead in a couple months. Maybe less in time.

A friend once said that if people up here want to farm for profit and effectiveness, we should just buy Iowa and send them there instead of wasting all the money spent on subsidizing them up here.