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Why growing and preparing your own food is the future
- zipdog 15y agoCSAs are more likely to be the future (Community Supported Agriculture). It combines pretty much all the benefits of growing the food yourself while still letting a farmer run a farm effectively. The general idea of CSA is that small to medium farms sell shares of their crop each season. That money funds their operation, and they produce a variable and generous amount of crop for each shareholder. The price is competitive and there's economies of scale, with the guarantee of knowing where and how the food is produced. Of course, its not for everyone, but its a better bet for most people who'd like to grow their own crops but don't have time/knowledge/space etc.
- nantes 15y agoAbsolutely, we just joined a CSA this year and love it. Not only does it bring you closer to your food, but also to your neighbors and community. For anyone in or around Lawrence, KS, Rolling Prairie [http://www.rollingprairie.net/ http://www.rollingprairie.net/] has been fantastic.
- bhousel 15y agoAbsolutely agree.. CSAs and farmers markets are great ways to support responsible agriculture. We joined a CSA last year, and I have nothing but great things to say about it. Anyone interested in eating better should look into it. http://www.localharvest.org http://www.localharvest.org is a good site to find a CSA near you. Note that CSAs usually take applications during the winter months. So you probably can't sign up now, but keep it in mind for next year.
- viggity 15y agoThe day that everyone joins a CSA is the day that I become a Malthusian. I believe we can easily feed everyone in the world despite record population growth, but it sure isn't going to happen without the technological advances of industrial agriculture.
- zipdog 15y agoIndustrial farming has its benefits, but one interesting data point is that the yield for small to medium farms is often higher than the super farms (ie of the US mid-West), around 1.5 to 2 times from the people I've spoken to. The ability to adjust the crop planting and fertilizer, etc by knowing the land is often diminished in the very large farms. That said, I could forsee better use of computer monitoring of conditions, etc in a large farm bringing their yield up considerably.
- nagoff 15y agoCompletely agree - I've 'semi-retired' from doing tech start-ups to start a CSA project and its been absolutely superb!
- ph0rque 15y ago10 lb/day in 100 ft^2 is ~36.5 lb/ft^2/year... sounds really high. Can you post more details?
- fr0sty 15y agoI'm also suspicious of these numbers... Can you really harvest 70lb/wk from a 10x10 plot? For how many weeks?
- wiredfool 15y agoI seriously doubt it. 70 lbs/week is about the order of magnitude of what one person would eat in a week, but people who eat mostly from their gardens normally are working more on the order of a couple thousand sf/person. You can jack the numbers up a lot with heavy irrigation/fertilization/perfect climate and lots of experience and work, like in some of the urban homesteading movement. But even the urban homesteaders are serious outliers.
- baremetal 15y agoI'm counting 'waste' leafy greens as well, not just the fruiting bodies of the plants. The chickens eat that stuff even if we don't. They eat everything even weeds. Not saying we get 10lbs of potatoes or x per day, that would indeed be amazing :)
- ph0rque 15y agoSo you're counting weeds as part of the 10 lbs/day, or all the harvested edible plants, part of which is not eaten? If the latter, then 36.5 lbs/ft^2/year gross harvest is still really amazing...
- orangecat 15y agoWe truly believe everyone will be living like this in 20 years. Also, everyone will build their homes from scratch and compile their own Linux kernels. Sorry, division of labor is a good thing.
- k7d 15y agoI think you are missing the point.
- billswift 15y agoRight. I am quite capable of growing my own fruits and vegetables (and meat for that matter); are they going to buy me the land to do it on? I strongly suspect (since they didn't show their math) that their ROI claims don't include either the cost of the land or opportunity costs.
- da_dude4242 15y agoSo who is held responsible when your spinach gives e coli? Farmers have insurance and adhere to regulations to prevent these types of situations.
- wccrawford 15y agoIf you're the only one eating it, then you are responsible for your own health. You take your chances. If you sell it to others, you now fall under the same regulations as regular farmers. Disclaimer: I am not a laywer, etc etc.
- kiiski 15y agoThey say they give that food to their employees and friends so they're not really saying everyone should grow their own food (just that people should eat locally/naturally grown food). Besides, you wouldn't realistically grow everything yourself anyway.
- grannyg00se 15y agoIf you choose to grow your spinach in a cattle ranch you will be responsible for your own problem. The best part is that since I'm growing my own spinach, your lack of judgement does not affect me. So I don't need anybody regulating you. I'm quite happy regulating myself, and letting you regulate yourself.
- hnsmurf 15y agoMost problems like that come from the industrialized food supply. You'd be pretty hard pressed to get e coli from spinach you grew yourself.
- crististm 15y ago20 years ago we ate local (east Europe) tomatoes that _had_ a taste. Now we eat big imported tomatoes and almost as hard as a rock - but sadly with no flavor whatsoever. I don't wonder any more why children don't want to eat vegetables as I don't want to eat them either. Only when I go to my grandparents in the countryside I can eat good vegetables - because they grow them themselves and and not from engineered seeds. The difference in taste is incredible.
- __mharrison__ 15y agoI don't care for store bought tomatoes either. The difference between a homegrown tomato and one that you buy in the store is huge. I really don't even think of them as the same fruit. Looking forward to my black krims, mr. stripeys and brandywines....
- Sukotto 15y agoI don't wonder any more why children don't want to eat vegetables As a counterpoint, my kids (6 and 4) find it easier to eat the "tasteless" veggies than the ones with real flavour. They don't like any kind of spice on their food either. Makes it really frustrating to find meals that the whole family can enjoy... Either we all have bland food (and the adults add spice after being served) or we have to cook the kid's food separately. My mother assures me that this is just sweet, sweet revenge for my own childhood misbehaviour :)
- dmm 15y agoWhen they get hungry enough they will eat.
- RobMcCullough 15y agoThis made me chuckle.
- Sukotto 15y agoThat's the sort of thing I used to say before I had kids. :D The reality is more complex. When they get hungry they also start to lose a lot of self control: running around and screaming; fighting; raiding the fridge; etc. And these are kids that are normally very well behaved. I suppose if I ruled the house with an iron fist I could enforce the "they'll eat it when they get hungry" paradigm. But doing that results in other (far less desirable) rebellious behaviour.
- rajpaul 15y agoi shake my head when i see stories like this. it tells me that mainstream culture has gotten so far from common senses when it comes to some things, like food. A vegetable garden has become an innovative idea. however, i appreciate people's efforts to correct the situation. i see immigrant homes (Chinese, Indian, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese), on the less desirable side of town with fantastic vegetable gardens. instead of planting decorative trees, people planted fruit producing trees. but when someone on the more desirable side of town makes a small little garden, they make the front page of the newspaper :(
- samlevine 15y agoI'm guessing the reason why they feel heathier after eating food they grew themselves is the placebo effect.
- roel_v 15y agoThis list doesn't make sense. For example the costs he's citing basically assume that the work you put into it costs nothing. If everybody growing their own food is so awesome, why did we move away from it centuries ago, and why are millions of people in developing countries trying desperately to get away from it?
- grannyg00se 15y agoActually he addresses the "work" issue: "People focus too much on the 'work' aspect of it, it should be looked at as more of a zen practice. Growing and preparing food is very zen and is a very karmic and devotional practice!" In this way, one could conclude that the work you put into it actually does cost nothing and in fact benefits you through it's karmic ROI.
- hencq 15y agoThat seems like an overly romantic way to look at it though. I'm sure I would probably derive some happiness from growing my own food; after all that's mostly why people tend to gardens/model railways/personal blogs/etc. However, if it's something that needs to be done to be able to actually eat, that work soon becomes just that: work.
- grannyg00se 15y agoWell, to be more serious about it, the actual work involved in producing food for a small number of people is not very significant. Once you have your setup built you can have a self-running hydroponic system in place that requires very little work. I grew peppers and tomatoes this way on a 2' by 5' work bench. The only work required during the growing period was occasional water resevoir filling. I would love to have a large multi-level greenhouse to work with. I suspect that the average backyard could supply enough food for three or four families with about 1hr per week invested in time.
- billswift 15y agoWhen you are actually depending on that food it is a lot of work and even more stress. You're talking about just playing at raising food,
- known 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth#World_population_and_agricultural_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_a...
- wiredfool 15y ago10 lbs/day/100sf? Seriously? Not in my climate. I get about 200lbs of potatoes/year out of ~1000 sf. That's one crop a year. I get a year's supply of garlic in another 100sf or so. Slugs ate my greens this year, so we're at 0 lbs/40sf so far, though there are some chard coming on. The chickens were doing well till spring, when they molted and went from ~.9egg/hen/day to about .4/hen/day, so the price per egg went from ~15c to ~30c. Had to build a greenhouse for the tomatoes after getting nearly none last year, so the first one's going to cost $150, but the second one will be cheap.
- simonsarris 15y agoIf you haven't given beer traps a try for slugs, they have work ed wonders for me.
- wiredfool 15y agoI have, but while it killed off a lot of slugs, I'm not sure that it actually protected the plants. We have a nearly infinite supply of slugs. And now, I have an almost 2 yr old, and I'm not really into him pouring sluggy beer all over himself.
- RobMcCullough 15y agoJust finished spending about $200 to get my garden going this year. I always look at it as an investment.
- warmfuzzykitten 15y agoMy eyes crossed at "Growing and preparing food is very zen and is a very karmic and devotional practice!"