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> Grow some of your own food so you can control what goes on it. This is laughable. Growing your own food is a cute hobby, but if it was actually adopted at sc

> Grow some of your own food so you can control what goes on it. This is laughable. Growing your own food is a cute hobby, but if it was actually adopted at scale, the resource, energy and land costs associated with food production would go up by somewhere between 10-100x. The current population of this planet could not and can not exist without modern agriculture.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Not everyone sees it that way. https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-gardens-could-be-so-revolutionary.html https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-ga... https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory-gardens-a-model-for-a-more-sustainable-food-future/2011/05/18/AGsc2MBH_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.973c9120be70 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory...
- kuzehanka 8y ago
  I don't think you have any grasp of the efficiency gains brought by modern agriculture and its scale. I actually grew up on an old school farm and it took the land area equivalent of an apartment complex to feed our one family all year round. Tending to it was almost a full time job for 6 of the 12 months of each year. This is how people have been living for hundreds of years, the math is pretty well understood. If you have anything better than a pair of op-eds to show that home gardening can be made 10-100x more efficient than it was a generation ago, I would love to see. My fruit+veg garden is a fun hobby and is quite large and healthy, but there is no way it could feed me for a year, never mind my family.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    What part of "Grow some of your own food" are you interpreting to mean "grow all of your own food"? I'm well aware that the efficiencies of modern agriculture has allowed us to have more than half the global population living in cities for the first time in human history. This not only become true within my own lifetime, it became true within the lifetimes of my children. None of which is really pertinent to the idea that there is value in having some food supplies outside the chain of industrial agriculture as a protective measure. Last I heard, American gardens provided about 10 percent of America food. I didn't bother to mention that earlier because I couldn't find a source. Ten percent of a nation's food is not insubstantial, even if is less efficient than industrial agriculture.
    - kuzehanka 8y ago
      I really doubt american home gardens are providing 10% of america's food. But I think a large home garden like mine could ostensibly provide 10% of my family's fruit/veg intake. It takes a nontrivial mount of work to maintain, it takes a lot of water and energy, and it takes ownership of a large piece of land, and I could have also subdivided the land and built a second house instead of that garden. Oh did I mention one fuckup with extreme weather pests or birds means you lose everything? Guess who was enjoying my first ever harvest of peaches? It wasn't me, it was the fucking cockatoos that raided it in less than an hour. All of those opportunity costs to reduce my intake of harmful chemicals by 10%? That's laughable. No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour. I've spent time on an email list where the owner was growing food for their ill spouse in order to have control over everything that went into that food. Not everyone does things for the same reasons you do them.
    - threatofrain 8y ago
      If you thought there were enough people who thought similarly, wouldn't the right move be to sponsor a farm together? Don't people already do things like that? IMO a community funded farm with a highly accessible interface and transparent operations would be amenable to a lot of health-concerned people. It makes a lot sense to me that like-minded individuals who don't like how how their food is handled should prefer a scalable method that doesn't break your back and takes advantage of modern efficiencies, and a way to handle excess supply so you're not wasteful. I can't see a vehicle going from house to house collecting tiny and disorganized surplus. Plus, I'd rather see what a community plot could do rather than vs small home plots good for only growing mint tea, if even that.
      - 8y ago
- piyush_soni 8y ago
  You realize that most people in the world don't have a garden of their own. Right?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Yes. I assume you know some city people grow herbs and veggies in their kitchen window or in a container on the patio. It also wasn't a suggestion that everyone on the planet must do this.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Not everyone sees it that way. https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-gardens-could-be-so-revolutionary.html https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-ga... https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory-gardens-a-model-for-a-more-sustainable-food-future/2011/05/18/AGsc2MBH_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.973c9120be70 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory...

kuzehanka 8y ago
I don't think you have any grasp of the efficiency gains brought by modern agriculture and its scale. I actually grew up on an old school farm and it took the land area equivalent of an apartment complex to feed our one family all year round. Tending to it was almost a full time job for 6 of the 12 months of each year. This is how people have been living for hundreds of years, the math is pretty well understood. If you have anything better than a pair of op-eds to show that home gardening can be made 10-100x more efficient than it was a generation ago, I would love to see. My fruit+veg garden is a fun hobby and is quite large and healthy, but there is no way it could feed me for a year, never mind my family.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  What part of "Grow some of your own food" are you interpreting to mean "grow all of your own food"? I'm well aware that the efficiencies of modern agriculture has allowed us to have more than half the global population living in cities for the first time in human history. This not only become true within my own lifetime, it became true within the lifetimes of my children. None of which is really pertinent to the idea that there is value in having some food supplies outside the chain of industrial agriculture as a protective measure. Last I heard, American gardens provided about 10 percent of America food. I didn't bother to mention that earlier because I couldn't find a source. Ten percent of a nation's food is not insubstantial, even if is less efficient than industrial agriculture.
  - kuzehanka 8y ago
    I really doubt american home gardens are providing 10% of america's food. But I think a large home garden like mine could ostensibly provide 10% of my family's fruit/veg intake. It takes a nontrivial mount of work to maintain, it takes a lot of water and energy, and it takes ownership of a large piece of land, and I could have also subdivided the land and built a second house instead of that garden. Oh did I mention one fuckup with extreme weather pests or birds means you lose everything? Guess who was enjoying my first ever harvest of peaches? It wasn't me, it was the fucking cockatoos that raided it in less than an hour. All of those opportunity costs to reduce my intake of harmful chemicals by 10%? That's laughable. No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour. I've spent time on an email list where the owner was growing food for their ill spouse in order to have control over everything that went into that food. Not everyone does things for the same reasons you do them.
  - threatofrain 8y ago
    If you thought there were enough people who thought similarly, wouldn't the right move be to sponsor a farm together? Don't people already do things like that? IMO a community funded farm with a highly accessible interface and transparent operations would be amenable to a lot of health-concerned people. It makes a lot sense to me that like-minded individuals who don't like how how their food is handled should prefer a scalable method that doesn't break your back and takes advantage of modern efficiencies, and a way to handle excess supply so you're not wasteful. I can't see a vehicle going from house to house collecting tiny and disorganized surplus. Plus, I'd rather see what a community plot could do rather than vs small home plots good for only growing mint tea, if even that.
    - 8y ago
piyush_soni 8y ago
You realize that most people in the world don't have a garden of their own. Right?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Yes. I assume you know some city people grow herbs and veggies in their kitchen window or in a container on the patio. It also wasn't a suggestion that everyone on the planet must do this.