Comment on It is very therapeutic to garden, though.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 months agoI came to the realization earlier today that there are an alarming number of people who theorize that they can just live off homegrown and composting. They think they can challenge big agriculture by “going off the grid” and that society would be better without subsidized industrial farming.
That’s why they would optimize for yield and cost effectiveness. They think they can compete.
Absolutely you can compete my dude. Just not if you’re doing it commercially. If you have the space you can grow everything you need and save a ton of money.
The problem is everyone can’t do that. It doesn’t scale. To feed 8 billion you need the big ag machine. But you, yourself, if you want to focus your time and effort on digging in the soil instead of being a corporate cog, can absolutely support your needs for very cheap.
How northern are we talking? Our tomatoes didn’t so well last year in Northern Ohio, but the summer before i was absolutely drowning in cherry tomatoes!
47th Lat, so a fair bit further but the high winds of my region could contribute to hanging crops declines.
It’s certainly something besides latitude. Western Canada grows hella tomatoes and that’s 49 lat at the bare minimum
British Columbia for sure has some very diverse hardiness zones.
My parents are around 44 deg lat and their tomatoes do very well. It seems like something else must be limiting your success.
xor@infosec.pub 5 months ago
man, you’re going to be really alarmed when you hear about community gardens and greenhouses…
the idea for most people isn’t to completely replace all farming, but to reduce it, grow food instead of a lawn, have some fresh delicious non-gmo shit…
have something to fall back on when the nuclear apocalypse happens…
industrial farming will never be as nutritious, delicious, or satisfying as home-grown…
p.s. working with soil has natural antidepressant properties…
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 months ago
I’m telling you that some people think it can be a replacement. I’m explaining to you that this is an unfortunately common stance.
xor@infosec.pub 5 months ago
some people think the moon is made of cheese but i’m not losing any sleep over it
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese.
Like no cheese I’ve ever tasted.
(Just beware of vending machines with dreams of skiing.)
vrek@programming.dev 5 months ago
Ok, I’m just curious, do you have a source for that soil antidepressants statement? Not being argumentative, legit want to read the source.
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This Pretty outdated (from 2007) and I position it in more pop sci than hard science. But from my own perspective, gardening makes me chill out for sure.
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/66840#1
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 5 months ago
From a comment thread lower down:
permaculture.com.au/why-gardening-makes-you-happy-and-cures-depression/
xor@infosec.pub 5 months ago
…com.au/why-gardening-makes-you-happy-and-cures-d…
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 months ago
I would be cautious of statements like these. Because this way it is easy to get lost in your own idealization of community gardening. I mean, I agree that we should do more community gardening and that it would probably benefit most people.
But how do you know that industrial farming won’t ever be as nutritious/delicious as homegrown? How would you fall back on your own garden in case of a nuclear catastrophe? Wouldn’t your soil just be as contaminated? What are your arguments against GMO crops apart from all the obvious economic reasons? Wouldn’t be some genetic mutations be really good actually? I mean the food we eat is already heavily bred and mutated, even most homegrown stuff. Try eating a wild carrot or wild apple. Also, the article you shared regarding the antidepressant properties of soil makes some same mistakes. It is overly idealistic. The actual underlying study is much less ambitious and I’m not sure you can really claim that "working with soil has natural antidepressant properties ".
I love cooking and don’t really like eating out. But if a canteen/cafeteria is run well, it can sure cook much larger quantities of food that are just as delicious and nutritious. It just scales better. I would argue the same is true for agriculture. (Although we definitely would need to change agriculture by a lot!)