this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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The problem with Mr. White here is that he's still internalizing capitalistic individualism.
"Everyone should grow their own food and be self sufficient." -- Nope.
"The local community should grow food for each other and be self sufficient." -- Yes.
Food self-sufficiency is much more realistic on a community scale than on an individual scale. And it can help with all the problems listed here:
People who don't have access to land -- can share the land of others who do have access to land
People with health problems -- can be assisted by the community and still help out where they can (maybe their health problems prevent them from effectively weeding or harvesting, but maybe they could still help with sorting/processing/preserving)
People who value food security -- with a larger community growing more diverse crops, you're less likely to have catastrophic crop failure
People who hate zucchini -- again, with a larger community growing more diverse crops, there would be more options for what to eat
Isn't division of labour a capitalistic thing? That ultimately leads to alienation?
What is the limit of a "community"? I live in a city where it is certainly not practical to grow the food needed to feed the city inside thr city limits. On thr other hand, in my province there is tons of high quality land that would be more than sufficient to grow enough food for the whole province, especially if the food system shifted to a vegetarian-focused one. Thats a lot bigger than my "community" but it is a lot more practical and arguably more sustainable.
I live in a small community with only around 8 billion others. We have our problems, but most of us are trying to make it work.
Looking at my own area in a city there is basically zero nearby plots where community gardening would be realistic; however, if one could get an entire street to agree to use their front yards as a plot, well now all that land is being used to grow food for the community rather than just for looking or sitting. Ofc, good luck in getting people to agree to that...
I don’t know what the average yard size is in your area, but in general I doubt front yards would provide enough land to sustain everyone. I might be wrong though so it still would be an interest f experiment just to see if it could work
I was thinking the front yards of an entire city block. I also don't think it would be enough for a main source for food for everyone, maybe just some fresh ingredients from time to time, buuut it's also just a though experiment for me. Breaking down the fences and walls put up everywhere to say this is mine.
Personnally I'd argue that there is no hard limit to the size of a community and to the number of communities a single person belongs to. Neighborhoods can have community gardens and kitchens, hobby farmers can share their crops with family, etc. At the provincial level, I find supply management to be alright for cutting speculation out of the equation and insuring a livelihood to local professional farmers.
There's a level of food sufficiency one can achieve on their own, even without land. e.g. I'm putting together a medium scale hydroponics system right now for home - it needs 100-120cm of wall, 30cm deep at its thickest point, and can grow about 120 separate spots.
Now obviously hydroponics is not an easy answer for all food needs. You can't easily grow wheat and other grains/cereals in the volume you'd need. You can't grow larger fruits that require trees. Smaller fruits - tomatoes, cucumbers, berries are usually pretty doable. And of course tons of herbs and spices - rocket/arugula, basil, mint, you name it.
If anything, the herbs alone are worth setting up a small home unit, especially since it's so effort-free - add water, measure nutrients, repeat once a week, harvest in 3-4 weeks earliest, trim it proper and freeze for long term storage, and you don't even need to re-plant things because most of what you'd grow in hydroponics, when trimmed right, just grows again.
Again, this doesn't solve all the issues, but having some freshly grown herbs at least is a good way to get started with "grow your own", even if on full scale it's impossible.