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You can trade the excess potatoes with other people in the apartment building or in the neighborhood. It builds a stronger local community than it would if ever

by hosh 6y ago

You can trade the excess potatoes with other people in the apartment building or in the neighborhood. It builds a stronger local community than it would if everyone were to buy from a grocery store. That is not the only thing you can plant on a balcony. Taking canopy layers into account increases the available amount you can grow. It is practical to raise quail for eggs or meat in an apartment. Mushrooms can be cultivated in a kitchen cabinet.

Loughla 6y ago
>It is practical to raise quail for eggs or meat in an apartment. Having raised quail, I just absolutely cannot fathom having them in an apartment. They're loud, they smell, and they really, really like flying around. If you raised quail in an apartment, I'm betting it would be in semi-inhumane small cage conditions. As someone who has not bought food at a grocery store (outside of citrus and other fruits we cannot grow locally due to climate and my absolute fear of scurvy) for the last 5 years, and someone who has cultivated this specific lifestyle for the last 20, I genuinely do not see a way for an apartment of folks to provide for themselves. Nor do I see a functional way for a city neighborhood to do so. It takes so much space just to feed our family of 3 for the year, and that's with trading goods that we cannot or do not want to raise ourselves. I agree that it builds a stronger local community and all that. But OP's premise is still accurate - this is an unrealistic expectation of people growing their own self-supporting food. The space just isn't there - in urban areas.
- hosh 6y ago
  The domesticated quail raised for food feels safer when they are in a confined space. Unlike chickens, it is more inhumane if you let them free range. You build the coop area so that it is short enough that they don’t jump when startled. I am not sure there is much to be done about them being loud. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/permaculture-for-the-future/id1494403834?i=1000471762358 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/permaculture-for-the-f... As far as going close to 100% growing your own food, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. I acknowledge that it is impractical for everyone to do with at this time. However, there are cases where people had to do this and found ways to do it: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farming-revolution-how-to-create-self-sufficient-cities/8660204.article https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm... It just might be that we won’t really try until we are forced to by some kind of collapse scenario or another.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    It is accurate that quail should need be free-range, yes. That's just a good way to lose all of your quail. But, they do need a flight pen, for humane husbandry. They naturally like to run around and peck things. They need space to do that. Anyone who justifies cage raised quail because they like confined space is just trying to justify a bad decision. >It just might be that we won’t really try until we are forced to by some kind of collapse scenario or another. This is 100% what I believe the case will be. We won't try anything, at scale, until forced to. The reason I live the way I do is to prepare for (what I believe to be) the inevitable change/shift in the world in the next 3-5 decades. That being said - mega-cities, and a majority of humans living in cities is a relatively new phenomena. I am not sure our current structure lends itself to 'local' living - that's my argument above. It takes a crap-load of space to feed a family.
    - roboben 6y ago
      I can't find the sources but until 60-70 years ago almost every houshold in NY had either chicken or rabbits.
    - hosh 6y ago
      I’m not knocking your experience and observation, but I wonder if there is some missing piece of information here. The woman who was interviewed on that podcast raised quail on both a farm and privately in her own space. She did try to let the quail free range first, and that was a disaster. She tried to make the coop area more open, and they became too nervous to lay. She eventually created a space that lets them feel safer from predators. She was also talking about a specific breed of domesticated quail. I don’t think she was trying to justify anything. Are we talking about the same things here? Maybe the missing information is just how big of a cage we are talking about. What are you envisioning when you say that? Are you saying that, if a cage is made to allow them to do that, it would still be too big for a typical sized apartment? I used to live somewhere where I can see wild quail running around the house every day. I remembered that they liked to hide in shrubs and overhanging trees. The mother might peak out and then run out from one cover to another, with a string of chicks following right a long. I rarely remember them flying out in the open.
- rvense 6y ago
  I've been interested in permaculture and sustainability for a while, and also self-sufficiency, or at least local food production. There's an old book called "Five acres and independence" which I think is a reference to the amount of land you need to sustain a family. I don't know anything about the subject, really, but I just jumped off that number. I'm not in America, but we can use it as an example to do calculation. It's probably approximate to a misleading degree, but since I'm a software developer with a degree in an unrelated field making internet comments, that doesn't put me off: According to Wikipedia, the US is 3,796,742 square miles. Wolfram Alpha says that's 2.43 billion acres. Using Wikipedia's stated 2019 estimate of 328,239,523 people, that's 7.5 acres per person. So under forty acres for each family of five, roughly. So if we say 5 acres is a good number, in the US you're at 8x the amount of land needed for everyone to live off the land at a small scale. Is 1/8th of the US even arable land? What about all the other stuff we'd need, like factories, mines, schools, the cold fusion powered mag-lev network etc.? Will that fit in the rest? Maybe the occasional forest would be nice? And then of course we need to consider that the US is no. 145 out of some 200 countries for population density. For the European Union, we arrive at 2.3 acres per person, so you'd need to distribute people evenly over roughly half of the land for each five-person family to have a five acre farm. For Africa, 5.8 acres per person. But maybe that starting number is too high or too low. I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment.
  - kyuudou 6y ago
    To add to this, folks like this family claim (or were when that video[1] was done) to harvest 6,000 lbs of food a year from a 1/10th of an acre and still have enough left over to sell to local chefs to the tune of about $20,000. The more I read about this the more I started doubting all the doom about sustainability. Granted, I think they were vegetarian (still had live birds for eggs) but.. I think the combination of pooling together ancient techniques with modern technology could provide better results than the "if GMO & Roundup are eliminated the WORLD WILL STARVE" type of propaganda that, the more I read up about things like Agent Orange and, well, propaganda, the more I want to hear from people like the Dervais kids (RIP Jules) and less from people who have never farmed before or maybe grew some herbs one year. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM
edoceo 6y ago
What excess potatoes? A 4sqm field of potatoes over a season can be finished in less than four weeks. What apartment has room for enough area to grow excess potatoes?
- roboben 6y ago
  We should start questioning why everyone is living in (mostly more expensive) apartments in urban areas with no garden :)
  - mixologic 6y ago
    Industrialization of food production has allowed the density and population of cities to grow. If you specialize in something other than food growing, and rely on the food distribution system to provide your food resources, living in an apartment is efficient (from an economic standpoint, not from an ecological one)
stronglikedan 6y ago
> You can trade the excess potatoes with other people in the apartment building or in the neighborhood. Honestly, that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, unfortunately. Just one person getting sick, even if it wasn't from your potato, could ruin a good time.
- liotier 6y ago
  Found the USian !
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here.
ivanche 6y ago
adriand literally wrote the opposite - grow for entire year, eat in a week.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by hosh 6y ago

Loughla 6y ago

>It is practical to raise quail for eggs or meat in an apartment. Having raised quail, I just absolutely cannot fathom having them in an apartment. They're loud, they smell, and they really, really like flying around. If you raised quail in an apartment, I'm betting it would be in semi-inhumane small cage conditions. As someone who has not bought food at a grocery store (outside of citrus and other fruits we cannot grow locally due to climate and my absolute fear of scurvy) for the last 5 years, and someone who has cultivated this specific lifestyle for the last 20, I genuinely do not see a way for an apartment of folks to provide for themselves. Nor do I see a functional way for a city neighborhood to do so. It takes so much space just to feed our family of 3 for the year, and that's with trading goods that we cannot or do not want to raise ourselves. I agree that it builds a stronger local community and all that. But OP's premise is still accurate - this is an unrealistic expectation of people growing their own self-supporting food. The space just isn't there - in urban areas.

hosh 6y ago
The domesticated quail raised for food feels safer when they are in a confined space. Unlike chickens, it is more inhumane if you let them free range. You build the coop area so that it is short enough that they don’t jump when startled. I am not sure there is much to be done about them being loud. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/permaculture-for-the-future/id1494403834?i=1000471762358 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/permaculture-for-the-f... As far as going close to 100% growing your own food, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. I acknowledge that it is impractical for everyone to do with at this time. However, there are cases where people had to do this and found ways to do it: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farming-revolution-how-to-create-self-sufficient-cities/8660204.article https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm... It just might be that we won’t really try until we are forced to by some kind of collapse scenario or another.
- Loughla 6y ago
  It is accurate that quail should need be free-range, yes. That's just a good way to lose all of your quail. But, they do need a flight pen, for humane husbandry. They naturally like to run around and peck things. They need space to do that. Anyone who justifies cage raised quail because they like confined space is just trying to justify a bad decision. >It just might be that we won’t really try until we are forced to by some kind of collapse scenario or another. This is 100% what I believe the case will be. We won't try anything, at scale, until forced to. The reason I live the way I do is to prepare for (what I believe to be) the inevitable change/shift in the world in the next 3-5 decades. That being said - mega-cities, and a majority of humans living in cities is a relatively new phenomena. I am not sure our current structure lends itself to 'local' living - that's my argument above. It takes a crap-load of space to feed a family.
  - roboben 6y ago
    I can't find the sources but until 60-70 years ago almost every houshold in NY had either chicken or rabbits.
  - hosh 6y ago
    I’m not knocking your experience and observation, but I wonder if there is some missing piece of information here. The woman who was interviewed on that podcast raised quail on both a farm and privately in her own space. She did try to let the quail free range first, and that was a disaster. She tried to make the coop area more open, and they became too nervous to lay. She eventually created a space that lets them feel safer from predators. She was also talking about a specific breed of domesticated quail. I don’t think she was trying to justify anything. Are we talking about the same things here? Maybe the missing information is just how big of a cage we are talking about. What are you envisioning when you say that? Are you saying that, if a cage is made to allow them to do that, it would still be too big for a typical sized apartment? I used to live somewhere where I can see wild quail running around the house every day. I remembered that they liked to hide in shrubs and overhanging trees. The mother might peak out and then run out from one cover to another, with a string of chicks following right a long. I rarely remember them flying out in the open.
rvense 6y ago
I've been interested in permaculture and sustainability for a while, and also self-sufficiency, or at least local food production. There's an old book called "Five acres and independence" which I think is a reference to the amount of land you need to sustain a family. I don't know anything about the subject, really, but I just jumped off that number. I'm not in America, but we can use it as an example to do calculation. It's probably approximate to a misleading degree, but since I'm a software developer with a degree in an unrelated field making internet comments, that doesn't put me off: According to Wikipedia, the US is 3,796,742 square miles. Wolfram Alpha says that's 2.43 billion acres. Using Wikipedia's stated 2019 estimate of 328,239,523 people, that's 7.5 acres per person. So under forty acres for each family of five, roughly. So if we say 5 acres is a good number, in the US you're at 8x the amount of land needed for everyone to live off the land at a small scale. Is 1/8th of the US even arable land? What about all the other stuff we'd need, like factories, mines, schools, the cold fusion powered mag-lev network etc.? Will that fit in the rest? Maybe the occasional forest would be nice? And then of course we need to consider that the US is no. 145 out of some 200 countries for population density. For the European Union, we arrive at 2.3 acres per person, so you'd need to distribute people evenly over roughly half of the land for each five-person family to have a five acre farm. For Africa, 5.8 acres per person. But maybe that starting number is too high or too low. I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment.
- kyuudou 6y ago
  To add to this, folks like this family claim (or were when that video[1] was done) to harvest 6,000 lbs of food a year from a 1/10th of an acre and still have enough left over to sell to local chefs to the tune of about $20,000. The more I read about this the more I started doubting all the doom about sustainability. Granted, I think they were vegetarian (still had live birds for eggs) but.. I think the combination of pooling together ancient techniques with modern technology could provide better results than the "if GMO & Roundup are eliminated the WORLD WILL STARVE" type of propaganda that, the more I read up about things like Agent Orange and, well, propaganda, the more I want to hear from people like the Dervais kids (RIP Jules) and less from people who have never farmed before or maybe grew some herbs one year. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM

edoceo 6y ago

What excess potatoes? A 4sqm field of potatoes over a season can be finished in less than four weeks. What apartment has room for enough area to grow excess potatoes?

roboben 6y ago
We should start questioning why everyone is living in (mostly more expensive) apartments in urban areas with no garden :)
- mixologic 6y ago
  Industrialization of food production has allowed the density and population of cities to grow. If you specialize in something other than food growing, and rely on the food distribution system to provide your food resources, living in an apartment is efficient (from an economic standpoint, not from an ecological one)

stronglikedan 6y ago

> You can trade the excess potatoes with other people in the apartment building or in the neighborhood. Honestly, that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, unfortunately. Just one person getting sick, even if it wasn't from your potato, could ruin a good time.

liotier 6y ago
Found the USian !
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here.

ivanche 6y ago

adriand literally wrote the opposite - grow for entire year, eat in a week.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]