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.
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 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.
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.
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!
Yeah sure, if everybody else is enduring and/or paying for the bad side effects of the way somebody conducts an economic activity, it’s “cost effective” for those doing that activity that way.
I think the hypothetical here implies transport would still exist for a primarily home-garden non-industrial agriculture replacement system. Or do you think the whole world should suddenly stop trading? Might as well since we’re writing a fantasy fiction, anything goes.
Where’s that 4chan post where all the BLM rioters tried to set up a new community in Seattle or something. Then they had everyone give there skills and what that want to do in the new world, everyone was saying they can grow food. Then there was the crappest plot of veggies I have ever seen.
I recall the one you’re thinking of, but did not find it. This is a textbook case of how photography is just another aspect of journalism that can be very biased depending on what you decide to show and the context in which you place it.
For my part, isn’t it more interesting to know that it was started by a scholar of energy and sustainability who used the opportunity to promote gardening skills and raise awareness of the history and politics of land use rights?
There is a whole thing about land use rights and energy and sustainability. But just because one guy was right on that doesn’t mean the whole movement wasn’t a complete disaster from the start.
As much as this website hates capitalism I’m still pro capitalist. But even I admit a lot needs to be changed. Land is one of the big things I have been contemplating lately. Having said that, there wont be any meaningful food production in cities for anything but mental health reasons.
What can I say except that I hope you’re wrong about food production? The allotment system in the UK is a good example of this, and could be expanded on to good effect for the overall goal of more mutually supportive communities. Obviously we’re not going to turn every city into homesteaders, but reducing the imbalances in our economic systems is worthwhile.
As for CHAZ/CHOP, I find it more useful not to judge it based on whether an impromptu short-lived anarchistic community can govern itself perfectly during that chaotic moment in time (especially as police had every reason to try and subvert it - after all, they did lose that precinct), but based on its vision and the hope it gave people. It only lasted a short while, but hopefully the memory of it can live on as a hope for what could be, and as a part of the dialogue between communities and state forces going forward.
Agreed, my wife and I had that conversation recently, as it happens. Though, for some things, there are other benefits. Herbs is the best example, even the fresh, packaged herbs that you can buy at a grocery will be noticeably not-as-good as something that you picked fresh in the backyard 2 minutes ago. Dill, basil, thyme, mint, what have you. I’ve found the same to be true of things like bell peppers and jalapenos.
Why subsidized? A fair comparison would be subsidized home farming vs. subsidized industrial farming, or neither are subsidized.
The exact problem was discussed in Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, where he reached a very different and nuanced conclusion. You can have a read if you are truly interested.
Subsidizing home farming isn’t really possible with our current society, and not subsidizing industrial farming could be disastrous and lead to famine. The subsidies guarantee that food options will be available at all times.
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.
Sometimes. You cannot go to a store and buy the freshest, most mouth watering and delicious fruits because they cannot handle being shipped even locally.
A warm, juicy peach right off the tree is an amazing experience.
Also, you know 100% of what what was and what wasn’t done to your stuff.
That said, I don’t have the time or will to grow all my own veggies that I like daily.
I can, however make enough other stuff that’s saleable so I can afford fresh veg year round.
I mean the government could open up facilities for cooking meals or processing food for cold storage that would otherwise be thrown out, and regulate both farming and grocery stores so that anything that would get wasted instead goes to feed homeless people or something. Its a massive yeah right though. All industrial farming has done on this side of this rock is pump us full of ready roundup and microplastics, crush small independent grocers, drive up water and other resource consumption, and people are still going hungry regularly. Corporate america will never let people be happy and healthy without wealth divisions on this continent, and likely as much of the others as can be influenced.
Judging by the median quality of life (rat race, anybody) and the obesity epidemic (and related diseases), neither “happy” nor “healthy” seem to be objectives and it looks a lot more like it’s just “alive and energized enough to work”.
Industrial Food (and that includes the Intensive Farming and Cattle Rearing side) in the US is particularly bad at the healthy part, and even in countries with better food regulations the industrial stuff (and again that includes the products of intensive farming and livestock ranching) is still significantly worse in that sense than the non-industrial kind but at least they don’t shove corn so hard that it adds up to over 70% of the human food chain directly and indirectly like in the US.
Not that I’m saying that the World can sustain this big a population without intensive farming. I’m just disputing that the modern version of it even tries to have “happy” or “healthy” as objectives, much less have succeeded in achieving either.
Some things are ridiculously easy to grow in some places and we should for exactly that reason. It’s like drinking bottled water when you have an amazing spring in your backyard of great tasting clean water.
Neither does industrial farming? We grow more than enough food to feed the world every year, but don’t because that’s not the point of industrial farming. The point of increasing the amount of industrial level farming every year is to increase the profit margins of large agriculture conglomerates.
100% granted. In the 100 square feet of my property I set aside for vegetable gardening in my spare time, I cannot grow as much food as a full time professional farmer can in a given 100 square feet of a multi-acre field.
I can, however, produce more food than the non-native species of turf grass that used to grow there.
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.
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.
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.
Yup we should normalize gardening and canning. It’s a thing my grandparents knew. Their families survived times of world wars, dust bowls and the great depression. They probably didn’t have much choice in the moment but even when times got better they kept up a wonderful little garden. Kid me didn’t get why they didn’t just buy the things they needed.
I love the conveniences of modern farming and I use it every day. But like all big industialized systems they can be fragile. Covid was a huge problem for a lot of indistries and thankfully farming wasn’t really one of them. But if it was countless people would have struggled.
I’m not really a prepper or anything crazy but I don’t want to forget the lessons learned just a few decades ago- gardening is great and worth the effort.
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.
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.
You can have both and it doesn’t need to compete with industrial farming or meet some business model. It just needs to meet your needs and/or goals.
Gardening lets you grow the stuff you want how you want and eat it fresh without taking days and trucks on a highway to get it to you.
I’m thankful for the conveniences of modern agriculture but if gardening didn’t have any positive impact why did they push victory gardens so much in WW2?
It feels good, teaches valuable skills, makes your neighborhood more resiliant and gives you healthy things you want to eat. It’s more than simply therapeutic.
This only true in places that aren’t environmentally supportive of agriculture. My family never had to buy vegetables. Granted we had about 2 acres of farmable land. We didn’t sell produce, we harvested and froze until we needed it
Edit: Initial start up is definitely not as cost effective as buying from the grocery, but once you’re able to harvest your own seeds, it’s not that expensive to sustain your production
The problems of quality with mass agriculture corn that has enough might to have lobbying power to influence regulatory policy aren’t solved by growing your own corn that you can regulate and control the cultivar and farming methods?
It makes me really sad that you’ve apparently never tasted GOOD corn. Like the kind where you start boiling the water before you pick the corn. Or just eat it in the field.
I garden all the time, it won’t feed any single nation on earth except maybe Principality of Sealand. You’re either being disingenuous or not understood the conversation taking place.
I garden all the time, it won’t feed any single nation on earth except maybe Principality of Sealand. You’re either being disingenuous or not understood the conversation taking place.
I’m sure your personal experience gardening for yourself is valid, but it would be disingenuous to take it as valid for a larger scale commercial operation that wants to feed people on more than a 1:1 basis.
I’ve had this discussion dozens if not hundreds of times over the years and the one thing that always stands out is that the claims of “X won’t feed Y” never come with substantive data and always have to side-step the original premise. At best they come with personal anecdotes that tend to be amusingly irrelevant.
In fact the logic of my basic premise - that small farms can and do feed people efficiently - is rather simple and well-supported by the data. For posterity let me work through a representative scenario.
I’ll use the example of the smallest small farm I know to kind of show the boundaries of the problem. It’s a real farm near me - out of respect I won’t give it’s real name but let’s call it Fox Farm. You can find examples like this all over.
This farm is just under 2.5 acres, but that includes the house, a barn and a greenhouse so probably 2 acres in production. It’s well positioned near a town of about 5,000, has good soil, is right on a busy road and has easy access to lots of manure from several cattle operations within a mile or two. Fox Farm’s owner has been farming for about 12 years and has really mastered hand-scale operations - his only “large” equipment is a walk-behind tractor with a rotary plow. He runs the whole thing with just him and his wife.
How many people do they feed? They have about 150 regular customers, but we can do some quick math: You could use the $100k figure and divide it by the annual grocery budget per person to get a representative figure - so $100000 / $3865 (California average) yields just under 25 individuals. That’s of course if they got 100% of their food from this one farm.
So in rough terms you could say that a single 2 acre farm can entirely feed 25 people and provide a decent living to the farmer as well. Now I can tell you from my experience on 15 acres that as you scale a bit more you gain (and lose) some efficiencies but probably it’s about 10-15% more per acre every time you double in size but that gain diminishes a lot past about 20 acres for a bunch of management reasons but mainly because of your ability to actually sell it all. Selling produce is way way harder than growing it.
I know for a fact that small farms work because I have not only my personal experience but the experience of several farms around me. If you don’t believe me go see for yourself. Seek out the nearest three farms under 100 acres in your area and ask them. I feel I have to point this out even though it should be obvious: your garden is not very productive relative to something run by a professional farmer. Not only will we get way bigger yields for any one crop but at this scale we’ll get multiple crops out of the same patch of dirt in a season using carefully planned rotations. As just one example, I will plant peas (nitrogen fixers!) using T-posts and a simple trellis. When the peas are done the tomatoes go in and use the same post-and-weave trellising. This is partly why you should never think of small farms in terms of acreage but rather in terms of revenue.
Counterpoint: if you, personally, can save some dollars so you’re mainly spending on the things you can’t grow, that’s hardly a bad thing. Also, working with soil is known to be good for you. Exposes you to soil bacteria that are known to boost mood.
And it sounds corny as fuck and I didn’t really take it seriously until I did it, but homegrown produce can be so incredibly much better than what you get off an industrial farm.
Just let people participate in feeding themselves and be happy, fuck.
Assuming it used all the same tools and techniques, making only minor replacements of tractors for voluntary domestic labor … I don’t see why it couldn’t reach averages in a similar magnitude. Given them larger plots where they could use industrial tools and they should produce about the same on average.
Eother way there attempts more self sufficiency are to be commended… So the I’m not sure of the point of the post really.
If we had a socialist style of market economy like Vietnam we’d produce more crops.
Also in a correctly valued economy we wouldn’t have to subsidize farming.
I feel like there are helpful and harmful fantasies, and villainizing the foundation of all modern life in favor of unrealistic self-sustenance is leaning harmful.
We have the means to all enjoy good produce for minimal costs, we don’t need to change to a worse system that costs us more.
Honestly, you don’t have to do much to villainize some aspects of industrial farming. It’s mostly only possible due to the haber-bosch nitrogenation process, which was invented by the same guy who invented chemical warfare, and the process itself uses lots of petrochemicals and dumps a lot of nitrogen into the natural environment. That’s not even getting into the use of migrant workers, or the patenting of dna over some crops, and the food monopolies that exist in some countries.
I also don’t think it’s a case of “there can be only one system”… And I don’t run into a lot of people saying that.
For myself, this isn’t one of the more pressing issues in the world. I don’t really think people have enough land to be able to be self-sufficient, but gardening is a nice hobby.
Food markets vary from nation to nation, and have political aspects I’m fairly disinterested in, so can’t really comment on that.
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