The Self-Sufficient Garden Blog
The Garden Food System – II
Why The Garden and Industrial Food Systems Are So Different First, just to map out some context, how are the two systems alike? Well to begin with, as their titles denote, they are both systems. A system is a group of interacting parts that work together as a whole....
The Garden Food System – III
Current IFS System Fixes Fall Short of an Optimal Solution How do we assess the viability of food system fixes? First, let’s consider what constitutes an optimal “system fix.” One of the most comprehensive and thoughtful descriptions of what a truly sustainable farm-...
The Garden Food System – IV
How Will an Expanded GFS Impact the IFS? Suppose, just suppose, that at some point self-sufficiency gardens began to supply, say, 20% of all our food. How would that affect the industrial food system, given that we’re already on the way with 41% of all households...
False Narratives of Food Production
Much of the discourse around the industrial food system—and how to make it more sustainable—hinges on the six untrue but largely unquestioned narratives discussed here. Together, they present a decidedly distorted picture about how the U.S. and the world produces and...
Is the Ukraine-Russia War Wreaking Havok on the Global Food System?
The hand-wringing was oh, so predictable. In March (2022), ominous headlines began to warn of impending doom wrought by the loss of grains, sunflower oil, and fertilizer exports from Russia and Ukraine: War threatens to cause a global food crisis – NY Times War takes...
Lawns! A Vast, Untapped Source of Food Wealth
I say: If we wanted to, we could grow enough food on our lawns to feed about 90% of our population. You say: You’ve got to be kidding, right? I say: Nope, I’m not. And the reason is that numbers don’t lie. See if you agree. Start with the baseline data of what one...
Long Live the Dacha Gardens!
What a bracing discovery for self-sufficiency gardens! I just found that in 2008 Leonid Sharashkin, a Russian grad student at the University of Missouri, did his PhD research on “The Socioeconomic and Cultural Significance of Food Gardening in the Vladimir Region of...
No Trade-Offs
It’s just so telling how mass food production is portrayed as a set of trade-offs, regardless of whether conventional or sustainable systems are being invoked. Yes, you get some wins if you do it this way, but also some losses. And if you go this other way, you...
The Evidence
Part 1 Once, upon a time when I was a botany prof at the University of Hawaii, I got called to jury duty. It was a routine case of drunk driving, hit and run, and driving without a license. However, one juror adamantly doubted the breathalyzer evidence. “There’s just...