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Two thoughts on this meme - self-reliance is necessary, and self-reliance is not sufficient, because if capitalism destroys the climate your homestead goes with it.
Grandma there looks like she has land. Pretty fucking hard to get land nowadays. There used to be a time that it was being literally given away
The biggest flaws with gardening. 1) Not everyone has land 2) Often you have to pay more than just buying groceries 3) Doesn't scale.
So you manage to get everything to work. Congratulations, you've just reinvented modern farming with all of the same fundamental problems. If you want a genuine change of the system you have to go to the foundations and not repeat the same steps that got you here.
Between 100% of people growing their own food and 1% growing for 99% of the others is a wonderful range of opportunity we should return to. One person or corporation owning and managing hundreds of hectares with the help of giant machines doesn't scale either, it's currently destroying the planet. The guys on the big tractors are the grandchildren of the people grandma was forced to sell her garden too. I'm sure the human species is ingenuous enough to come up with something that guarantees people's dignity and feeds everyone.
Pretty much this. If your solution isn't considering the community then it's just going to eventually evolve into the same system anyway.
Self-reliance is a skill that everyone should have, but it should no longer be a necessity. If we can bail out corporations to the tune of trillions, then we should be able to ensure the welfare of all citizens, not just the 1%.
We don't make those decisions, the corporations that get bailed out do. That's why we have people dying in the gutter while the wealthy circumnavigate the globe in their private jet.
Consequently, no one in my circles cares about the welfare of the 1%, and if grid down collapse comes, well, some people are gonna hunker down, and some people are gonna go hunting. You best believe the one percsnt has the largest targets on their ... Everything.
Most people won't even be able to get to where the wealthy are. They live in modern castles, complete with massive walls, guards, and isolated from everyone else
My Opa survived the dust bowl.
He had a story of being through a locust swarm that ate the (cotton) clothes he was wearing.
Then he survived WW2 landing at Sicily(first wave) through the Italian and Netherlands campaigns.
What if grandma didn't survive the depression? O_o.
Seriously though one of the threats we have as a species right now is the WTO etc orthodoxy's obsession with economically punishing nations who want to strive for food self-sufficiency.
Survivorship bias.
My grandma lived through hard times in the Great Depression, which is why my family is located in such a remote state. She taught me a lot, but I'm not much of a gardener. My husband has a garden every year though, and he's hoping to have backyard chickens.
I feel like the best things I learned from my grandma are not to waste food, and to keep bags of beans and rice on hand at all times for the hard times. That's saved me a few times
I recently learned that outside of the affected dust bowl areas that people don’t store their drinking glasses upside down in the cabinet.
East Coast here. I store my glasses upside down since the less used ones start collecting dust.
Also East Coast, and can confirm, do the same.
Grandma was willing to hoe a garden, which is head and shoulders above 99% of the people I've talked to that talk about smallholder farming like it'll save the world.
I'm planning on cultivating Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii as part of a nutrient cycle, so that way even if the food network collapses I'll be able to keep myself fed. Even if it doesn't, I have a really good supplement of nutritious calories which will dramatically lower food costs.
The best part is that if other people want to join in I can give them a sample and they can start their own farm. Get a pickle jar and poke a hole in the top, cover it with paper tape to allow your plants to breathe, then fill with clean water and input your culture and nutrients then pop them up against a window so they can produce food and oxygen for you. Still figuring out the rest but so far everything looks really promising.
Self reliance isn't feasible, way to many people and not enough arable land. Plus you lose all benefits of specialization, putting you to pre industrial levels.