well, no, if you're growing for personal use you can make a notable effect on your own supply/food costs. You don't have to solve the global food shortage to benefit from a personal garden and since the global food shortage will drive up prices, the financial benefit is even greater (as long as price increases in things like fertilizer don't eat up your cost savings).
You seem to be thinking about this from a personal finance angle instead of an economy-wide production angle.
It doesn't matter if a piece of corn is made in your garden or on a farm. The net effect on the corn supply is identical.
It takes orders of magnitude more input to grow a piece of corn in a garden than on a farm. That had better be offset by the personal enjoyment of the gardener.
You seem to be thinking about this from a personal finance angle instead of an economy-wide production angle.
Yes, I tried to be clear:
Depends whether you're gardening for a global food shortage, or to supplement your own use, which I suspect is why most people have home gardens.
No one's backyard garden in the USA is going to help feed someone in Africa, but even if the global food shortage doesn't mean food shortages in the USA, it's going to drive up prices, and a backyard garden can help offset that household expense.
You took specific objection to my comment that victory gardens were to make people "feel like they were helping". I meant this to imply some kind of externalized effect beyond just saving money.
It's also probably wrong that a home garden will net save you money unless you make like $3/hr. Again, unless you're extracting pleasure from gardening.
You took specific objection to my comment that victory gardens were to make people "feel like they were helping". I meant this to imply some kind of externalized effect beyond just saving money.
Yes, that's why I quoted it specifically and clarified that I was talking about a home garden.
It's also probably wrong that a home garden will net save you money unless you make like $3/hr. Again, unless you're extracting pleasure from gardening.
The people that benefit the most financially from a home garden are already low paid - those are the people that aren't going to struggle to afford food as prices rise. My sister has been gardening for years, a couple years ago she kept a spreadsheet and added up her savings based on retail prices of produce and her "revenue" from her garden (which covers most of the back yard of her 1/2 acre lot plus one apple tree) was over $2500 after deducting expenses (excluding labor).
She estimated around 2 hours/day tending the garden for a 6 month growing season, so that's around 360 hours of work, or around $7/hour, which is better than she'd take home working a minimum wage job and in exchange they get all of the organic produce they can eat in the summer, plus a lot of frozen or canned food in the winter. And she ends up giving a lot of it away to friends/family.
For a lot of people here, putting in 360 hours of work to earn "only" $2500 worth of food sounds like a terrible bargain, but for many people in this country, that's a great bargain.
well, no, if you're growing for personal use you can make a notable effect on your own supply/food costs. You don't have to solve the global food shortage to benefit from a personal garden and since the global food shortage will drive up prices, the financial benefit is even greater (as long as price increases in things like fertilizer don't eat up your cost savings).