Lets stop talking about home gardens.

Ruud has updated his arguments. The new stuff is at the bottom.

There's a lot there, and some of them are concepts that are going to need their own posts. Plus, frankly, I don't want this to be a back and forth between the two of us as you as an audience. I'm posting his stuff so that you guys will see it, and I want to hear your responses. Read it. Parts will probably make you angry. I know I past back and forth madly muttering before sat down to write. But it's good that it made me angry, it's good if it makes you angry, because he's challenging our ideas. And ideas need to be challenged, to me made stronger or, if they prove bad, to die. There's more to Ruud's response than just farms vs gardens. At points he challenges some of the core concepts of superstruct, things like decentralization, or large scale collaboration without designated decision makers. I think we need to answer these things. And don't leave it all up to me, I have limited free time.

That said, before I get to the points of contention, I want to talk about the points where I agree with Ruud.

Victory gardens are a nice start, if you are a 1st worlder. They suppliment your store bought diet. You can certainly replace all your veggies this way, and not have to quit your day job either. Butyou aren't gonna get your grains that way, you definately won't get any meat or dairy this way. Even if you go full vegitarian, you aren't going to get all your calories this way, not without moving to the next level, which is the Homestead.

The homestead is the leveled up version of the garden. This is what I talk about, not the victory garden, when I talk about personal scale agriculture. If you are a first worlder, this is actually a bad idea, from an economic standpoint. You, as a first worlder, have access to the market and the means to purchase food that way. Homesteading is a full time job, and your effective pay is too little to justify it. Vegetables are a high priced item right now, so an hour spent planting and tending them pays for itself against the going rate. But grain foods are still cheap, so if you are growing corn or potatoes, you'd be better off spending your time working a minimum wage job and buying it. Ask yourself how much effort goes into personally farming potatoes, versus how much they cost. Do you fancy working for a few cents an hour?

I have a homestead, and I do it for completely political reasons. I don't want to be a first worlder, despite having been raised one. I want to be self-sufficient. I want my food, as well as my other needs, provided from as close to me as possible on my Seraa map. But from an economic standpoint, it's a poor decision.

Now for the rest of the world, the 3 billion who live in rural areas, and who's wages are somwhat less that 100 dollars per year, Homesteading becomes a great option. But if you are reading this on a computer, chances are you aren't one of those people. Well, thanks to initiatives like OLPC, chances have gotten better that you are one of those people. And these are the people that I'd like to help homestead. Because as Ruud points out, they currently don't really know how. And they also lack access to the tools. And the land. When I say ensuring that everyone has access to the means of production, that's what I'm talking about: Tools, land, seeds, training.

But there's another part of the world, the first world, that will be far better off continuing to get their food from the store. And this is the main point I want to make, the main area I agree with Ruud on. Not enough of superstruct's focus has been on large scale agriculture and the food distribution system. Remember, it's a systemic, economic issue we're dealing with, not a production one. Both those systems are what feed those of us that don't farm, and we're not going to make everyone a farmer. We still need people to do other jobs.

Your garden is a good start. It's a valuable piece of the puzzle, one of many co-existing and mutually inclusive strategies to meeting this crisis. But I think we've got it mainly figured out, at least as well as we can in conversation. It's time to set it aside and work on the other strategies we'll need.