Is it possible to grow enough food in your backyard to live off of (plus chickens as a yard waste disposal) if you also work full time? I can't even eat at a restaurant without knowing if they use organic produce.
They never will if everyone has that attitude. I agree they aren't going to be made to go away instantly; but I don't think they're an "old-as-time problem" either.
> I'm not sure how eliminating them would change the underlying utility that pesticides have.
Eliminating food subsidies would improve things whether pesticides are used or not. They're orthogonal issues.
However, I think consumer confusion is the main challenge for such a market. How many people already think buying organic = no pesticides? Or they see your pesticide-free marketing and think "my bases are already covered: I shop at Trader Joe's."
The real problem in farming is not cost but the fact that there are a lot of middlemen taking all the profits. Here in Europe, supermarkets sell produce for vastly more than the farmers ever see. I'm sure the same is true in the US. I'm guessing this is a huge factor in some farmers choosing to go for more lucrative organically farmed crops over the capital intensive traditional way of farming one of few staples using GMO seeds, lots of fertilizer, pesticides, etc. Supermarkets seem to love selling organic foods at twice the price. I doubt that the cost is anywhere near a factor 2.
No, that's not the problem. The problem (if you view it as a problem) is that food is now produced very far away from where it is consumed, which means that the process of getting the food to the people who are eating it is now much more complicated and requires much more work. When you buy food at the supermarket, you are not just paying the people who farmed it; you are paying the people who got it all the way from the farm to the supermarket, which, these days, could well be a trip halfway around the world. There are indeed plenty of middlemen in this process, but they are adding value since food on a farm hundreds or thousands of miles from the consumer is no good to the consumer.
(This is not to say that there isn't corruption in the food distribution process; there certainly is. I mentioned government issues in another post in this thread.)
The "bananas in Alaska" problem. :) https://www.superbeariga.com/shop#!/?id=12413&department_id=...
Eat food you make from mostly whole sources, avoid sugars (especially refined), avoid grains (especially refined), avoid refined seed/vegetable oils... do those things and you're still doing better than most of the population, even if your veg and meat aren't completely clean.
As for the general advice to avoid sugars, grains and seed oils. These are all things whose consumption correlates the most to increases in heart attacks, obesity, dementia and many related diseases. They are absolutely not required for anyone and for most of the population consumed in quantities that cannot be justified as healthy or safe.
Eating lots more vegetables (in scale and variety) and some more fruits (keeping sugar manageable) generally corresponds to better health. Regardless of other macro nutrition (though I feel that meat, eggs and fish are fine). "OPTIMAL" historically speaking has mostly come down to cost and availability. Optimal for man, in general comes down to what could be raised, gathered, hunted or foraged relatively locally. That would include regular periods without food, and a few in excess.
We both work full time and spend the weekends out in the yard harvesting/planning. With irrigation to water and a little planning, it becomes a passive hobby.
I will say, I think you'll still need to buy stuff, like beans, broths, spices, etc. You can't have it all in your backyard, but you can have the primaries.
> EU has much stricter rules regarding food quality
And within the EU the standards are also widely different, especially in the non-EU-ORG stuff.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/05/23/a-behind-the-s...
The author solicited input from many farmers. He openly admits the official record keeping is lacking. So in some cases he has to infer amounts.
Author also gives examples of organic crops which are (generally) more damaging than conventional. Such as organic bananas. TIL.
But the general gist is that organic techniques use much less of much less toxic pesticides.
No. I'd advise against trying unless you know what you're doing - the land around your home might be perfectly safe to live on, but it may well be dangerous to grow food in. Large areas of the San Francisco Bay area have horrendously toxic soil as a legacy of the semiconductor industry; the average gardener isn't equipped to test their soil for contaminants.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-...
The things you can't produce will be flour, sugar, spices (salt, pepper, Etc.) and will need to import, but with a flock of chickens and a dairy cow, and roughly 5 acres of land you can provide everything else. As I recall the Firefox survivalist series gave a pretty complete recipe for what you needed. You can substitute goats for the cow if you are ok with getting your milk, cheese, and meat that way. I don't recall if there was a purely vegetarian or vegan recipe.
In the place where my well-paying job is, it would be difficult for us to afford 5 arable acres on one locally top 5% income within a reasonable commute to my work.
There are communication technologies today that have made this more practical. 10 Gigabit microwave links are a thing these days.
That said, there are a lot of variables. Community gardens, barter systems, and others which once you open up the problem to the question "can a community be self sufficient" you get into village design.
[1] https://www.cablefree.net/cablefree-millimeter-wave-mmw/10g/
Setting aside labor, it's generally considered that self-sufficient gardening requires anywhere between 0.5-2 acres of land, which is far bigger than your typical backyard.
You can chose to purchase staple crops and get a considerable variety of produce and herbs from your yard, or you can dedicate every square inch to calories and die of malnutrition.
Or for less work, you can improve your quality of life by focusing on a smaller array of fresh produce and herbs from your yard, and buy everything else.
I finally called enough and said we were dusting everything with sevendust. The next day all the bugs were gone. I have no idea how people could farm on the ground, in any quantity, without pesticides.
Regarding your squash bugs, if I remember correctly, some ants will hunt them without hurting your crops. That's maybe a little counter-intuitive, but it might be worth looking into.
People have been farming organically for thousands of years. I'm sure much of it just comes down to knowledge about various crops and the local environment and then applying common sense and creativity.
Now producing beans, rice or wheat is another matter. I don't think its possible without moving to your own farm
Theoretically there should be nothing stopping one from growing any of those crops in small scale, assuming the right climate and soil conditions. There are small scale separating units that can be used to deal with the above. But it is tough to compete with the economies of scale that commercial operations have. These crops in particular are probably the most efficiently grown farm products of all. The cost of growing them at home will scare away most.
A friend asked me why I bother with dry beans, when they are so cheap to buy anyway. I replied that I can control the inputs, resulting in the highest quality beans, and they are so easy to grow, so why not? I'm not growing a ton of them to sell, so I care less about the economies of scale.
That doesn't make sense. Organic produce isn't healthier than conventional produce. Even worse it requires significantly more water and allows for nastier pesticides and herbicides. Read up on the history of organic farming and look at what certification allows.