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.
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.
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 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,
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.
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.
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.
Funny enough ‘efficiency’ industrially tends to just mean what makes the most money anyways, so most crop’s have been trained to be nutrient sparse, yet large
@FiniteBanjo it is true, but what no one has directly mentioned yet is, that home grown provides a high bar on what industrial agriculture can ask for as a price. If it gets so expensive that growing your own is more cost effective for yourself, you don't need to pay for overpriced products. That's a possible competition, obviously only for those that are fortunate enough to have the fitting and needed resources to grow(being poor is expensive).
It’s better to encourage native fauna by planting native flora than plant a vegetable garden that you give up on after 2 months and then gets overrun with foreign weeds.
I fucking hate gardening. Fucking hours of work, thousands of dollars in tools and materials to beg a plant to grow because it can’t be fucked to grow on it’s own. Only to watch it die and it’s fruit rot on the stem because of some Norwegian small nosed stink beetle that’s invaded the garden. OH WHAT A LOVELY HOME I’VE MADE FOR YOU YOU LITTLE FUCK.
I just wanted to make salsa. I could have had salsa any time. Months ago I could have had salsa. I could have made my own. I could have been bougie and gone to the farmer’s market and gotten all the things I tried to grow and made my own salsa.
What I’ve learned about gardening is to grow what loves to grow in my particular space. I tried a lot of plants and you know what thrived? Gerkins. Little cucumbers. Do I need 600 picklng gerkins? I do not, but thats what grows. Chives also love it back there.
So, we give away jars of home made sandwich slices and pickle relish. The plants reach up and pull on the low tree branches with their little tendrils. Its not what I want to grow (I want to grow fucking pumpkins, but they get downy mildew and barely fruit).
Desire for isolation won. I don’t reach out anymore and I don’t respond to DMs anymore. I felt lonely for a while but the feeling has now faded. It’s honestly better this way.
A lot of industrial produced food is cheap because of child, forced, and otherwise exploited labor (undocumented workers, for example). Heavily mechanized farming (mostly used for grains) is cheap because of the vast amount of fossil fuel “energy slaves” used. And that’s only cheap because the costs are externalized.
Anyways, growing your own food can definitely be cheaper than buying it. Of course, not if you start plants under lights, build raised beds and fill them with purchased soil, buy organic pelletized fertilizer, or stuff like that. It can be nearly free to grow your own food (if you don’t count the cost of your own labor) by saving seeds and intercepting materials from waste streams (wood chips, lawn clippings, manure, used coffee grounds, etc) to “feed your soil.”
I have some land prepared for a garden. It was pretty well laid out by the previous owner of the property. I’ll have some costs in getting it going, since the last guy used it mainly for flowers, so I want to put in some raised beds and something to keep the animals away from my food, beyond that, it’s all planting and waiting. It rains sufficiently here so no need for irrigation, and there’s plenty of sun. The soil is pretty decent too.
Direct financial costs will be minimal, year over year, and then it’s just the indirect cost of my time to tend to it as it grows.
There is no precise answer to the associated costs. It’ll be different for every circumstance. There are just too many variables and factors to consider.
If you have plenty of time, happen to already have good soil and climate, have all the necessary tools on hand, and are just lucky, don’t have to pay for electricity or water, and so on, the financial cost can be essentially 0 (or close to it).
The more you have to overcome your situation, the more you want to make the cultivation easier, the more you want to maximize yields, and so on – generally that’s going to incur more financial cost.
There could be upfront costs like installing automated watering systems, amending your soil if it’s not up to par, building raised beds, building fencing or installing edging. Plus, any tools you don’t already have, which might include shovels, snips, wire, a spade, and so on. Even if you’re growing on a balcony you might have to buy pots and potting soil, invest in some shade cloth, put down some saucers to protect your downstairs neighbors from getting dripped on. Those are just a small sample of potential upfront costs.
Ongoing / annual costs might include things like fertilizers, pesticides, compost/mulch, replacements for any of the upfront stuff that breaks, and even things like cost of water (which is hopefully negligible but not always).
So, if money is the only “associated cost” here, then it could basically be nothing, but it also wouldn’t be entirely unusual to spend a couple hundred dollars (USD and US costs, I can’t speak for the entire world) and some folks even spend thousands.
I thought you were sincerely asking a question and I was answering sincerely as best I could. If you would like a more precise answer for your specific situation, then I’m afraid I can’t really help there, at least not without a lot more information and a lot more time investment on my side.
I appreciate your effort in that, but I was actually replying to the OP to make the point that “there are associated costs” is not a valid criticism of home gardening.
It seems like there would more effective and direct ways (with less farce and fallacy) than asking a loaded question that people might see as a sincere request for information and an opportunity to spark a bit of interest.
It seems like there would more effective and direct ways (with less farce and fallacy) than asking a loaded question that people might see as a sincere request for information and an opportunity to spark a bit of interest.
You are the one who misinterpreted and answered a question that was not asked of you. There was no farce or fallacy in my question in the context of that particular discussion.
You’re getting a lot of hate here, but you’re not entirely wrong. Cost aside, home gardens are massively more carbon intensive than modern industrial agricultural methods. Community gardens are generally better.
That said, gardens do still offer a ton of other benefits, both for your mental health and your taste buds. But let’s not completely decentralize our agricultural system.
Appreciate the link to the paper. Will be an interesting read.
But at first glance here’s a wee problem with the study: It takes the worst practices of urban farms and compares them with the best practices of industrial farms. It is not comparing “home grown produce” from the OP, where some of the principle offenders - not using materials for a long time - may, in fact, be used for a long time. It also doesn’t study small-scale non-urban farms. Which to me IS a decentralization but by people who know what they are doing.
One example is composting, where it correctly surmises that people who don’t know how to compost correctly… wait for it now, don’t compost correctly and produce higher GHGs.
And you are mischaracterizing the results and omitting a key finding: "However, some UA crops (for example, tomatoes) and sites (for example, 25% of individually managed gardens) outperform conventional agriculture. "
lemmy.today
Oldest