Throughout Ultra-Local, Full Circle Self-Sufficiency you’ve seen me refer to the research of Dr. Leonid Sharashkin, who reported that household gardeners in Russia produce 50% of the country’s food on just 3% of its agricultural land. And how his work...

Is the U.S. food system in danger?The answer is yes, but it’s not about to completely collapse overnight—it’s more like a slow cascade. Yet it’s not too early to think about growing your own food, either, just for peace of mind in case...

Rate of adoptionAll successful innovations go through an adoption curve, in which the new technology, practice, or idea reaches a critical mass. After that, it becomes self-sustaining, at least according to theory. But not all innovations are successful. For instance,...

What is Diffusion of Innovations?It’s one thing to say you want to galvanize a self-sufficiency garden food system (GFS), but it’s quite another to imagine just how that would unfold over time. Fortunately, there’s a well-developed theory, “Diffusion of Innovations,”...

Imagine for a moment that we could ramp up a self-sufficiency garden system enough to provide 50% of the U.S. population with healthy, balanced diets. How would that play out on a national scale, over time? Here we’ll ponder the significance of ten likely...

External FactorsMost people won’t be won over to ULFs (ultra-local foods) because they’re nowhere near as cheap, tasty, and convenient as UPFs (ultra-processed foods).On all three counts, this is a story about what we’ve long been conditioned to experience and thus...

In shopping around a self-sufficiency garden food system, it’s perhaps not surprising that I’ve come across doubts that such a drastically different approach would work. That is, provide a feasible alternative to the industrial food system, even though I’ve...

Time for another mini-post, this time about butterbeans.For over a hundred years, my family has handed down and grown what we’ve always called colored butterbeans. My great-grandma brought them with her when her family moved from Belhaven, N.C. to Roanoke Rapids in...

I can’t tell you the number of glowing accounts I’ve heard and seen about regenerative agriculture over the last few years. And it’s no wonder why. Guided by ecological principles, it promotes “regenerating” healthy soil to increase organic matter, water retention,...