7) Absolutely zero. What are all you doomers going to do when the oil runs out and the world doesn't come to an end?
My wife has a vegetable garden where she runs up our water bill drowning cucumbers, lettuce, and tomato plants.

I have a difficult time answering this because I specialize in vegetables. Though I may participate in growing enough veggies for 20 families, and am mostly self-sufficient in veggies, my family has to purchase everything else: dairy, meat, grains, legumes, sugars, oils, and luxury items (e.g., coffee, tea and chocolate).

You need more choices in your poll. I voted number 1, completely self-sufficient, although that's not completely accurate. I produce more than I need May-October and sell the excess. Similarly I have excess milk and yogurt when my cow is lactating which I sell, but buy dairy products when she is dry. And I have excess eggs to sell in the spring and summer but buy eggs in the winter months. Also we always buy things we can't produce like sugar, cooking oil, white flour, etc.

My gardening efforts have been meager and little supported by others and little rewarded.

But I sense a change in this.

The squirrels in my neighborhood have enjoyed the fruits of my gardening labors almost as much as we have.

The squirrels eat blossoms and fruit.

So ... squirrel-proofing will be high on my list of gardening tasks.

This poll raises a pet peeve: the term "self-sufficiency."

I'm sorry, but another myth. I marked 25-50% because of the sheer volume of food we have, but for me the percentage is impossible to calculate because the term itself is deceiving:

We're dependent on a whole web of farmers and artisans, even if we grow most of our own food: seed and animal breeders and sellers, equipment makers, electricity for pumps. As you can imagine, the list is endless.

I didn't vote, because none of the categories fits my situation. I grow less than 5%, but "absolutely zero" isn't accurate. If was just zero, I guess I could have picked it and claimed rounding error, but "absolutely" zero doesn't really allow that. :)

I am an apartment dweller. And I'm upstairs, so the only thing I can grow is stuff in pots. I grow kitchen herbs, mostly. Sometimes tomatoes or strawberries. And there's an old apple tree outside my window. (This was an apple farm not that long ago.) It produces delicious (if rather wormy) Cortlands in the fall, but I can't really claim to grow them.

My dad is an agronomist, so I have spent time on farms (including working on them in my teenage years). I used to try to plant gardens when I was a kid living at home, but wasn't very successful. Japanese beetles ate my strawberries, fungus killed my watermelon and pumpkins, an early frost killed my corn. My dad wasn't much help. He would just say, "Farming is a tough life. Stay in school."

I guess it was a cobbler's children going barefoot kind of situation. My mom was always upset that our yard didn't look as good as the neighbor's. But after messing around with weeds, pesticides, fertilizers, etc., all day at work, it was the last thing my dad wanted to do at home.

maybe 25% now. i am practicing growing food that stores easy over the winter. corn to grind, beets[store in cool & damp area- root cellar], sweet potatoes- dry cool storage. i figure winter, early spring will be tough times in tough times so i'm practicing for such.above crops did well but lots of watering required, & sweet potatoes long & skinny.

very late freeze got most tomato starts[actually i was depending on neighbor] so i didn't put up any. butternut & acorn squash failed. i did soybeans last year & did well; some still frozen.

neighbor provides turnips & winter greens. limited time last spring but now am unemployed & will reemploy as little as possible so i am trying to eat /cook from stored food as much as possible & will expand next spring.time to plan now[some excitement].

got the pond dug with drought & leaving 15yr. job in july. was my last [do they ever end]huge po project.

Hello Nate,

I voted [zero %] because I own no land, and the homeowner where I am renting a bedroom is in complete denial. I offered to rake up leaves and start a compost pit--no go, put it in the trash--breaks my heart to see this hauled by a city trash-truck fifty miles outside my Asphalt Wonderland to be buried in a landfill with all kinds of toxics. Such is life.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I used to grow a garden for the deer who would jump right over the 5 foot fence and blink at me as they chewed. Now I've been growing cucumbers on the deck in pots about 12 feet above the ground. They are very thirsty because of the small pots so they don't yield a lot since I don't keep up with them enough. But, they are tasty. With the price of oil so high though I've started suplementing my heat with twenty 23 watt CFLs illuminating peas, beans, lettuce (I finally found my seeds) carrots, tomatoes, basil, chives and parsley. The peas are up. Since I've arranged the illumination to be twice as bright as the Sun (in the optical, not the infrared) and I intend to leave the lights on most of the time, this is mostly an experiment to see how these plants grow at high density in the extra light and to figure out what the pollination requirements are for the peas and beans. The Miracle Grow Organic Garden Soil promises twice the growth so this should be interesting. I'm keeping a control planter above the illuminated ones to compare the growth with only our wane winter sunlight.

So, I'm nowhere near self-sufficient, but I am gardening on Winter Solstice with lots of little green shoots. "It came a fowerette bright, amid the cold of Winter When half spent was the night."

Chris

Hmm you guys and your deer, and my "birds" post makes me think .... grow stuff deer/squrrels/birds/etc like then harvest the critters.

I plan to do some serious investigation of the crawdad fishing here when the weather warms up.

#6 - %5 or less. **

Very small community garden plot. Our second year, and only planted after a house next to it blew up/burned down from a gas leak, and was shoveled onto the Garden in Mar/Apr.. took til June before new soil and fencing got brought in, and even then the hedgehog (Fleam, it might have been a 'possum, if that gives it more poetic flair.. but more critters at the table, nonetheless) got much of the early growth.

** But it's worth adding that we are buying from a CSA, local dairy, local meats, stocking with many other locally produced foods, while our Jobs are largely locally based as well. As Bendzela said (sort of), there are a lot of ways for one to be living sustainably within the immediate communities, such that there is a good, resilient network with a variety of somewhat specialized producers. There is a strong emphasis towards a 'survivalist' movement where many people suspect that when the Fan starts really spraying it, that we're all on our own. I don't buy it, and I won't resign myself to preparing for such a solution.

One of the Agriculture issues that's always on the tip of my tongue in these discussions, is that there ARE farms that will need to sell their produce. It might make sense to come up with some contingency plans to be able to quickly apply forms of local currency and local food crediting, so that 'in a pinch', farmers can be moving their produce, people can eat, and there is a way to bypass a shortage of cash, which should be no reason to keep those material flows from moving.

How does the farmer buy the next batch of seed, or make payments on the Farm, etc..? I have no idea. But creative minds should be able to propose some contingencies that could be developed.. like the 'Mainers sharing a few heated homes' idea from the other day. It might be uncomfortable, but it could keep people alive. My thought has been to put solar heat and electric on the schools (and churches or other larger public gathering spaces).. where the supply can help the budget of these institutions in normal times, and then can provide a heated shelter for lots of people when there's a downturn..

Just a thought..

Bob

I think a good PO skill is to learn to make brew your own beer. people will always trade you something, probably anything to have some beer in bad times.

I grow a small veggie herb and berry garden on .01 acre and in pots. So the rest is 'locavore' sourced when possible: farmers market, CSA, and Amish grocer. I bought a case of Ball jars and am learning how to safely put up food.

Could probably dig out a couple ornamentals to replace with more food crops. But it still wouldn't be enough. Instead I help start up community food gardens for other people in the region. [Attention apartment dwellers: set up a community garden space arrangement with your management company.] Can't wait til my own HOA is ready to convert the lawn spaces for same. I give 'em about three years.

Happiness is...a peaknik in his victory garden.

I've been away from TOD for a long time before coming back recently. Had anyone conducted a poll from the TODers regarding the best places to be when TSHTF? I noticed someone advising people on PO readiness has decided to move himself to Mexico though I am clueless on the reasons behind and which part of Mexico.

Here's the problem we are facing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR200712...

Humans are breeding like rabbits. And we think that it's a good thing. If you are a food producer better get the shotgun ready. Lots of "midnight harvesting".

Up until a few years ago I/we were 100 % food self sufficient but we were considered wierd and now I am maybe 25% with a new partner and 2 kids. It was a very different life and I have found that those who talk about sustainability and food self sufficiency don't really have any idea what they are talking about

I have a degree in Agriculture and have sold off most of my land.

2000+- calories every day from your land/garden is not a life folks would understand or want to live. Believe me I have been there and it was a beautiful life, but most would not want to make the adjustments.

We did trade for elec. to pump water and pay taxes , but did not buy any food.

3)25-50% My gardening was pretty successful this year using Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening method. In my small corner of Colorado the soil is mainly gravel and clay. Terrible stuff. I previously tried ammending the soil for years to no avail. I have been simply amazed at my results with the Sq. Ft. method! It was more work to setup but the best garden since I lived in Illinois. I still have greens growing (ice arrugula, kale & such) in an improvised cold frame cover, and I still have carrots in the ground that I pull out when we need them. I also have 30 gallons of wine fermenting from fruit in my yard (apples, rhubarb, grapes, and cherries). MY herbs are doing well inside now along with a sampling of tropicals (lemon, fig, bay, cherimoya, coffee and black pepper). I am practicing wiht seed-saving too.

I also had great success with squash. My pink banana squash grew on a trellis and were outrageously huge (visualize 2.5ft long and 10" dia) They are keeping well at room temp. I'm doing some sample plots of winter wheat, barley and oats, just to see how they do. Lastly, after some unsuccessful starts, I got my hops growing now so beer won't have to be too sweet after the crash ;-)

This past fall I ripped out our front yard and put in a semi-permaculture mixture of fruit trees and berry bushes. It looks nice and our front and back yards are only tiny urban ones (about 250 sqft in front and perhaps double that in back) but provide a fair amount of food.

I also hunt, and this year my son & I put 2 deer and 2 elk in the freezer. That plus miscellaneous small game meets about 85% of our meat needs. We buy chicken, some fish and small amounts of pork. I'm going to try my hand at raising some urban chickens and bee keeping next year.

I'm pretty serious about preparing by practicing skills before we need to rely on them. I've had experience with gardening and still had lots of mistakes and lost whole crops. That could be disastrous in a crisis. IMHO there's a big humbling gulf between reading about and thinking about actions versus doing them. To me, personal skills, knowledge and tools are more valuable now than money in the bank, so that is where I have invested my time. I actually quit my engineering management job last summer to better prepare and to take care of family needs (we also have a daughter with disabilities that requires a lot of support). It takes a lot of time to do the gradening and other work that wasn't happening when I worked 50hr weeks and commuted an hour each way!

Happy holidays to all the OilDrum readers!

None of the classifications fit me exactly, but I checked over 100% because I am a farmer/rancher and probably feed several hundred families beside my own with what I grow, but I don't sell all we produce. I'd guess somewhere between a third and half of what we eat is grown on our place--the rest comes from the grocery store.

I'm gonna plead guilty to number 6, with an explanation. Prior to my divorce about 6 years ago, we were on the Farmers Mkt circuit, (CCOF certified organic) and grew a good deal of our food. I tried to muddle thru the first season, but it was just too difficult timewise, and I made a decision not to grow until I quit work. Gardening wasn't terribly compatible with 3 or 4 12 hr night shifts/week, combined with 2 hrs of commuting.
When farming, we grew all our seasonal produce, plus what we sold. Didn't do much canning; just tomatoes, I think. We also had about 100 chickens, and 5 hives of bees, along with 2 angora goats, and for a while, angora rabbits.

I'm retiring by the end of next Oct. If TSHTF before that, I'll quit sooner, but, as of now, I am not planning on a spring garden for next year.

I have maybe 100 fruit trees, mostly apples and pears, with as few plumps, Asian pears, almonds, and a non-producing walnut or 2. Tried cherries and peaches, but have a lot of trouble in our rainy climate. Have a large variety of trees, to try and extend the season as much as possible.
The garden had about 50 raised beds (100 sq ft), plus maybe 200 linear feet of raspberries, and some grapes.
Was pretty much pure John Jeavons, except the time constraints meant I was using sprinklers instead of overhead watering by hand. Dripped the berries and the trees.
Double dug all the beds by hand; had a U-bar built by the local blacksmith, and could do a bed in about an hour. The time constraints came at harvest; could have grown more, but had no time to pick it all, and no hired hands.
I also grew a few beds of wheat each winter, for practice, a cover crop, and goat food. Managed to grow about half the goat food for 8 months of the year, by harvesting the paths in the garden, + corn stalks, etc.
I've got my seeds, I have my beds and my trees. Next year, I'll have the time again. Probably hold it down to about 10 beds, until I need to go full tilt boogie. If that happens, I'll be growing for my kids, so they will be working out there, too. In the meantime, I have a lot of preserved food and canned seeds, + wheat, a variety of beans, buckwheat, and barley seeds I can plant. Have some split peas, too, but don't think they will grow.

No plans for chickens and bees again.May have to trade with folks I know who are already producing these. Plus, there is a herd of cattle next door, so I may have to trade produce for meat with them.

Oh...learned how to graft trees along the way. Had fair success with that.

Oh; reminded by VtFarmer's post...I have one sugar maple, maybe 20 years old. May not be big enuf to tap for another 10 or 20 years, but somebody on the West Coast will have maple syrup.

Rat

Nate--

Aren't you supposed to take the styrofoam packing peanuts off the squash before you cook it?

As far as your poll, I am less than 50% self-sufficient although that is the ultimate goal. This last year was dedicated to getting the house finished and its energy systems, but I am mostly self-sufficient with it (my PV meets most of my electricity needs and I heat with a masonry heater with a geothermal heat pump as a back up). I produced enough maple syrup this year to last me two years so may not sugar this year. I am still in the infrastructure development stage as well as in over my head with animals for which I am not yet prepared. I grew squash, peppers, and tomatoes last year in the garden and put in an orchard and other perennials which are not yet producing (but lots of roadside apples with which I pressed cider for freezing this year). But I am getting enough eggs from my small flock for my own use and to give to friends; my steers are putting on mass, and the cow is advancing nicely in her pregnancy; my ram had a major injury which may have prevented him from fulfilling his duties with the ewes; and my draft horses are eating but not yet working (since I am still in the learning mode of teamstering). If the sheep are pregnant, I will milk them after they lamb to make cheese and will start milking the cow soon (although I am leaving the calf on her since I don't need that much milk and that way I am not committed to a twice a day milking). This summer I will expand the annual garden and should get up to about 50% self-sufficiency. I should get trees felled this winter to mill into timbers and lumber this summer with my sawmill to build my outbuildings over the next two years and will get firewood cut and split earlier this year. It's a slow and evolving process.

If the question is about food self sufficientcy or self reliance then it comes down to raising grain or grains to get the 2000 calories per day year round. I have never heard of anyone doing this in the usa.

If anyone feels that this is important then they should figure what grain it is they want to eat daily

Here's a modern version of my favorite song from the 1970's. Seeing as how we're to repeat the '70s n all. I kept parts of it, but changed places to make it fit today's world.

The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the oil wells there a goin’ dry
The money supply is up, and the buyin’ power’s down
And your gonna freeze to death if you live in town
I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids, and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle, and burn E-85
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do
We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

Because you can’t starve us out
And you cant makes us run
Cause one-of- ‘em old boys raisin ole shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn

We’ll outlive the very last of the coalmines
We'll outlive Abqaiq, Ghawar, and the EPA's fines
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot-line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just hillbilly
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine

But he was killed by a mob that took to riot
When gas got too high they just couldn't buy it
Id love to spit some beechnut in them dudes eyes
And shoot 'em all with my old 45
Cause a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
Cause one-of- ‘em old boys raisin ole shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn

We stay the hell oughta California, and away from DC
Lord help the poor bastard who tries to mess with me
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot-line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive

First the vote: Currently raising zero % of my own food. Maybe this spring I will add a veggie garden,,,or maybe not.

Now my more substantive comments. Having read or skimmed this and the previous post on farmers and farming and the over 200+ comments I feel the need to add a perspective I have on this debate, one which Jason has heard from me personally and I have railed against professionally.

Any discussion by Heinberg and others on transitioning to a low energy system of food production dependent on many more farmers is premature unless the very contentious issue of LAND USE / LAND REFORM is discussed. As some of you know, I am a land use planner with a strong background in this subject area. In many, if not all jurisdictions in the US (as well as a number of other countries) what you do with your land and how it is arranged and configured is governed by a basket of rights commonly called zoning. Currently, most locations that maintain an agricultural designation, restrict the minimum parcel size and the number of units permissible on the property. For large scale ag, this isnt a problem as most commercially profitable operators operate well in excess of the typical minimums. But for those new small scale farmers that many of us envision, there simply are no properties available that are correctly sized and larger ones are unable to be collectively purchased and split down to a more useable size since the designation prohibits this anyway.

At the same time a compromise solution that would preserve parcel size minimums but allow collective ownership and residency--one I floated right here in Jason's backyard--was shot down by the local planning commission in a fairly contentious and well attended hearing by small scale farmers back in April. THis set of proposed allowances (which you can read if you click here: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/planningteam/pdf/GPU_070419_SR.pdf and scroll down to Item K on page 12) to encourage small scale farming were modest and entirely voluntary.

Oddly enough (or maybe not) allowances for farmworker housing continue to remain on the books. So while 10 small scale farmers are not able to band together and jointly farm a large holding in an equitable manner, a single farm owner can oversee a 10 subservient resident employees (or "independent contractors" as many farmers have taken to referring to their help as legally).

And speaking of ownership in general, land ownership in the US has gotten increasingly consolidated in rural areas due in no small part to cheap energy which makes farming thousand acre farms an afterthought. Well as cheap and abundant energy dries up but the land ownership patterns remain the same we have another problem that we do have historical references for: what will happen to the "landless" poor. We already know our zoning codes frown on collectivism but approve of (neo)feudalism. We know that landowners historically do not give up land willingly. We also know large mobs of landless poor are hugely destabilizing and have given rise to both the Lord-vassal relationships as well as the forced (often violently) removal of the land owner and redistribution of their holdings.

If we are indeed forced down Jason's curve, how are we going to get all our required farmers onto their lands--and under what ownership structure? It is great to talk about the nuts and bolts of farming but failing to address the legal, political and historical challenges to increasing farming in this country renders this discussion premature in my mind. I know we can sustainably farm small properties and provide a decent respectable standard of living for those farmers. The real question is will we be allowed to?

Siwmae pawb (Hiya all)

Fleam, you said that your area is not really right for growing things. To this comment, and to everyone else struggling up the early years of the grow-yer-own learning-curve (like me) may I offer these useful discoveries:

* Whilst there's still time, do an in-depth study of the ideas of permaculture. This does take time and repeated annual experience to get going up to a really sophisticated level, and we may not have much time left before the S really HTF. But once you have it going, it fits into any weather/soil/water/wild-things pattern you can think of, and still shows yields. Sophisticated permaculture plans commonly include 'wild' -- that is, volunteer -- inputs to your total yields. One of permaculture's most empowering rules-of-thumb is that -- if you look hard enough and think about it carefully -- every problem can turn out to be a benefit. No shit: this works, in the real practical sense. Bill Mollison’s magnum opus ‘Permaculture’ gives lots of examples. For North Americans, probably David Blume at www.permaculture.com is the most useful source, and certainly deeply inspiring for anyone who wants a hard, practical, time-served and proven demonstration of what's possible. Breathtaking yields! Permaculture works on any scale from big spreads to Cuban-style apartment-block survival roof-gardens.

* Investigate 'no-work' (really, low-work) cultivating. It makes the difference between back-breaking, quit-causing labour and bearable-labour inputs. Google Ruth Stout mulch-gardening; and/or Masanobu Fukuoka no-work farming.

* Take a look at The Scythe Connection website. The old wonder-tool who's time is returning. And no, I don't mean the heavy, dispiriting curved ash tools commonly known to North Americans and Brits, but the design used commonly a little further east in Europe. Sometimes called the Austrian scythe. I make these for my own use. And as the man says at the Scythe Connection, the old experienced mowers of an earlier generation were right: when you gain the knack of using them right, you can actually REST yourself when mowing. The Tai Chi comparison is no daft idea. It really can re-energise you as you work. For harvesting small/medium grain stands, animal fodder, and general mixed mulch materials WITHOUT being tied into the complex-machinery/high-energy-demand system, the scythe is a wonder tool.

* Another rule of thumb in permaculture is that no-one has a plague of slugs, snails, insects, (name your own pest). What you actually have is a dearth of ducks. Investigate Campbells and -- particularly -- Muscovey ducks. Muscoveys don't even need lots of water. A shallow pan does for them. Prime meat/egg/safely-reared-youngsters/pest-control, both of these species. And both can support themselves without supplementary food, if they can range in safety. Which leads to……

* If you have enough ground to be growing livestock, even small stock like ducks, rabbits, etcetera, then you need -- almost certainly -- a shepherd dog. (Not at all the same thing as a sheep dog) Nothing from a hawk to a Kodiak Grizzly gets past your shepherd dog to your livestock. Thieves don’t raid. Wild herbivores don't devastate your plants. A good shepherd dog is never off duty. Two are even more impenetrable. I've kept Anatolians for years, and know this to be true. True also of Maremmas, Pyreneans, Kuvasok, Ovcharkas, Gamprs, Kuchis, and many other local landraces of the whole Eurasian shepherd dog family. A big success story amongst stock farmers in North America since they started to be introduced by the Koppingers (Ray and Lorna) in the 1970s. Google Erick Conard in Texas, and Robert Denlinger at Denstar farm in Kentucky for detailed insights. Robert is particularly interesting, because as well as keeping shepherd dogs very successfully -- and telling fascinating stories about his and their joint learning curves -- he also farms with draft horses, and only has minimal machine needs. Both Erick and Robert can claim that they are the ONLY farmers in their respective neighbourhoods who've lost no livestock whatever to coyotes since they got their shepherd dogs. A shepherd dog – of either sex – dotingly mothering a bummer lamb born out in the field on a harsh February night and then mislaid by a silly ma is a sight to behold.

What has this-all to do with energy? These agricultural practices are the wave of the very near future, as the energy-famine starts to bite. I support my friends’ local CSA farm, and I know how they worry already about the cost of fuel just to keep their tractor running. The group-labour input of their consumer-subscribers is their lifeline, more and more, to keep the crops growing. I’m just off to the farm’s Winter Solstice social for all subscribers this afternoon. Great! Community trumps collapse….

Cofion gorau ac Nadolig LLawen I bawb (Best remembrances and Merry Christmas to all), RhG

PS: Diesel is now at about £6.10 a gallon here = something like $11 for the slightly smaller US gallon. And it's dawning on everyone slowly that we haven't seen the top of the ramp yet......

4)- 5-10% - We have a small hobby garden and it supplements our grocery store trips

we have a perma-culture type character living in house now. The tomatoes where plentiful and yummy. I doubt full cultivation of our garden could get us to 3) maybe close?

it was a wet summer so very little water was needed from the tap infavt i think we watered the tomatoes only once!

Boris
london

3a around 50%. Not enough considering in dry weather I use 200-500 litres of water a day via a solar pump and apply insecticide 2-3 times a week. I have a shadehouse, 14 or so fruit trees plus a similar number of semi raised beds 4X1.5m in terraces on a hillside, each with a chickenwire enclosure to keep out critters including the pademelon.

There's a lot I don't understand; why for example
this year is good for several crops including corn, pumpkins and strawberries, average for potatoes and lousy for cabbages. I have to work out what I'm doing wrong. Maybe the war time victory gardeners already had years of experience and just scaled up.

This news is probably a better place to post this than the Drumbeat since it discusses preserving seeds in the ultimate world seed bank.

I saw this article in my latest issue of "Popular Science". I've loved this mag since I was a kid and understand most of it is fantasy (especially in a post peak world) but every once in awhile there's a gem in it. The article I'm talking about is in the January 2008 edition and it's called The Gatherers.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Norwegian government will open a huge seed bank vault in February 2008, called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It is dug 400 feet into a mountainside and will store 4.5 million seeds.

I tried googling the article itself and couldn't find it on the internet, but I did find this one on the Canadian Global Research website that adds more to the story than Pop Sci did:

"Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty.

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault's relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Now...this article is mostly aimed at why people of power are deciding to create this vault now and concludes evil intentions and is probably stretching quite a bit.

The Pop Sci article is a more balanced story about the scientists gathering the seeds around the world and is worth grabbing the January edition to get it in full.

(edited last paragraph)

Poll: 6+ i.e. as close to 0% as you can get and still be doing something. 4 Roma tomato plants in half barrels and a 6' square patch of kitchen herbs.

Our house sits on a 25' X 70' urban lot, and there is a 1 car garage (workshop) on the lot as well, so there is really not a lot of free space, what there is is covered with wonderful ornamental plantings which are my wifes thing.

I did try a community garden plot for 2 years, but it was an 8 mile round trip commute to get to it, and when I figured the $ costs of what little my "black thumb" had been able to produce they were almost 1/2 that of a share from a local organic CSA farm, so that is what I do now.

Your poll has a gap between 10 - 25%, which is too bad because that is probably about where I'm at right now.

I put down the one below it because we were probably closer to just 10% this year. We had that horrible late hard frost last spring, so we lost all of our fruit crops. Then the drought started, so some of the vegies didn't end up yielding quite as well as I would have liked. This was also my first year at our community gardens. I have two plots, each 300 s.f., this first year was kind of experimental; I have a better idea now as to what to grow there. I did a good job of getting spring and summer crops, but not so good with succession planting for a fall crop; I've learned some things and have a better plan for next year. I also only had time to get 1/4 of it double dug; as I double dig more of it, I'll be able to do more on an intensive basis and the yields will go up. The gardens are a couple miles away, so I'm trying to focus my efforts there on things that do not require daily attention. All of my root crops are grown there, along with all of my brassicas (cabbage family), winter squash & sweet potatoes, and corn; each group takes up 1/4 of the total, and are on a 4-year rotation plan. I'm going to try the old Cherokee practice of interplanting pole beans with the corn next year. I mulch heavily, but even so with the drought I had to make more frequent trips out there than I wanted to just to water; we need a return to more normal precipitation! (The water there is free! We're right next to a river and have a pumping system; the plot rents paid for that and the fuel to run the pump.)

I'm going to trim some overhanging branches that have been increasingly shading my home vegie garden (that's another 300 s.f. at the moment), and am going to try to get some better production out of it. I also plan to grow a number of things (tomatoes, squash, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, strawberries) in containers on my deck (the sunniest place on my property) next year. I also plan to plant more fruits (blueberries, blackberries, currants, another apple). I'll be learning beekeeping this year in preparation for setting up my own hive in 2009. I then plan to be set up to raise rabbits by 2010 or 2011. Longer term, once I am no longer working a full time day job I plan to take down some trees and create another 600 s.f. garden in my side yard. Chickens may have to wait until I'm no longer working full-time and have the time to care for them, too. If milk prices go high enough, we might also just be able to squeeze in one dairy goat, which could pasture on the front yard (which we want to keep shaded with two sugar maples).

If (when?) times get really hard, I plan to approach several neighbors with the idea of letting me share-crop their yards - I grow garden vegies, and split with them on a 50:50 basis.

My goal isn't to reach 100% self sufficiency, but rather to simply reduce our vulnerability and thus strengthen our food security. Somewhere in the 50-75% range should do it.

Of course, there is another dimension to this, too. Even for foods one doesn't grow oneself, there are things you can do yourself to lessen your dependence. For example, I bake my own bread instead of eating store-bought. Eventually I'll probably get a grain grinder so I can just buy wheat instead of flour. I'm also in the process of starting to make my own yogurt; home-made cheese will follow soon. I could buy fruits & vegies in bulk in season at the farmers markets and can them myself; I've sometimes done that in the past and could do more of it.

I grew a smaller percentage (tax man took the garden last year) but pay sub $600 and get a bushel of veggies once a week over the growing season. What land I control grows 'other' stuff - like Jurslium Artichokes, ground cherries and Luffa gourds.

I still end up processing lotsa veggies. Nothing like canning squash/potatoes/other veggie bits/spices then to make 'food' place in blender and poof! A soup!

Oh, no option for hunting. (latest "toy" .75 cal muzzleloader for deer. Puts both ends on their butts)

Otherwise buy the base materials and make my own meals.

Its not 'traditional' - but the simplest is to take the pulp from veggie juicing, combine with other veggie bits and pulp in a champion juicer, mix with spice and a bit of fat - veggie gruel! When people comment I say "One day you'll be saying "remember when we had veggie gruel to eat?""

The poll's results so far are very interesting. As I suspected the majority of posters here do not produce most of their own food. What I find interesting is that the opposition to ethanol so often heard at the TOD probably comes mostly from this group. They are voicing their own self interest and at the same time frequently condemning corn growers and ethanol supporters as seeking only their own self interest. Seems to be a double standard to me.

Thank you, Nate, for an excellent poll.

Fascinating discussion.

I've done some intensive gardening, but now feel that that is not the most effective way to spend my time/energy/money.

Learning how to shop, scavenge and prepare food seems to be a better use of my resources. Gardening or farming by themselves are not the only answers.

For example:

Persimmons and pineapple guavas grow in our area. Many people don't like those fruits, so they are eager to give them away. Great eating for those in the know.

Soups, salads, and stir-fries - wonderful ways to use leftovers. My grandmother got me into the habit of making broth from chicken bones.

Oatmeal plus water/milk/yogurt and fruit/nuts, hot or cold, tastes better to me than boxed cereals.

Greens are cheap, easy-to-grow and fantastically nutritious. People throw away greens (like beet greens). In our area, chard grows like a weed.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Nate - We here in middle world pacific north west are great fans of the Delicata squash. Sweet enough that you do not have to add sugars, (I still slather them with butter though).

We keep a couple big boxes around and when ever the oven is fired up we throw a few in.

When you think about it, it always seems like the oven is about 90% empty when in use, even with a couple sheet pans of baked goods are in there. Stick a couple squash in as soon as you turn it on to pre-heat and leave them in after.

There are several varities of pumpkin that are very sweet and can be eaten "straight up". My kids will CHOOSE these dishes over most junk food, (but I guess that makes them freeeeks eh!).

My restaurant is about 25% local grown. I take all the stuff that the local "Organic Farmers" don't sell at market and therefore pay less (still way more than dist.)

We heard about a technique to extend the tomato season
and tried it for the first time this year. In SW Okla
we will be having fresh tomatoes with our Christmas
dinner. Here's how: Just before the first killing freeze
pick all the pink tomatoes and take into the house.
Get a shovel and dig up some vines with green tomatoes
attached. Brush off the dirt on the roots and put the
whole thing upside down in your cellar. Over the next
couple of months, the vines will wither up and dry out,
but the green tomatoes will turn ripe. I was amazed.

For the months from June through the end of September, probably 90% of our produce comes from our garden. We are still eating potatoes, and they should last through to mid January. We canned 14 quarts of applesauce from neighborhood trees. They were free, as the neighbors just let them rot. We also canned a considerable amount of chokecherry jelly and 7 quarts of pronghorn. I got a mountain goat this year, and my son and I each got a pronghorn and a deer. We are going elk hunting at the end of the month. Next year we plan to plant more winter squash, and we may dehydrate some of the excess summer squash for use as a pasta substitute in lasagna. The book we found most helpful has been; Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon. It is available at the LATOC bookstore and the complete organic fertilizer is highly recommended. Saving urine has greatly improved our compost! I would love to get chickens, but there are too many bears in our neighborhood :( I would recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for inspiration.

My web show is dedicated to the idea of growing food at home.

We can do it if we want to, but it's not like I get my nutritional needs from the small yields I get. It's stupid to think everyone can do that. No, I see work camps in the future, but none of us truly knows, do we?

Nate,
Those are some pretty nice looking squash. Wish I could do the same. We have a bug here called a "squash vine borer". It's hard for me to control since physical removal of the bug is the best way. I don't have time to sit in the garden all day waiting for the bug to appear. If you have any suggestions on how to control this pest I'm all ears.

Thanks,
Rich

Siwmae bechgyn (Hiya boys),

Some responses:

@DIYer: The language is Cymraeg, the oldest continuously-spoken language in Britain (English people call it Welsh).

@b3NDZ3La: “Drought, floods, frosts, bug infestations, galinsoga, voles, mice, deer, fungi, are "benefits"? Bullshit.”

Don’t know what galinsoga is. All the others are dealt with in – for example – Mollison’s ‘Permaculture’ . Wherever I can follow his principle in my climate/soil/etc. it works for me. It takes time and inventiveness, but until you try it seriously, you’re in no position of knowledge to knock it. Get a hold on the principle and TRY it, extensively. Then report back. (You’ll like it…..) Mostly I use cow shit, actually, in odd loads. Not many bulls near me.

“Ha, ha. You either work cultivating, or you work acquiring and laying the mulch (which I prefer to cultivating). This does NOT mitigate the need to pull weeds from around plants.”

Having done dig/weed cultivation, mulching and sward gardening, I can tell you that I’ll never go back to bare-earth dig-weed: the hardest, most disruptive, most anti-natural method of the three. The other two together equal far less work, and are far more comfortable than cultivating. More harmonious with the way things want to go, too, and less massacring of all the other creatures that I want to keep living on my patch, to keep everything balanced. Direct experience. Works for me. Mulching +properly+ means no weeding, period. Different approaches, perhaps?

“Got the grass to scythe? How big is your plot? You cut the whole thing by hand, and "rest" while you do it?
“I've used a scythe. They're interesting tools. But a "wonder tool"? Stop it. A mower is much, much more efficient.”

Nope. Once again, let me refer readers to ‘The Scythe Connection’ website. Study, try-out, see for yourselves. I make my own scythes, including blades to my own design, with hand tools, a simple stick welder and an angle grinder. I like scything. And yes, the Tai Chi re-energising thing is real, but not learned in five minutes. Till you have it, don’t knock it. My ‘official’ piece of ground is small. My access to much larger areas nearby, officially owned by some multinational corporation based on another continent who don’t give a shit about us locally, or our landscape, so long as they can hold on to the mineral rights here, is much larger. There I do guerrilla gathering and harvesting of a range of storable foods and other goods, such as ALL my wood fuel needs for total heating and cooking for over a decade. No other fuel acquired at all for these purposes over that whole time. None needed. Both wood and a wide selection of mulch materials are available in great superabundance, simply for the mowing/gathering. Both processes are a pleasure rather than a chore. And you wouldn’t catch me screwing up my pleasure, or my freedom from extra-money needs, by buying expensive, hitech, noisy, stinky, hi-maintenance machinery and somehow getting it into those neglected, footpathed, abundant landscapes. Once I worked briefly for John Dankworth (that one!) at his place. He had seven mowers, all buggered one after the other, on which he’d just given up because of the difficulty of keeping them serviced and running. More efficient? Considering total carbon footprint/financing demand? Not in my experience. And I keep my scythes running easily for virtually no money and very little time.

Lots of self-sown volunteer apple trees in my nearby ‘neglected’ lands. Abundant cropping from some, if not all, every year. Old-fashioned varieties, similar to those recently discovered by a New Zealand study (sorry, reference not immediately to hand) to be much richer in health-preserving organics than modern commercial varieties. I do nothing whatever to cultivate these ungrafted full-sized volunteer trees, beyond giving them the odd respectful gifts of tree food from my own stashes, about once a year, as practical gratitude. Superfruit, which I shall be layering out in numbers next year, outside my official patch of ground, in the ‘neglected lands’, for me and anyone else to harvest as and when. At the moment, no-one else seems to bother. But I think a lot of us Brits will be departing from the Pampered Twenty Percent of the Earth’s population soon, like lots of USAmericans. People may appreciate those volunteers then.

“Ducks don't eat all pests. They don't even eat a fraction of them. And they tear the shit out of leafy crops, and they crap on everything, and they flatten it with their feet.”

Sure, they eat a fraction of them: part of the whole. My serious problem previously was multitudinous slugs/snails, thriving in this ‘neglected’ landscape. Now they are a valuable resource (See what Bill means?) as free, high-protein duck-food that I don’t have to do anything to either cultivate or control. That’s duckwork. And gastropod damage to my food plants is now negligible, without me doing anything about it, beyons getting in the ducks. The veggies, in raised beds made from an abundance of dumped bus tyres from a coach firm half a mile across the fields (free), are spared the tearing and trampling at ground level, but benefit from the slug-patrol anyway. (The black tyres are also excellent heat conservers/sunheat harvesters, keeping the mulch’n’compost-based deep-loam terra-preta soil within warmed against frosts. Occasionally, when late frosts are forecast, they get glass covers over, in the form of scavenged throw-out window units in perfect order from the – still, for the time being --profligate suburban townsfolk a moderate bike-ride away.) The ducks’ day crap just goes into the soil on my patch wherever it falls, feeding the heavy-clay base soil; the night crap falls from their self-chosen roosts in the evergreen trees here, onto collecting trays on the roofs of the dog kennels under the trees. Muscoveys are canny birds; mine know that the dogs are their protectors from all comers; they seek them out at any alarm, and roost above them spontaneously at night. I didn’t have to do any more than place the kennels under the best roost tree, following Mollisonian principles of prolonged observation and clustering of functions. The crap they dump at night I feed into my composter bins, which also take the periodic emptyings of my composting toilet/household veg-cleanings bin, plus wood-ash and charcoal harvested from my heater-cooker stoves periodically, for making terra preta soil in the beds. (The composter-john is very efficient and inoffensive when managed right, with a handful of sawdust from my saw-horse, or forest-floor litter gathered from the local woods, thrown in after each use.) I consider that I would be mad to not have my good ducks!

As to other pests: I’m so hemmed around by ‘neglected’ land, where everything organises its own balances, that I don’t seem to get anything much. I suppose that so-called pests do explore my food plants. But then, so do their predators. And I don’t do monoculture of anything. All food plants grow cheek-by-jowl with all the others, in the beds. So nothing tempting is concentrated in long, multiple rows. (Deeply unnatural; asking for trouble) And I’ve already started trying out Fukuoka seed-balls, which I shall extend into the ‘neglected’ lands next year, to begin just gently pushing the natural balance of plants there towards accommodating more ‘wild-living’ harvestable food plants, in amongst the wild volunteers, in the beginnings of a multi-layer, roots-to-canopy forest garden. Classic permaculture strategies.

“Dream on. The industrial paradigm will be here a long, long time. When "the energy famine starts to bite," energy will simply be diverted from recreational uses to agricultural uses. This won't be pretty, but a wave of permaculturalists is not in our future.”

Ten (in gold bullion) will get you fifty that it is. No dream. Just a bet. Anyway, it’s here now for such as me, and coming on steadily for my CSA farmer friends five miles away. If Dieoff.org is right about industrial ‘civilisation’ being a once-only giant-pulse event in Earth’s history, then that long, long time might not be so long. Right behind peak oil, right now, looms peak everything……

“Do you have a cellar full of food?”

Outdoor sawdust-filled bins for roots (pest-proof, weather-proof containers such as converted big gas bottles, steel drums, pre-fab concrete fuel bunker, all scavenged from hereabouts free; big stash of prime clean, dry sawdust scavenged from nearby wooden-building factory half a mile away) So many assorted roots and ‘roots’ in fact that I suspect I’m going to have to give some away soonish, when I have to make room for the next early crops. Multitude of jars of various sugar/salt/vinegar-based preserves also. Setting up a sun-driven insulated, double-glazed (see scavenging note above), thermo-syphoning, insect-tight dryer cabinet for lotech, natural dehydration of various foods right now, ready for next season’s gluts. I did dried apple-rings this Autumn, hung above my stove, to preserve some of the wild apple glut, and they're just delicious: instant snacks, re-hydratable, etc.

These examples above are just a sampling of the way permaculture works to organise a supply of all essential, not just food, whilst promoting enhanced respect and reharmonising with the living Earth: and absolutely essential survival need for arrogant humans, if we are going to have a future.

“The proof is in the produce. I use standard "organic" so-called techniques (digging, composting, mulching, etc.) because I like to, not because I think I'm superior to any other farmer.”

Me too. But no-dig. Too lazy. Superior? Me? Shit, no. Still bumbling up the learning curve. Till death, I imagine.

@rj1122:

Diesel price at my nearest filling station is £1.14/litre. Sorry, I was hazy about just how much smaller the US gallon is.

Hwyl fawr i bawb (Cheers to all), RhG

PS: Forgot to mention:

The raised beds are peppered about under the fruit trees-in-grass which my good neighbour and friend planted here when he had active use of ‘my’ home patch. He’s too old and crippled now to be active, but of course he and Ruth still get fruit and nut tranches every Summer. So long as the fruit/nut trees/shrubs aren’t let to get too thick-canopied, they nurse the raised beds by giving dappled shade, which keeps the food-plants photosynthesizing throughout the daylight hours, instead of shutting down in the heat of the Summer sunlight between about 10 and 4: a trick learned from David Blume, who in my book is as impressive at permaculture as Bill M and David Holmgren. The grass is patrolled comprehensively by the ducks, and having had geese before, I think I shall now get three or four more, as they keep grass well-mown, and short. The degree of untidiness/paddledness of the turf depends on the stocking density, and whether the birds can get over/through the perimeter fence to range outside, in the ‘neglected’ lands. My local wild small predator friends are now all pretty sophisticated about the devil-dogs here, and keep a good distance, even when they see the tempting birds. I actually see this dog/duck/fox/badger interaction happening now and then. Fascinating. Benign balance is the name of the game, I suppose.

Also planning to try out Fukuoka’s no-till micro plots of grain growing in the upcoming year, planted in pre-mulched patches in a nearby, very secluded, thorn-thicket surrounded ‘neglected’ three-quarter acre. They will be very small patches of mixed grains, mainly oats, dotted ‘invisibly’ amongst the wild volunteer plant arrays. Total aggregate area of grains probably less even than Fukuoka’s standard quarter-acre plots. For hand harvesting with minimal tools, for storage in dug-out bin(s) similar to the kind that archaeology says were working well here, and evidently popular, in the Iron Age Celtic period about 2.5 millenia back. The heavy clay subsoil here seems to be the right stuff to line the bins, and seal the roofs, so that the natural exudation of CO2 from the stored grain pools into a preservative, pest-suffocating atmosphere inside the bin. Each bin needs a little rain-shedding roof over. Apparently thatch in the originals. If that screws up, then more improvised above-ground closed bins, like for the roots. I haven’t done grain growing before, so this will be a try-out/screw-up/learn and try again process, I suppose, as usual. Deer – mostly the little imported and gone-wild muntjacs -- will be a problem I suppose, because the patches will be outside my perimeter fence, which is mainly to keep my ‘dangerous’ (according to some locals) shepherd dogs in. So I’m currently mulling how to do a Mollison on that problem and turn it into a balanced benefit. Venison, dried to pemmican, maybe, and accept some grain loss…….? Also an extension of the fruit and nut orchard into this wild land seems a good idea, so long as they’re layered or grown from gathered seed, and don’t cost me any cash or much labour.

At night, erratically, I let the dogs go outside the perimeter fence for the odd hour or so – pour encourager les voleurs – and they can, and have, killed deer, as well as foxes and badgers. Shepherd dogs, being exceptionally intelligent, have an impressive capacity to learn what is permitted game, and what mustn’t be touched. I can walk my adult dogs off-chain through local farmer-friends’ lambing paddocks, for example, without them even spooking the ewes and lambs, though they know they’re ‘strangers’: not ours, and they could kill them easily. They also harvest their own food regularly, in the form of wild rabbits. Lots here. Except for a few neighbours, known and accepted by the dogs, human visitors don’t penetrate into the ‘neglected’ thicket-lands just near our home patch, so this seems to be a balanceable method. Hmmm; try it and see….. Ran Prieur is very interesting on the idea of guerrilla hunting/gathering/cultivation/invisible forest-gardening on ‘neglected’ lands, as a necessary and benign strategy for people meeting TEOTWAWKI constructively. He’s trying it out around his own formally-owned patch in a secluded forest area in the Pacific North-West. (Google his name)

In a nutshell, whatever fits precisely into the given conditions of your home patch, and might work, is worth a try. And terrifically absorbing to watch happening, screw-ups and all.