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Like I said, it wasn't a comment about you personally. You just mentioned the farm bill, I.E. farm subsidies, so I decided to comment on the irony of people claiming to be self sufficient yet sucking up that government cheese.
The $100 - $150 farm subsidy that covers being certified organic certainly can be seen as government cheese.
I must laugh at people who claim the cost of being certified as reason for higher costs of organic. But it is a cost, and there is government dole for it.
Who am I to point fingers? I too am on the dole [though in my case, it is also a retainer should my services be needed again].
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... Again, nothing to do with you personally, but my intuition tells me that more than a few people on this forum are bad mouthing other poor people (calling them welfare zombies or what not) while they themselves are dirt poor and on one form or another of government assistance.
I am not aware of anyone bad mouthing the poor.
The phrase 'Welfare zombie' is a new one too. I am not sure what kind of picture that draws.
When I think of 'zombie' I think of my grand-parents and parents as they were forced at gun-point to leave their farms. Refugees seeking some other place. No food, no water, no money, their 'hope' was the idea that a trek Westward would lead them to jobs.
I think of post-Katrina refugees. No food, no water, no money, on a slow trek hoping for safety somewhere. While the 'safe' refugee center turned out to be a haven for robbery and rape.
Can you guarantee that we will never again see a Depression? a hurricane? a tornado? flooding? If you can guarantee these things will never again happen on earth, then I suppose that helpless and hopeless refugee / zombies will never again be seen.
But you can not guarantee this.
These will happen again, as they have happened before.
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... Yet they love to claim they're "self sufficient". Irony abounds and as a guy who worked hard to get an advanced degree, who lives in a major city because that's where the work is, making a nice professional salary, I've had to listen to more than a few nonsensical posts on this forum over the years from these same people.
I am happy for your degree and your salary. I attended a small university out West, called UC-Fresno.
When you see a nonsensical post by a 'self-sufficient' person, you should ask them about it.
I rarely see wild grains growing in such density to allow making bread. But I settled in forest and not in the plains. So maybe in the plains it is possible to forage grain for bread
I have not heard of "Humboldt Fog" before. Google says it is a brand of cheese.
I'm not suggesting that anyone forage for grain, at least, not as a regular practice. Grains and beans are so cheap that quantities for many years can be purchased with a very reasonable outlay.
Humboldt Fog is an outstanding artisanal goat cheese from California; it's so good it's exported to France. Needless to say, it's expensive.
I don't practice this dietary regimen except for fish although I do eat quantities of purchased fruits and vegetables. I can live far better using money from profits from business to purchase what I wish. I grow tomatoes at this time simply because the taste is superior to all but one commercial grower I once found. Taking care of indoor tomatoes is easy.
My point is that people can eat very cheaply without gardening or expending undesired labor. Gardening, foraging, fishing, and hunting are all labors of love. The grocery store is cheaper and more convenient if one buys simple raw foods. Barring compete anarchy there will always be suppliers.
I some what agree with you though it all comes back to time value, marginal utility, and the trade offs of opportunity costs. If you do one thing then you can spend that time doing something else so most people will spend their time doing that which gets them the highest rate of return. For the most part food is dirt cheap in most modern countries therefor it has very low returns compared to virtually anything else people can do with their time. Yes, this is based upon assumptions about there not being a shortage and that other people (who can produce more efficiently because they have vast farms with modern equipment) will still do those low return things simply because they're so efficient at it they can still make a profit.
By and large this has worked out well for most people and there is rarely if ever shortages. You asked, so I'm telling you.
And I'm not denying any of what you've written here, except the part about dying at 35. That didn't happen so often. Typically you died at birth (or giving birth to a child), as a child, or as a young teen. If you made it past that stage, your chances of living a more "normal" lifespan was greatly increased. The 35 is an average of the time and says nothing about the standard deviation, which is always overlooked and vitally important to the picture.
Anyway, the rest of it I can agree with you on. However, if you look at my post again, you'll not see me romanticizing anything. It was simply a question as to what the economic/political model of the time was and whether it tended to work (on average) better or worse than what we have today. Of course, you have to account for the huge population differential, but just in a general sense.
And as another poster mention, this subsistence agriculture (or partial subsistence and cash crop) tended to happen on the frontier of a given era. Once the population "settled in" and larger towns developed, it would turn to more of a cash crop setting. But if you read some of the writings of contemporaries of the time, there was often a praise for the "general state of the society and economic situation." Now... please, I don't want to argue about the disadvantaged of the times (blacks, Native Americans, etc). I'm talking about the typical colonial transplant (or father/grandfather transplant) from Europe. I know life was tough at the time. But, looking beyond that, did their basic societal/economic structure work or not work? And we could even extend the discussion up through just after the civil war into about 1870, in certain cases, even though I'm primarily talking about 1800 back to the later 1600's.
OP, are you beginning to see the resistance and animosity in this country for self-reliance? Your radical idea that a community actually produce some or all of it's food has disturbed the hornet's nest.
If you really want to stir the hornet's nest, mention the idea of essentially disconnecting yourself (or your community) from our "economic system" so that it largely doesn't matter anymore (in addition to the self-reliance goals). Them'z fightin' words 'round heeah...
I'm not as tough as I use to be. Plus I am having physical problems. I think I will get an easy $7.25/hr job now because in a few years it will be $15/hr! Plus free healthcare now! I've voting democrat from now on!!!!!!!!!
if you really want to stir the hornet's nest, mention the idea of essentially disconnecting yourself (or your community) from our "economic system" so that it largely doesn't matter anymore (in addition to the self-reliance goals). Them'z fightin' words 'round heeah...
the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave the green-light to four chicken processing plants in China, allowing chicken raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to be exported to China for processing, and then shipped back to the U.S. and sold on grocery shelves here.
the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave the green-light to four chicken processing plants in China, allowing chicken raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to be exported to China for processing, and then shipped back to the U.S. and sold on grocery shelves here.
That doesn't seem either physically or economically viable since the chicken will already be in a processing facility when it dies. Do you by any chance have proof of this?
Renting people's backyards is a well-known occupation, and it can be pretty lucrative if you do it right. It's known as SPIN farming (small plot intensive farming).
This is not the only thing we do that doesn't seem viable - like shipping flattened cardboard boxes to China to be assembled there and shipped back.
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