Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] from Mother Earth News 1976

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Liz <liz@allslash.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] from Mother Earth News 1976
  • Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:38:00 -0400

At 10:34 PM 4/26/2008, you wrote:

HIGH YIELDS AND HIGHER HOPES
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1976-05-01/High-Yields-Higher-Hopes.aspx
Biodynamic/French intensive agriculture:

<snip>

Current estimates based on test results indicate that widespread use of b/F intensive techniques could conceivably allow 3%—6% of a population to grow all of a country's food. A family of four, working a total of 56 hours per week (that's two hours a day for each individual) on a little less than two acres, should be able to raise—within a six-month growing season—enough food (grains, vegetables, fruits, and fodder for dairy animals) to supply a complete 2,379-calories-per-day annual diet for 32 people!

Wholesale market value (50% of retail) of such a harvest, based on current U.S. food prices, would be around $9,600 . . . and, if inexpensive mini-greenhouses were used to extend the growing season year round, that output (and the resulting cash income) could be doubled!

On a smaller scale, a family of the same size working toward food self-sufficiency alone could use b/F intensive techniques to raise their entire annual food needs on just 10,000 square feet of soil—less than a quarter of an acre—by working just one or two hours a day during a six-month season!

I read this when it was first printed, along with a lot of other info about the French Intensive gardening. It's all true, of course, but statements like the preceding paragraphs gave a lot of people the idea that gardening and being self-sufficient was "easy." As most of us know, it isn't easy at all. It's doable, but it isn't easy as defined by most people--picking food out of their garden with the same lack of effort as picking it up off a supermarket shelf. I know many people who jumped into growing their own in the 70's, made more or less of an effort to continue, and gave it up as too much trouble. The difference now, of course, is that we may not be able to fall back on the supermarket, as people did in the 70's when they realized that growing enough food to feed themselves meant a lot more than buying starts at the local garden center, sticking them in the ground and waiting for the bounty.

And of course the article says nothing about what is required to keep that food available for the next six months--root cellaring, canning, dehydrating, pickling, etc. You want hard--that part of it is often harder than the growing!

Off to build another raised bed...

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page