Can we grow what we eat? Or, more importantly, can we grow what we think we should eat? What should we eat? Should we eat just some meat? No meat – go vegan? Is dairy bad? Uh oh, does that mean cheese is out then?
These are the questions that I think many people are asking. The advice we’re getting is all about what we should eat, yet, I’ve been thinking about where and how we’re growing or rearing food.
In my last blog post I made a bid to start the hashtag #PlaceBasedDiet as I’d been thinking about the where in this story, and it seems important to me. I suggested that we get out of the supermarket (put that shopping trolley back!) and explore our local foodscape more. In so doing we can reconnect more with food. I ended up with the idea of an imaginary homestead.
This idea might seem bizarre, or may be even trite, to someone who is already a homesteader or a farmer, but then very few people are in that position. Most of us who log on to social media live in countries where under 10% of people are farmers. Mostly we’re disconnected with what can be grown or reared on our doorsteps, but there are many who say that it doesn’t have to stay that way.
If we’ve taken on board that buying more local food would be better, the surely it would be worth thinking about the most sustainable way for this food to be produced? How about thinking about how you would do it, even if that’s not your plan? It’s a mind-stretcher….
What Do I Know and Not Know?
So how would I know how to grow most of what I eat when the extent of my homesteading is growing some of my own food in an urban garden, a backyard container garden and on an allotment nearby? I’m in to preserving food in traditional ways, but otherwise my efforts are more home crafts related.
I’ve never reared or kept any livestock (as yet). I’ve been interested in homesteading and farming for a long time though, and as I work in archaeology my perspective on this is a long one. If you want to know more, a previous blog post here looks down a long lens through the past, and back again to the future.
What do big influencers know or not know? Check out, for instance a few journalists for national newspapers and people who are the voice of high profile think tanks. You probably won’t see any sign that they’ve produce a carrot or a cow between them. We take our advice from these people, maybe even elevate them almost to the status of ‘guru’. I want to persuade you that you could be your own guru and inform yourself.
What Would Your Imaginary Homestead Be Like?
How would you produce most of your own food? Could you do that without all the inputs that ramp up the carbon footprint of your food? All those factors that I mentioned in my last blog post #PlaceBasedDiet.
If we think about how we would grow most of our own food, with only a little trading in an almost closed-loop system, I think it would focus our minds on what our local landscapes can provide. Even if you don’t intend to be a homesteader, it could send you on an interesting and useful thought trail.
Where Will It Be?
Where might your homestead be? I suggest that we’re prepared, metaphorically speaking, to homestead anywhere.
There is no one food-producing environment.
We could homestead in the city and the suburbs. Many people do, usually with the use of some extra rented or borrowed land. Otherwise, we could expect to be homesteading from the hills to the valley floor.
I often wonder what I could produce if I went further down the homesteading or smallholder route. If I didn’t do this in the city (a small city), I’d be drawn to the hills.
But maybe, for the imaginary homestead I shouldn’t choose. I should just stick a pin in a map of my region and see what comes up. Anyone up for the same challenge?
How would you go about it? I’d go about in the same way anyone would who is looking for a new home would. I’d research and look around.
Get To Know Your Land
So lets say my pin landed in the hills – if I could I’d go there. Have a look around, get a feel for the place. Notice what crops and animals are in the fields. It’s like looking for a new house.
I wouldn’t believe everything the estate agents say though. For estate agents substitute a lot of the biggest voices on social media. I’d pluck up the courage to ask the locals instead.
Homesteaders on Social Media
You may have no intention of homesteading, but homesteaders are talking in a way that’s very likely to have you thinking more deeply about what it takes to produce food.
I’ve come across lots of homesteaders out there on social media. If you read their blogs, they all have their own stories about how they came to do this. Most weren’t born into it. They didn’t necessarily have much money either.
Hear from Gently Sustainable about How to start a homestead with No Money. Some dived in at the deep end and landed themselves straight into it. Some planned and researched first. They nearly all talk about the steep learning curve, the trials and tribulations.
I’ve saved several links about homesteading on my Pinterest board, so in the hope that this might be helpful, here’s my – Productive garden and homestead board.
Armchair Farmer
Want to know what it takes to produce sustainable food? Ask a farmer.
I’m a self-confessed armchair farmer. There are so many fascinating books written by farmers and smallholders for anyone to read. They want us to know about farming. These are the farmers who are proud of the way that they farm. They generally farm closely with nature and care about the animals they keep. The big agri-industry farmer doesn’t tend to write books for the general public. There may be a reason for that.
I’ve been building up a Goodreads list. Check it out on the sidebar if you like. It’s mostly British-focused, so you may need to search for books more relevant to where you live. One book, Letters to a Young Farmer I can’t praise highly enough – it’s US-focused.
Bear in mind, though, that if we skimp on the research we could all too easily get it wrong. All theory but no practical experience. Get it right, and we gain valuable knowledge.
If you want some advice, Forest Creek Meadows are sustainable life designers, living on a homestead in Romania. I’m sure they would be happy to advise.
Nirvana
What about you? So you’re thinking of a homestead in a warm, balmy climate on good fertile soils on flat ground or on gently rolling hills. In your mind, relax, poor yourself a glass of wine, wander around your small vineyard in your mind and think about what to do next.
Maybe, sow your wheat crop for next year. There’s lots of baking on the menu. You’re in Nirvana.
You can grow all that food that the promoters of the Mediterranean diet as a fix for climate change speak of.
Only I won’t linger here because in reality there’s a good chance you don’t have this environment around you. Besides, most of the planet isn’t like this.
Even in Nirvana, the fertility of the soils will fail eventually if you don’t have a plan to maintain it. I’m assuming we’re not using chemical fertilisers.
Nirvana is not the best environment to get a handle on the challenges we face in feeding ourselves. The best environment is where you are.
Can We Grow What We Eat?: Challenging Environments
Most of the world is a challenging environment in which to produce food. We might think those environments are the wind-swept Mongolian plains, Siberia, and the deserts of the Near East. They are, but my guess is that there’s plenty of land that’s challenging enough on your doorstep. Here’s one challenging environment I’m fond of….
Upland Homestead
If I weren’t in the city, I’d head for the hills, I said. I’ve no idea why. I live just off the floodplain in Worcester – a small city where the countryside is not far away. Perhaps, though, I prefer to have my head in the clouds, even if it can be a bit chilly up there. I have a strange liking for quite bleak landscapes.
Upland landscapes in the UK have cold winters and often poor soils. Head west and north of where I live and on hilly ground, nutrients leach out of the acid soils during wet winters. Grass grows best here. These are not environments that stock the supermarket shelves with vegetables and salads.
It’s no surprise that if you head up into the hills you will find yourself surrounded by sheep, and possibly highland cattle or other hardy breeds.
Sneak a look over garden gates and you may see a few goats close to the house.
All those animals. It’s a farmscape that has a long history to it. It is the local food culture. If this jars with you because you want a plant-based homestead, consider Robert Hart. He was vegan and produced his food in a forest garden system for himself and his brother. He lived near Wenlock Edge in Shropshire, one of the two high ridges I was looking out on in Animal-based or plant-based food for a sustainable diet?. I add this in here as a different perspective. It’s a way of producing food that I’m surprised we don’t hear much about, considering the plant-based zeitgeist at the moment. He did grow quite a few exotics to get by though. Quite how, in that environment, I don’t know.
I’m thinking of going this way on my allotment. Personally, though, I favour the historic farmscape when it comes to the larger scale. Because of the working environment I’ve been steeped in for many years.
Soils, Weeds and Pests
I know well that whatever your soils are like they underpin how you produce your food. Still, recently, I’ve found that I’ve overestimated the fertility of the soil where my allotment is located. It looks good – dark and crumbly, but it’s deceptive.
I’ve checked it out on Soilscapes and found it categorised as low fertility. You might want to try this yourself if you live in England. I think I was resting on my laurels a bit where looking after the soil was concerned. I’d moved from an allotment site that suffered from flooding, but got a dump of nutrient rich river silt every few winters. Now on my new site I’m paying the price and making up for lost time. I’m throwing everything at it – compost, manure, and green manure.
Did you know that farmers say that we have anywhere between 50 and 100 years of topsoil left? All because of the way we are industrially farming the soil. It’s the use of chemical fertilisers that don’t add organic matter into the soil and the high yields being squeezed out of the ground.
Whatever your soils, you need a plan to return organic matter to the soil. Otherwise, you may want to keep it in the ground under pasture. Look into permaculture, agroecology, biodiverse farming, polyculture, which are essentially traditional, old-school farming techniques and you will find the answers. All these movements are part of a growing desire to revive and build upon traditional knowledge.
On our homesteads we don’t need to keep crop weeds down with herbicides. To ensure we, rather than pests and parasites eat the crops, we can use people power not pesticides. What we need is people and biodiversity; small farms, more farmers and homesteaders.
If this all seems like never, never land, remember that around 70% of the world’s food is produced by small farmers.
The Global homestead
So, you have your homestead in your mind. One that fits into your local landscape, and operates on an almost closed-loop system. You’d be many steps ahead of anyone else in appreciating the global homestead as a total closed-loop system. Where all our inputs into producing food are concerned, we live in a finite world. I digress on this finite world in Sustainable Life: Everything Has to Come from Somewhere.
If I’m not mistaken, Star Trek isn’t real. After all, there are no other habitable worlds out there, as far as we know. I could be fooled, though, as my husband, Andy, has Star Trek on the TV a lot at the moment. He who was born on a farm has imagination in galaxies far beyond the Milky Way.
How should we take our advice about what we should be eating? The voices that speak the loudest on social media, right now, are not farmers or homesteaders. The loudest, and most numerous are food consumers. They seem to take no account of how we produce the food they prescribe, in a finite world.
So, can we grow what we eat? it’s a good question. You could say I’m not one for taking what we hear on social media at face value. I want to persuade you to dig deeper.
Featured image by Jens Johnson on unsplash.com
If I’ve interested you in sustainable food, you my like to know about my book about sustainable food. It’s centered on a journey around where I live, but it’s relevant anywhere. And, it’s, out now……
