You must log in or register to comment.
Some stuff you can def grow yourself easily and not have to buy at the store. I don’t have to buy tomato’s all summer just from a few plants. Never buy herbs. But yeah sustenance farming I am not. Support local farmers!
Local farm has a dirt cheap produce subscription. $40 a week for locally grown produce!
That’s super expensive… 40 a week for just veggies? I spend 40 a week on all my groceries at most.
Average is $270 per week in the USA.
That’s cool, I wanted to point out that saying cheap and then a price point without reference isn’t really helpful because price varies so much.
Also, 270 per week per person!?!? What the fuck, that can’t be true, that’s more than what I extrapolated it would cost me in the European expensive countries when I visited and went to random grocery stores. As always, the american dream seems to be a scam fetish xD.
$270 includes everything like Keurig coffee pods, ground beef, and laundry detergent- not just vegetables.
That’s fair, but the comment above said that they “spend 40 a week on all my groceries at most.”
I spend 1/3rd of that on all of my groceries combined per month. If I was spending that much per week I would be over 1000$ in debt after a single month. Is the average person really that rich? And what food are they buying that they need to spend that much?
This is baffling to me as a poor person.I’m thinking that price is per household not person. I hope that’s the case. But I’m seriously impressed that you can swing $90/mo for food. That’s amazing.
no, food costs that much
American grocery store produce is really expensive now. $40 for a week of veggies would be a good deal in my area. Plus you’re supporting local agriculture.
Sure, but they didn’t specify they were american, did they?
Wasn’t saying you should have assumed, just corroborating. But also doesn’t the $ imply he’s American?
It’s not you who said I should assume, it was them who didn’t specify, implying we should asume, sorry if I made you think otherwise. Canadians and Australians afaik aso use dollars, just not USD.
In any case, this was quite the small complaint I had, so I’ll just drop it haha. Have a great day.
Haha gotcha you too!!
Where do you live? I’m in central Europe and hit the local currency equivalent of 60$ per person per week…
I live in a quite expensive Spanish area and we usually spend 50ish for 2 people’s worth of food. We do go out or order food on the weekend sometimes but being vegetarian we don’t spend more than 15€ on produce a week at most so 40 a week sounds a lot.
Surplusable farming is literally the basis on which all civilization is built
Like the whole point of the way things work for us now is that you don’t have to be a farmer or a hunter or a gatherer to be able to have access to a consistent source of food.
People romanticize about the idealic agrarian past but human civilization was literally invented over how back breakingly difficult that kind of work is for people who aren’t built for it.
Also the fact that one bad year in your tiny part of the world means you and everyone you know die slow agonizing deaths. Fun!
The Agricultural Revolution was a trap
Who the fuck prioritized efficiency over quality in their backyard garden?
My handmade solid maple and walnut furniture will never reach the yield or cost-effectiveness as IKEA. I guess I’ll just have to burn my shop down
You are missing the point.
It’s not about your shop. It’s about everyone making their own furniture… which doesn’t scale and isn’t feasible.
This is a totally specious argument. Everyone doesn’t have to make 100% of their own furniture any more than every one has to grow 100% of their food.
If I make two chairs it’s more efficient than 1 chair and I only need to spend maybe 70% more time than 1, not 100% I sell/barter one chair to my neighbor, who, because they have grown 6 tomato plants instead of 4 (at most 10% more of their labor), has excess tomatoes and gives me some in exchange.
Bro I think you are vastly overestimating the produce yield of a homegrown tomato plant let alone 6
Two tomato plants far exceeded what we needed. We sacrificed the remainder to the possums and birds.
The harvest was too much, presumably not too much for the entire year.
Right congratulations, you had 2 extra low iron and vitamin deficient mini tomatoes
I’m curious if you have numbers on that or you are just assuming low yields.
I happen to know exactly how much a tomato plant grows because over 20 years of commercial farming I kept records. It varies a lot by variety and season and even how we are responding to market needs but in general I tend to get about 800-1400 lbs per 200 ft row for indeterminate tomatoes over the season. A farmer I know at lower elevation gets a lot more but they have a longer season, better soil and, crucially, water a lot more than we do – my method cuts yield but increases quality. We use a 2 ft spacing for F1 varieties so that’s about 100 plants (more like 95, but whatevs) so let’s call it 8 pounds per plant = 48 lbs of tomatoes. Again, this is quite generalized and it’s often way more. I also happen to know that’s going to be on the very low end of home garden yields because people tell me this shit. Also, for cherry tomatoes you can get probably 60-70% more since they are very prolific.
Bro we talking about a home garden here, where do you have that much space? and above all, time to do all that in your home? Not even counting the knowledge needed, fertilizer and soil and the fact that 90% of people starting this will drop it at the second week, it is still overestimating how much they will harvest at the end.
I’m not your “bro”.
I’m using examples from commercial small-scale farms because that shows what’s possible when done correctly and by competent people, even at hand scale. I know many home gardeners who are extremely competent and frankly using the example of incompetent home gardeners or those who “drop it at the second week” compared to competent industrial farmers is completely disingenuous and wholly illogical.
the fact that 90% of people starting this will drop it at the second week,
[citation needed]
Sure pal
They might just be in a better climate than you! I had far more delicious sun-ripened tomatoes over the summer than I could eat. More than six plants to be fair, but most self-seeded anyway.
exactly.
i’ve been gardening for years. it’s a supplement. for like 1-2months i get nice produce that can feed a few people for a few weeks. but that’s it. i maybe produce 20lbs of produce in a year if i’m lucky. that’s over a dozen or two plants. i have a good sized garden of about 100 sq ft.
not to mention the weather any year could totally f you. one year we had three months of drought, so i got like 2lbs of tomatoes that year.
turns out i still buy like 95% of my produce from the grocery store… because it’s available year round and it’s hard to grow variety well unless you have multiple beds with differing soil and sun conditions.
most folks grow tomoatoes and cukes because they are easy and produce abundantly. but i am not going to live on tomatoes and cukes 365 days a year.
the space needed to grow squashes, berries, etc. is way way higher. you need a lot of land. and they are very low yield. a ten foot watermelon vine produces like maybe 1-2 melons per year and takes up 20 sq ft of garden space. a squash vine might produce 4-6 decent squash, etc. and a lot of veggies and plants are non complimentary, meaning they choke each other out if grown in proximity.
the only person i know who has a varied and big garden is an engineer who has spend five figures producing dozens of beds, water systems, and etc. and he still gets a shitty yield some years due to weather and he struggles constantly with rabbits, groundhogs stealing his crop. he has a whole trap and kill system for them even now. because the critters know he is the place to go for the tasty plants. most home gardening grow a few tomato plants and make some tomato sauce and throw a dinner party and that’s the extent of their home gardening.
it’s way more complex and difficult than some ‘hrr drr just bring back victory gardens’ nonsense. you’re average person isn’t going to be building a 1000sq ft veggie garden with fencing and dealing with all the part time job of labor and upkeep that it requires.
It scaled and was feasible before the industrialization of production.
I think you mean, you don’t want it to scale or be feasible.
Who the fuck prioritized efficiency over quality in their backyard garden?
The Billions of human beings who rely on agriculture to live.
I think the imperative phrase here is backyard garden. They aren’t referring to a 40 acre field of wheat and potatoes, they probably are thinking a 10’x10’ raised bed.
Edit: operative not imperative
Yes but both in the comments and the post I’m comparing low yield home gardens to large yield industrialized farming. If anybody is trying to derail the conversation away from the topic of the discussion then that is on them, not me.
I’d urge you to consider what “yield” is and means and how “yield” plays out over the whole length of the industrialized food chain.
The classic example from a producer’s perspective is that commodity level production has to be sorted and doesn’t get equal value for everything produced. So you may only get top dollar for 25-50% of what you grew and far less - possibly even zero - for the rest. Incredibly, it really is sometimes cost-effective to let the produce rot in the field if prices don’t support a profit.
Then farther down the chain you have increasing losses and waste. By some estimates that’s as much as nearly 40% of all food produced. See also here.
These factors only very rarely are brought up in these discussions in part because folks have very narrow conceptions of what “yield” means.
There is no alternative. None.
There is no alternative. None.
There are always alternatives.
What exactly does homegrown produce mean for you?
Fun fact: IDK about like a backyard vegetable garden, but small family-sized farms are actually more productive per unit of land than big industrial agriculture.
The farming conglomerates like to enforce big farming operations because they make things easier for the managerial class, and let them be in charge of everything. But if your goal is just to produce food and have the farmers make a living, small farms are actually better even economically (and not just for like 10 other reasons).
This article about the study:
Aragón conducted a study on farm productivity of more than 4,000 farming households in Uganda over a five-year period. The study considered farm productivity based on land, labour and tools as well as yields per unit area of cultivated land. His findings suggested that even though yields were higher for smaller farms, farm productivity was actually higher for larger farms. Similar research in Peru, Tanzania and Bangladesh supported these findings.
And then the Actual Study HERE:
What explains these divergent findings? Answering this question is important given its consequential policy implications. If small farms are indeed more productive, then policies that encourage small landholdings (such as land redistribution) could increase aggregate productivity (see the discussion in Collier and Dercon, 2014).
We argue that these divergent results reflect the limitation of using yields as a measure of productivity. Our contribution is to show that, in many empirical applications, yields are not informative of the size-productivity relationship, and can lead to qualitatively different insights. Our findings cast doubts on the interpretation of the inverse yield-size relationship as evidence that small farms are more productive, and stress the need to revisit the existing empirical evidence.
Meaning the author is advocating for more scrutiny against the claim and against land redistribution as a policy stance with the intention of increasing productivity.
First, farmers have small scale operations (the average cultivated area is 2.3 hectares).
The definition of “small family farms” in this case is on average more than 5 acres, which would absolutely be under the umbrella of subsidized industrial agriculture in developed nations.
My god it’s like they’re deliberately trying to make their paper unintelligible to other humans. If I am reading this paper correctly, it is in line with other research on the topic, by indicating that smaller farms tend to have higher yields due to greater labor inputs. While I’m sure an economist would think this puts the issue to rest, being able to feed more people on a smaller land area might still be beneficial even if it requires more labor. Economists often assume that the economy represents the ideal allocation of resources, but I reject this assumption.
By the way, 5 acres is minuscule compared to conventional agriculture, at least in the US. So these aren’t backyard gardens but they are likely quite different from agribusiness as well.
If you think 5 acres on average isn’t subsidized or industrialized then I challenge you to try it out of your own pocket: fertilize with shovels, till with a hoe, water and pest control without anything but hand pumps or windmills, reap the harvest with a scythe.
I don’t know why you’re assuming small farms need to be worked with medieval technology—that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that 5 acre farms are far smaller than typical for modern agribusiness, and the differences in management are enormous. And I’ve actually worked on a farm that was 8 acres and we did much (though not all) of the labor by hand.
The average US farm is just under 500 acres. It’s totally different to grow food on that scale.
You don’t know why Industrialized farming is Industrialized? Are you for real, right now?
I have no idea how this comment relates to what I was saying or what you are trying to communicate. I believe I do understand why industrialized farming is industrialized. Do you?
Industrialized farming is industrialized by definition as it involves the use of Machinery and Automation such as large vehicles. I’m sitting here in awe and disbelief at how stupid a person could be as to lecture others on this topic while not knowing why “[I’m] assuming small farms need to be worked with medieval technology” to be considered outside of the scope of Industrialized.
We do all by hand on a 1/2 acre of mixed veg. We feed our family of five and sell our extras. All the work is done by two adults. 5 acres would be insane and we are hard workers. I can’t imagine that size without a tractor.
Wait, 5 acres wouldn’t be all vegetables! Fruit trees, grains, grassland all spread in time so you can work on them when your vegetables don’t need attention.
Two people. No mechanical equipment. Even with using animals in order to maintain all that space. Then add harvesting and threshing grains by hand along with those animals. Good luck. Our entire working space is an acre with fruit and nut trees and chickens for meat and eggs. The workload is immense and if our lifestyle was similar to most (day jobs) there is no earthly way we could manage what we have let alone 5 acres. We have been doing this for decades and have systems in place to help us as much as possible and it just would not be physically possible. Just garden prep for us alone takes months at a half acre and simple maintenance and picking is a daily chore all season long. We start planting in February and grow until Oct/Nov. We don’t vacation in those months at all and we have seasonal jobs so we can put as much time as possible into food. Oh and we don’t get paid to grow food because we consume the vast majority of it ourselves so we need those real jobs too. Where are you finding all the time and money?
I have around 15 acres I work on. Mostly alone, with a tractor. I have let parts of it go wild.
I quit my day job, I have a sick father and brother to take care of.
Yes, farming is really hard work, and animals need attention all the time. My farm isn’t making me any money, I get some subsidies though.
But my fruit trees are over an acre. I keep ducks, pigs and sheep. I have a woodlot. It all makes me happy, that’s why I do it.
We still buy groceries, we could go 3 months without that. But I’m not a prepper.
Absolute nonsense. Hyperbole is not helping your argument.
Yeah, that’s why I included “per unit of land.” It is in practice a little more complex, and a lot of times the smaller farms are more labor-intensive.
My opinion is that modern farming is efficient enough that we can very obviously sustain the farmer, and sell the food at a reasonable price, and it all works – the only reason this is even complicated at all and we have to talk about optimizing for labor (certainly in 1st-world farms) is that we’re trying to support a bloodsucking managerial class that demands six-figure salaries for doing fuck-all, and subsistence wages for the farmers and less than that for farmworkers, and stockholder dividends, and people making fortunes from international trade; and if we just fixed all that bullshit then the issue would be land productivity and everything would be fine.
But yes, in terms of labor productivity it’s a little more complex, and none of the above system I listed is likely to change anytime soon, so that’s fair.
Also, you can’t just look at the amount of food produced, but the amount produced vs waste, storage and transportation costs. Most things in the garden can stay ripe on the plant for a while and can be picked as needed.
Anecdotally, we were supplying about 80% of our fruit and veg needs on our own garden plot on our standard city residential lot with a family of 7. And we were literally giving tomatoes, citrus and zucchini away as fast as we could.
counterpoint: industrial agriculture exists mostly to sustain animal products
That’s a really good counterpoint.
Crops like soybeans are mostly cultivated for animal consumption, but are you sure it holds for the entirety of the industrial agriculture?
This is certainly true for our modern agriculture today. But is this really true for any possible industrial agriculture? Couldn’t we also have a plant based industrial agriculture leaving domesticated animals out of the equation altogether? Sure, we are a far way off from that. But I think it would be achievable and that we should aim for it.
You mean, compared to what goes to the market for people?
I don’t eat much of not industrial agriculture products, even local farms only produce fruits, and I would say they are also industrial (not sure where is the line)
Cows and other farm animals need a lot of food:
More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world’s protein and calories. […] However, only half of the world’s croplands are used to grow crops that are consumed by humans directly. We use a lot of land to grow crops for biofuels and other industrial products, and an even bigger share is used to feed livestock.
As per the article two thirds of that ‘agricultural land’ is graze-lands, so like a 12.5% of that agricultural land is actually farmland dedicated to feed livestock.
I see, 25% is still not too little, I expected this to be less than 10% based on how you phrased the first comment. But you’re right, it’s possible to greatly reduce strain on land
That wasn’t me, but I found out about it relatively recently and I’m happy to share it.
Oh, true, sorry I’m a bit sloppy
Thanks for sharing, anyway ❤️
No worries :)
Not only that. But our agriculture is so centered around animals that we also have a huge surplus of manure (the animals’ feces, horn shavings, basically anything left of them) that we then use on all kinds of plant crops. It is so baked into the system that it will be a long way before we can really get a animal-free agriculture…
The animal products are also just more industrial scale, subsidized farming, too.
I ran commercially successful regenerative farms for many years. Here is the shocking truth Corporate Jesus ™ didn’t want you to know:
You aren’t “competing” on price or quantity. You are competing on quality. Quality in taste, quality in freshness which also means quality in nutrition^ and quality in sustainability.
So… it might cost you a bit more in money and/or time to grow food in your garden but you are getting so much more value out of it. That’s the yield and that’s the cost effectiveness.
That’s massively more efficient than subsidizing huge-scale industrial agriculture so that some giant corporation can yield higher profits. In fact, come to think of it, shouldn’t home gardens be subsidized?
^ E.g. 90% of vitamin C in spinach is lost after 72 hours from harvest
home gardening requires time and land.
It’s largely a privilege for those who have both. not a solution for the economically depressed who have neither.
It’s largely a privilege for those who have both. not a solution for the economically depressed who have neither.
I’m pretty sure that’s what Corporate Jesus would want people to believe. And to be honest, sometimes labeling something as “privileged” is just another way of reinforcing that thinking. It doesn’t have to be that way.
- Gardening does not require much time relative to the value of the output. Many new gardeners will say “oh but it’s so time consuming” because they are still learning and make lots of mistakes. If you have your systems up and running and your processes down, it’s a fraction of the actual value produced and is extremely efficient. Don’t get me started or I will go on about this in extreme nerdy detail from personal experience.
- Collective action can massively increase both the availability of suitable land and the output relative to any one individual’s effort. An obvious example of this is community gardens such as the Gill Tract in Albany, CA. If Occupy the Farm had been better supported we the people could have had the whole thing, but there still is a large garden available for use by neighboring houses. And there are community gardens and vacant land waiting to be community gardens everywhere. It just takes folks to say they can do it to make it happen.
A key component in this is a general misunderstanding of the value of your labor. When you garden you retain 100% of the value of your labor and your time is worth much more. When you work for others and then have to pay for food at a significant markup, you are losing a very large proportion of that labor. This is one of the central lies of capitalism that forces you into wage slavery and promotes false narratives like “growing food is most efficient on a huge scale”. Efficient to whom? Not to you.
Edit: Another related example is the Berkeley Student Farm on the Oxford Tract and 6 other urban spaces. They are doing some amazing work and it’s worth a few moments to read about them: https://www.studentfarms.berkeley.edu/
Don’t get me started or I will go on about this in extreme nerdy detail from personal experience.
Please do! I am just starting with some gardening and haven’t much experience yet.
Please do! I am just starting with some gardening and haven’t much experience yet.
Uh oh.
Well I’ll just mention one thing… just. one. thing. Ok, no, let me do my top beginner mistakes, which seem to all be not understanding what plants need.
- Over-watering. For example, tomatoes (and solanaceae in general) like periodic deep watering and shouldn’t be overly moist. I always starve them for water until they start to get a little crispy (literally they look like shit) and do my weekly-ish harvesting the day before watering.
- Not hardening-off starts. Don’t plant those peppers in the ground without having them gradually outside over a few days, ending in being out overnight for a day or three.
- Not understanding soil and air temperatures. It’s super helpful to know the daytime highs and nightime lows and ideally soil temps as well. Some plants just really won’t grow well when it’s too hot (lettuce) or too cold (tomatoes, cukes, etc)
- Growing starts in your living room window because it “gets lots of sun”. If your plants are leggy and weak it’s because they get sun for part of the day and it shifts around too much.
- Assuming you have to nuke every living thing anywhere near your veggies. 95% of all insects are beneficials and if you do not provide habitat for them and/or you use copious pesticides, you are killing more good things than bad. On my last farm we used no pesticides, organic-approved or otherwise. This works if you have pathways of (ideally natives) for beneficials to thrive in. The classic example is flea beetles - they thrive in barren hot soil while the beneficials that would eat them avoid that. So plant your arugula near some grasses (like right up against it) and you will not likely have a flea beetle problem.
Thank you, that was interesting. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter 🙂
But I am not sure I understand point 2. Are you talking about seeds?
But I am not sure I understand point 2. Are you talking about seeds?
People buy or grow “starts” - little baby plants in pots - and often don’t let them adjust to being outside before sticking them in the ground.
Ah, gotcha, thanksñ
that’s why OP was suggesting we subsidize home (and I’d add allotment) gardens - give people money to plant food and flowers and they’ll be better of f both physically and mentally.
and who will till the soil, weed, fight pests, harvest, etc.
govt going to provide the physical labor and extra hours per week that is required too?
I mean I get it. I’m a rich white person with a lot of leisure time and I own property where I can have a garden… but turns out not everyone has this stuff. Half my younger friends have no time and no property on which to garden. And those folks are much better off that say, a single mom of two who rents and is struggling to provide her kids with food because she’s working 50 hours a week to pay rent. Should I just tell her to ‘make your own garden! that will totally feed your family of three…’ just put dozens of hours into your concrete driveway of plastic tubs that will provide you with a few weeks of vegetables, most of which will rot before you can use them… unless you want to devote more time and money into canning.
Gardening is great. But jerking myself off and generalizing and saying everyone else should be doing what i have the luxury to do… just makes me a smug self-righteous ass. People buy food from stores because it’s convenient and fast.
Involvement in food production to some degree is involvement in your own freedom and independence from capitalist hegemony. To me it’s the opposite of privilege. It’s not a luxury and it’s so so sad that people think of it in those terms.
Somehow along the way folks were instilled with the idea that growing their own food is hard, not efficient… even equated with being poor or some kind of peasant. And there’s a very good reason for this - big industrialized agriculture doesn’t work except at huge scales and it takes everyone buying cheetos and hot dogs for it to work. And somehow we got into this rut where you have to work 50 hours a week - paid a fraction of the real value of your labor - to afford the “value-added” food that is not nutritionally dense, tasty or grown sustainably.
The truth is that growing food is about as simple and basic as it gets IF you have the knowledge. It is even more viable if people work collectively to get some of those economies of scale.
So take 10 hours of that week and use it to produce valuable food for yourself and for your neighbors. 2-3 families working 10 hours a week each grows A LOT of food. You do not need a lot of land… indeed there is land out there available to be used for community gardens, for free.
Unlike a lot of folks, I’m not going to say this can’t work in every situation because I believe it can. Further, I believe it’s an existential necessity.
Do you fertilizer your garden with your own shit?
- Don’t throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Hell yea! Let’s bring back victory gardens! With a subsidy!
I don’t understand why anyone would argue against a garden. Should my yard just be grass? Why shouldn’t I plant something I can eat in it? It doesn’t matter if it’s less efficient than industrial farming, it’s basically unused land to start with.
That’s because nobody is arguing that. The argument is against people saying that industrial farming is evil and should be stopped, which is a bit of a past time hobby around here.
Monoculture is terrible for the ecosystem. Fertilizer runoff causes algal blooms and dead zones in the ocean. Multinational agricultural conglomerates force developing world farmers to purchase their GMO seeds sue them for copyright infingement if they try to use their seed stock in the next season. Rainforests are being burned down to make room for pastures of methane emitting cattle and monocultured palm oil plantations. The Haber-Bosch process is responsible for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Should I go on? At what point am I supposed to like this?
Fix the system, make a new system, buy discerningly. Have a garden if you can and advocate for more of them if you want. Fight against monoculture, irresponsible fertilizer and pesticide use, copyright abuse, and more. None of that is an irreplacable part of growing food at a large and efficient scale.
By the way, I’m curious about the Haber-Bosch figure. Isn’t that the process that allows us to easily make fertilizer, and greatly increase productivity? It seems like that 5% is doing much more heavy lifting than, for example, the ~20% from cow burps.
Right, those are all irreplacable parts of global capitalism and its ruling oligarchy.
Haber Bosch is basically just squeezing nitrogen and oxygen together with a catalyst to make ammonia. To generate high pressures you need energy which you get by burning hydrocarbons. Legumes and bacteria can also do this, which is why crop rotation and letting fields lie fallow has been done for centuries. But you can’t let your field lie fallow if you have to compete with other firms who are burning coal to make fertilizer…
They worked out four-crop rotation during the agrarian revolution in the 18th century, they haven’t let fields lie fallow since they worked out how to rejuvenate the soil with crops like turnips that could become horse feed…
Pre-Columbian Meso-Americans were already exploiting nitrogen fixing bacteria with the milpa (corn, beans, squash). Anyway the point is if your yield is dependent on how much fertilizer you produce industrially then the sky is the limit for how much coal to burn.
I think at the point where you have food on the table. Without haver, you wouldn’t have food on your table and you’d die from hunger
Nobody is claiming it’s perfect, nobody is claiming things cannot or should not be improved.
The point is that these systems are there because like it or not, they work. Haber works, you are alive, ain’t you? Now from here on we must improve.
Rotate crops more often, cut the stranglehold from agriculture conglomerates, lower the world population by lowering birth rates, be super 8+ billion and rising is just too much for this world to handle… Things like that.
Either way, tonight you can eat, maybe be at least a little grateful for that?
Haber will obviously continue to be used and work but as long as there’s a fossil fuel price to make it happen expect more extreme storms, fires, droughts, floods, ocean acidification, and possibly methane clathrate release triggering a runaway greenhouse effect like during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
I know. Same for cars, which cause up to 25% of all CO2 exhaust, much easier to curb that. We can do with much less cars, food would be harder.
Right?
it’s no different than the yahoos who they they would run the govt better. then they try and give up because it’s ‘too hard’. this is basically the same as soveign citizen BS, but with vegetables instead of guns.
but we can’t let a complex reality get in the way of our well-intention delusions of smugness. because apparently if every citizen isn’t providing themselve wiht their own fruits and vegetables… it’s their complicity with corporations… or something.
They have to defend capitalism and the idea that overproduction is good, regardless of the waste.
They simply don’t care, about anything but money.
I don’t understand why anyone would argue against a garden.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks I ever argued against a garden.
Why would home gardeners optimize for yield and cost effectiveness? They can’t deploy automation or economies of scale.
You garden at home because you enjoy the flavor, freshness, and variety. Those are the perks. Miss me with those mealy, flavorless grocery store tomatoes.
I came to the realization earlier today that there are an alarming number of people who theorize that they can just live off homegrown and composting. They think they can challenge big agriculture by “going off the grid” and that society would be better without subsidized industrial farming.
That’s why they would optimize for yield and cost effectiveness. They think they can compete.
EDIT: Also I’ve tried making tomatoes in colder climates before and they almost always succumb to disease. Huge success with zuccini and onions, though.
man, you’re going to be really alarmed when you hear about community gardens and greenhouses…
the idea for most people isn’t to completely replace all farming, but to reduce it, grow food instead of a lawn, have some fresh delicious non-gmo shit…
have something to fall back on when the nuclear apocalypse happens…industrial farming will never be as nutritious, delicious, or satisfying as home-grown…
p.s. working with soil has natural antidepressant properties…
Ok, I’m just curious, do you have a source for that soil antidepressants statement? Not being argumentative, legit want to read the source.
This Pretty outdated (from 2007) and I position it in more pop sci than hard science. But from my own perspective, gardening makes me chill out for sure.
From a comment thread lower down:
permaculture.com.au/why-gardening-makes-you-happy-and-cures-depression/
I’m telling you that some people think it can be a replacement. I’m explaining to you that this is an unfortunately common stance.
some people think the moon is made of cheese but i’m not losing any sleep over it
Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese.
Like no cheese I’ve ever tasted.
(Just beware of vending machines with dreams of skiing.)
I would be cautious of statements like these. Because this way it is easy to get lost in your own idealization of community gardening. I mean, I agree that we should do more community gardening and that it would probably benefit most people.
But how do you know that industrial farming won’t ever be as nutritious/delicious as homegrown? How would you fall back on your own garden in case of a nuclear catastrophe? Wouldn’t your soil just be as contaminated? What are your arguments against GMO crops apart from all the obvious economic reasons? Wouldn’t be some genetic mutations be really good actually? I mean the food we eat is already heavily bred and mutated, even most homegrown stuff. Try eating a wild carrot or wild apple. Also, the article you shared regarding the antidepressant properties of soil makes some same mistakes. It is overly idealistic. The actual underlying study is much less ambitious and I’m not sure you can really claim that "working with soil has natural antidepressant properties ".
I love cooking and don’t really like eating out. But if a canteen/cafeteria is run well, it can sure cook much larger quantities of food that are just as delicious and nutritious. It just scales better. I would argue the same is true for agriculture. (Although we definitely would need to change agriculture by a lot!)
lol, fine
But how do you know that industrial farming won’t ever be as nutritious/delicious as homegrown?
that’s just the nature of the beast. crops aren’t rotated, the soil is artificially bolstered with junk fertilizers and pesticides.
things are harvested before they’re ripe, and then ripen on the semi-truck…
it’s just not nearly as good…
go try some home grown, organic, actually fresh food.How would you fall back on your own garden in case of a nuclear catastrophe? Wouldn’t your soil just be as contaminated?
sea lion, it doesn’t have to be nuclear… it’s obviously better to have a garden in any catastrophe… in recent memory, shortages from covid…
if it were nuclear, no i’m hypothetically staying where i am because it wasn’t contaminated… ffsWhat are your arguments against GMO crops apart from all the obvious economic reasons?
Roundup/ glyophosphate causes cancer. We were stopped from even allowing “gmo free” from food labels for years… i’m not going to explain any further than that, go ahead and type other lists of tangential questions with no intention of actual conversation, sea lion.
Wouldn’t be some genetic mutations be really good actually?
this stupid strawman again? yeah, duh, i’m not against the evolution of crops… i’m against genetically modifying them to be immune to Glyophosphate, the spraying crops with that, then giving farmers and consumers cancer…
like the things that have actually happened with GMO’s, healthwise…
choice is important… how about long term knowledge? we know a tomato doesn’t cause cancer… some random new chemical? we don’t know and can’t control that, and i don’t want to be Monsanto’s lab rat…mean the food we eat is already heavily bred and mutated, even most homegrown stuff. Try eating a wild carrot or wild apple.
no fucking shit, you disingenuous bastard…
no fucking shit… fuck your stupid strawmen, YOU KNOW i’m not talking about any and all genetic mutations… that’s the dumbest, paid for, corporate argument i’ve every heard…
and i’ve heard that trash repeated over and over again as if that’s related…
and it’s notAlso, the article you shared regarding the antidepressant properties of soil makes some same mistakes. It is overly idealistic.
awfully vague counter claim, sea lion… and there are many such studies on this. but even if not directly, everyone that gardens can attest that there are mental health benefits
Wow there, you assume I was arguing in bad faith but I was just genuinely curious to discuss this. No need in being so rude.
I think you still got a lot mixed up here. When I was talking about GMO plants I didn’t talk about all the awful practices of today’s capitalist corporations. But GMO in itself could be great for feeding many people in a world after capitalism. Glyphosat and other pesticides are really not the same as GMO. Do you actually know what GMO means and how it works? I’m not necessarily a fan of GMO and think we should be very cautious with it. But just dismissing it as obviously evil without understanding what it means is wrong imo.
Similarly I think it is not really clear what we discuss when er talk about industrial agriculture. In my mind it is solely the production of agricultural crops at a large scale and by means of employing machines. It seems like you think of it like our modern capitalist agriculture. This thread was originally about how to feed huge populations of people and I think we will need industrial agriculture. However, what we understand today under industrial agriculture is just one way of doing it. I obviously know that today’s conventionally farmed crops and monocultures are really bad for biodiversity and the environment. And I sure want to see then gone just like you. But even organic farming relies a lot on industrial agriculture. And I don’t think it is really true that homegrown crops in small community gardens are necessarily more nutritious or delicious than organically+industrially farmed crops.
And this was my overall point. Just because you feel like something tastes/looks better doesn’t mean it is actually better. That’s what I mean by idealization. I don’t think we get that far just claiming some practices are evil and others are good.
I’m gardening myself and sure it does help me with my mental health. But that is because I can choose to work in the garden whenever I feel like it. But if I had to work on a farm because we need all the people working the fields, it would certainly not improve but rather deteriorate my mental and physical health. But still, this has nothing to do with your claim that soil bacteria actually function as natural antidepressants.
And please seek help with your anger issues if you haven’t already. It is totally off to call someone “disingenuous bastard” if they just try to start a debate. (Just to be sure: I don’t mean this in a passive-aggressive way.)
lol, nice try sea lion
Wtf is wrong with you?
Absolutely you can compete my dude. Just not if you’re doing it commercially. If you have the space you can grow everything you need and save a ton of money.
The problem is everyone can’t do that. It doesn’t scale. To feed 8 billion you need the big ag machine. But you, yourself, if you want to focus your time and effort on digging in the soil instead of being a corporate cog, can absolutely support your needs for very cheap.
How northern are we talking? Our tomatoes didn’t so well last year in Northern Ohio, but the summer before i was absolutely drowning in cherry tomatoes!
47th Lat, so a fair bit further but the high winds of my region could contribute to hanging crops declines.
It’s certainly something besides latitude. Western Canada grows hella tomatoes and that’s 49 lat at the bare minimum
British Columbia for sure has some very diverse hardiness zones.
My parents are around 44 deg lat and their tomatoes do very well. It seems like something else must be limiting your success.
Is probably true. However, one should question their world view if they measure everything as a minimization problem with respect to cost efficience and yield.
I think it’s less about ruthless efficiency and more about which system will enable even the poorest in society to have nutritious food.
as if this system has done so…
250 years ago people would rent pineapples for parties as status symbols because they cost $8000.
Nowadays the most expensive pineapple you can get is barely $400.
That’s progress
If it helps, I could sell you a pineapple for more than that.
I’ll have to see what my social status raising fruit budget looks like.
No you couldn’t, they would never buy an 8000$ pineapple today because he could get one down the street for a couple bucks.
Is that Canadian toonies?
Not saying anything about the system, just about which farming method has the most potential to equitably distribute resources.
I get what you mean. Our system produces a ridiculous amount of quantity, which should be great! But in the context of where it’s firmly placed within existing socioeconomics, stupid things happen like “destroying all the product to keep the value from crashing” and the “distribution problem” that feeding the poor isn’t profitable.
Maybe industrial agriculture wouldn’t be so terrible if food production for the human race didn’t operate on the same metrics as handbags or funkopops. =\
I agree that commodifying food, especially locking nutrition behind class walls is barbaric. I also get that the current iteration of industrial farming is scary (don’t get me wrong, it sucks shit) and that “small scale farming solutions just haven’t been tried!” but clearly small scale farming is a long term fantasy that would take many decades of work and public acceptance, not even to mention the process of decommodifying the agriculture industry. All I’m saying is that if I’m playing in the same space, the method that would be the most environmentally friendly and efficient (not in an economic sense) is large scale industrial farms.
The other concern I have about small-scale farming I had, arose because I had this notion about “What if we could eliminate food deserts that are literally in the desert through household hydroponics?”
It sounded like such an awesome idea. Federated food! What a revolution!
But I also found out there’s a ton that can go very wrong when you have no idea where food came from or how it is grown.
It’s also my experienced opinion that a not-small percentage of the human population in this metropolis range from clinically insane to dangerously ignorant.
Industrial farming sucks in a lot of ways, but I’m also glad the (horribly underfunded) FDA and USDA exists.
Perhaps pushes for education in this field could go a long way? It seems outside of farming communities, food production is very much thought of as “farmers’ work.” and not much else.
Borlaug’s green revolution of the mid-20th century did lead to a rapid reduction in famines across Asia and Africa…
if they measure everything as a minimization problem with respect to cost efficience and yield.
Well to be fair, that 3rd home in the Hamptons and a bigger yacht are not going to pay for themselves.
The more you grow and eat at home, the less the food industry needs to burn fuel to ship. I know you folks in the US hate doing anything to help out with the world, but if you took the saying of be the change you want to see, imagine the tens of millions of acres being wasted on lawns being put to environmental and nutritional use. Imagine instead of putting leaves into plastic bags to get shipped to a landfill, or burning, houses normalized having compost piles. You get to put waste paper and cardboard in there too instead of bagging it.
I challenge all of yall to grow beans this season. They grow fast, they grow easy, theyre pretty nutritionally complete, they fertilize your soil themselves. Make use of your land.
What a bullshit blanket rude comment. Lots of folks in the US are working hard to affect change at their personal and local level. You should edit your comment because it’s nationalistic and disparaging.
Notice how the US is among the largest polluters per capita by quite the margin.
Again that doesn’t change shit. My point is that a nation is not a monolith.
You wouldn’t make a statement like they did about a race, or a people from another country, so it isn’t appropriate here either.
Edit It is simply untrue that all Americans “hate to help the world”, and therefore that statement is bullshit.
Are we calling out the qatari, bahraini and UAE assholes here aswell?
I’m comfortable saying yes to that
Based
Don’t leave out Australia and Canada, since Australia is worse and Canada is next on the list after the USA.
Go ahead and tell everybody how Australia, USA, and Canada are such bad countries.
Meanwhile, with the freedom afforded to me as a land owner in the USA I work from home, harvest solar energy with solar panels to run my electronics, and am growing my own produce and eggs in a backyard farm. As an individual I’m probably doing more for the environment than most people reading this whole Lemmy post.
Lol. Check your privilege.
A. Do a carbon footprint analysis of your life, if it’s above 2,5 tons coe/year you’re a net burden on the planet. My country is as well, although considerably lower than the US.
B. It is possible for you to be a paragon of environmentalism and still live in a country with inefficient systems for water, infrastructure, zoning, industry and food production. Not to mention live in a culture of unsustainable lifestyle. Many Chinese or Indian persons are simply too poor to have a major impact on the environment, but their national industrial practices drive up the average pollution to levels comparable to the US (although still lower). Most US people aren’t as poor, and also have shitty industry standards, and also the means to change that without losing your standing internationally.
C. Multiple countries are shitty, in fact most of the non-developing world countries are a net burden.
D. As opposed to the other countries at the top, the US has had the economy, data, and access to resources to be able to something about it for generations, whereas most have had half the time and considerable need of modernising.
E. The US is much larger than the other countries, and could with quite simple measures make great impact and help pressure other great polluters.
I checked my privilege, and found that it was cool. I don’t have a carbonometer to check the other stuff so you can work on that if you want.
Nah Americans need to do better
It makes sense for it to be the same as solar power: just because most of energy generation is done in big facilities and even some kinds of solar generation (such as solar concentrators) can only be done in large facilities, doesn’t make having some solar panels providing part of one’s needs (or even all of one’s needs for some of the time) less cost effective in Economic terms or a good thing in Ecologic terms.
So it makes sense to grow some of one’s food, but maybe not go as far as raise one’s own beef or even aim for food self sufficiency, both for personal financial reasons and health reasons. That it’s also good in Ecological terms (can lower the use of things like pesticides and definitelly reduces transportation needs) is just icing on the cake.
Im pretty sure the easy decentralization of solar is a big reason its gotten so much pushback from politicians and lobbyists.
Can’t have people give less of their income to rent-seekers…
Imagine instead of putting leaves into plastic bags to get shipped to a landfill, or burning, houses normalized having compost piles.
I appreciate your argument but there’s no need to throw in a strawman. Leaves in plastic bags have been illegal in most US states for decades. Yard waste must be in paper bags.
Ive never seen yard waste in a paper bag, I have seen loads of plastic bags. pumpkin faces for autumn are extremely popular here.
These states and cities have yard debris bans:
maybe its an enforcement issue but from what I’ve seen in Arkansas its all plastic bags. Video with examples https://www.thv11.com/article/news/local/little-rock-stop-yard-waste-pick-up/91-4745aa35-0cd5-4261-b87a-8ac44a2cfc3a
It may be true for ‘soldier’ plants. However there are thousands of plant species that can’t be both efficiently mass produced and shipped while still being of good quality. So you get a bad produce, very costly produce or both.
I can’t afford fresh Basil leaves, I maintained a plant in my kitchen in some of the apartments I lived in. The current one doesn’t have enough sun. It took 10 minutes of work to arrange and emptying left over water.
Also, if you never tasted cherry tomatoes straight from the plant you don’t what you are missing, and how shity is the produce in the market.
I can’t afford fresh Basil leaves, I maintained a plant in my kitchen in some of the apartments I lived in. The current one doesn’t have enough sun. It took 10 minutes of work to arrange and emptying left over water.
The basil plants you buy in grocery stores are designed to die after a while. It’s not lack of sun or water, it’s because there are just way too many plants in the tiny pot and basil does not like to be root-bound. They basically strangle themselves to death.
You can easily propagate the plant through cuttings or you can separate the grown plants and re-pot them in smaller groups.
Yea, I had Basil im some apartments. The current one has no sun at-all. Basil needs some. But when I bought plants my father guided me how to split them. Gifted my friends, don’t need more then one.
I used to hate tomatoes, then I tried home-grown and just realized grocery store tomatoes often suck by comparison. There are many plants that don’t store/ship well so you either can’t get them in stores (e.g. pawpaws) or they taste bad because of short shelf life/bruising.
TIL about pawpaws, thanks.
It sounds like you live in the US or something. Tomatoes from the market should be freshly picked overnight to be sold early in the morning. There’s literally no difference.
I don’t live in the USA.
I just don’t live near a tomatoes field, however, it’s not just time, perfectly ripe tomatoes don’t survive transportation well. So mass production of tomatoes requires the picking of less ripe fruit.
I used to grow tomatoes myself and then transport them 80km away to my family. No issues there. They can survive a lot, especially if you have a refrigerated truck.
I worked a few summers on a commercial organic farm and for many years in a small family plot. Maybe we are talking about different scales of transportation, quality control or different species of tomatoes.
Okay but how does this feed 8 Billion People?
Okay but how does this feed 8 Billion People?
I went back and looked at some of your posts on this thread because I was thinking “they can’t really be that unimaginative” and lo and behold, it’s true, you can be!
Sorry for not having the time and energy to respond to hundreds of comments with full paragraphs, as if it would sway you anti-industrial advocates.
“Sorry for not being able to back up my assertions with facts, data, or even whole paragraphs”
I forgive you, but you should really try to fix it.
It’s such a pity you aren’t able to engage in meaningful conversation.
Oh well.
Yeah, despite my efforts you don’t seem capable.
We don’t have a stable way to feed 8 billion people. The dependency on monoculture will cause many people to die under a changing climate.
Self gardening may:
- Increase food stability
- Increase access to nutrients rich food, GR while saving many, reduced food quality
- Be fucking tasty and cheap
Agree, but also do plant something that you’ll use just a small amount from time to time, like herbs, spices, scallion, chive, and so on. Thing that you’ll want it fresh but you can never use it all before it compost. Don’t even need a garden, just plant it in pot.
I have screwpine leaf, lemon grass, coriander, and scallion in my garden, and i can harvest the onion when i need it.
I smoke a lot of weed. Always have. Last year I grew 4 plants in my backyard garden and this year I’ve saved thousands of dollars on weed. It’s not as strong as store stuff but you get used to to it quickly and there’s less paranoia with homegrown I find. I’m always gonna grow my own weed from now on. Only reason I didn’t before was that it was illegal. This year I germinated 3 seeds but only one took so I’ll have one super tall pot plant in my backyard haha.
While it’s still in the “vegetation” stage look up how to “clone” plants and you can make that one plant into as many as you can successfully clone!
I was wondering about this. Looked it up. Definitely starting a couple clones tomorrow. Thankyou.
Alright, I’d like to retroactively change my statement to have the amendment: “Except for Weed. You can easily be self-sustaining on weed.”
no shit you can’t compete with something subsidized lol, how is that an impressive argument?
just… subsidize the homegrown produce if you want it to be competitive? big brain moment
Yeah like look up organopónicos in Cuba. Thanks to the collapse of the import market that fuelled industrial agriculture and government support of local growers, a good chunk of food in the country now comes from ecology-sound urban agriculture.
“Hi, this is Chett from the local government non-industrial agriculture office. We see that you grew 6 tomato vines this year and didn’t take advantage of our program to loan you the costs of 34% of maintaining the crop, as it isn’t your first year, would you like to be pre-approved for a $46.38 loan for next year? In return, we ask you to install flood barriers and have your soil tested regularly.”
Home gardening is an important element of individual food security. It’s not meant to replace industrial agriculture which maintains food security for the nation as a whole
Home gardening is an important element of individual food security.
And food independence
It’s not meant to replace industrial agriculture which maintains food security for the nation as a whole
Hard disagree. Industrial agriculture maintains profits for a few corporations. That large-scale agriculture is productive, necessary, efficient or any of that is a myth. It’s massively inefficient when viewed from the perspective of value - especially nutritional value- to the consumer.
I don’t have any love lost for mega corporate farms and agree that we need more family and cooperative owned farms that would be more concerned with sustainability and environmental impact.
Glad to see you agree with me 100%.
