If we want to survive . . . each and every family as much as
possible needs to be able to produce it's own food for itself, and
as many other people as possible.
I don't need to grow my own food.
I need to be part of a healthy
network that does.
While I'd love it if everyone gardened, a
coordinated community food system
is more resilient and allows more
diversity than individual dachas, and fits better with American
culture and land ownership patterns. The US has a very different
history from Russia.
And most yards are too small to produce "all our
own food."
A single 18th-Century farmer could feed 50 people. Making the
household, instead of the farm, the neighborhood or even the town,
the core unit of a food system atomizes the community. Let's not
default to "go it alone." It reduces the many options for reaching a
goal--meeting our food needs--to a single tactic: grow it all
yourself. It means that this critical function is done only one way,
with all the attendant hazards (what if you get hurt?) and reduces
most people to serfs farming for a banker. It's part of the mix, but
not the solution.
The dachas are well worth looking at. But severe food and economic
disruptions tend to be brief in developed countries (see Argentina,
Iceland, Weimar Germany, Mexico, etc.), stabilizing soon at a
simplified level. So to redesign as though the unstable period will
be permanent is unwise.
While Russians were busy farming their 2.5 acre dachas all day, the
oligarchs were seizing control of everything else. They still have
it. Let's learn from that. We need to organize at a higher level than
the household.
Toby http://patternliteracy.com
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