1 million lbs of food a year on 3 acres.

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Doesn't it make you wonder why it cost so much to feed the average family? Does it make you wonder why our current agriculture model is so heavy on high tech equipment and use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides?????????? Does it make you wonder where our government is in encouraging small scale farming and independent food production??????
 
If it were actually that easy then lots of people would be doing it. But it isn't. Raising food in a large enough quantity and diversity to feed your family and to have enough left over to sell or trade is a very labor, time, resource, and financially intense operation. It is nearly impossible for a single person or family to be totally self sufficient. If one wants a subsistence level existence, it can be done. But, there is a reason people specialized. It is much easier to do one or two things really well and trade that skill/time to others for what they do really well.

Yes, I come from a long line of farmers so I am well aware of how much work goes into raising livestock, growing crops, growing a garden, maintaining an orchard, etc. I can do and have done all those things but by specializing I can get the benefits of all those things and more. I can spend my days working on a farm to put food on the table or I can do what I am specialized in and for 8-10 hours of my total monthly work time put food on the table that is just as fresh/nutritious and much more diverse. And I still have plenty of work hours left in the month to "trade" for other things that I find useful/enjoyable.

It is a matter of weighing the cost vs the benefit. Yes I still raise a small garden, have some chickens for eggs and meat, hunt when I can to put additional meat on the table, can to preserve the harvest/hunt, and heat when I can with a wood stove. I do those things because their costs are outweighed by their benefit to me. I enjoy those things but I do not have to toil day in and day out at them to generate revenue.
 
Yep. And took lots of time/labor as well as a huge capital investment. Also, $116,900 is the gross, the net is very different. He also can't eat all that corn himself. He's gotta trade it for other goods that he needs. He has thus specialized. If everyone chose to raise corn or the 10,000 fish things would not end well. ;)

To the second poster... The reason current ag practices are so heavily dependent on herbicides, pesticides, heavy equipment, tech, etc, is because that is what it takes to raise the massive quantities of food needed to feed the current worlds population without putting prices through the roof or making lots more people work in ag. With the population we have and the percent of that population that is in ag, there simply aren't enough people in ag to produce enough food via other methods nor are there enough people in ag to work the land that is currently in production if other methods are used. With current methods one person can farm a huge amount of land. Using other methods they simply couldn't make use of that much land. So, you'd either have less food produced driving up prices or you'd have to get more people into ag again driving up prices because the costs would go up.
 
But my point was that it can be done, regardless of work or time. If everyone (or even a small percentage of people) could do this it would greatly cut down on the reliance to commercial industries. What they don't want you to know is that you don't have to rely on anyone for anything if you don't want to. That's how they keep you where they want you. I.E. under them on the ladder. And the lower on the rung you are, the more you rely. Basic capitalism in a nutshell. They want it this way because if it wasn't everyone would realize we don't need them in the first place. Did you know that 99% of the nation's wealth is held in the pockets of the top 1% of the population? Guess who that is, that's right, the people that supply the seeds, fertilizer, and insecticide that's used in commercial farming. On top of that they tax for every seed used by the small town farmer, and if you don't use their seeds, they sue! Not to mention with the pollination rate of most of them, if your neighbors have GMO corn, so do you.
 
The Colonel said:
But my point was that it can be done, regardless of work or time. If everyone (or even a small percentage of people) could do this it would greatly cut down on the reliance to commercial industries. What they don't want you to know is that you don't have to rely on anyone for anything if you don't want to. That's how they keep you where they want you. I.E. under them on the ladder. And the lower on the rung you are, the more you rely. Basic capitalism in a nutshell. They want it this way because if it wasn't everyone would realize we don't need them in the first place. Did you know that 99% of the nation's wealth is held in the pockets of the top 1% of the population? Guess who that is, that's right, the people that supply the seeds, fertilizer, and insecticide that's used in commercial farming. On top of that they tax for every seed used by the small town farmer, and if you don't use their seeds, they sue! Not to mention with the pollination rate of most of them, if your neighbors have GMO corn, so do you.
Click to expand...
If everyone was to go back to farmsteading like in the 1800's then we could.The set up cost to do what was done in the video would be tremendous.And actually is more labor driven and energy consuming.Lots of people grow non gmo that do not get sued.If you illegally obtain GMO seeds or violate your contract then they will sue you.
 
matt44644 said:
If everyone was to go back to farmsteading like in the 1800's then we could.The set up cost to do what was done in the video would be tremendous.And actually is more labor driven and energy consuming.Lots of people grow non gmo that do not get sued.If you illegally obtain GMO seeds or violate your contract then they will sue you.
Click to expand...

Oh ok I misunderstood the lawsuit part. The one thing that really stood out to me was the way the used the waste from the previous specimens, such as the runoff from the fish, into the plants, and back through and so forth. I know you can buy heirloom seeds but it seems that as it gets further along its getting harder to find between cross pollination and the like. Google contraceptive corn for their new doozy, set to hit fields in spring of '15.
 

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