03-03-2014, 08:43 AM
The newgeography.com article does show a small majority of housing is detached, but also showed that well over 40%, comprising millions of people, is not. Obviously much of the non-detached housing is also in the larger, densely packed urban areas. "If people can grow their own food, they can avoid hunger" seems both a lowest denominator (we're generally not discussing people starving) and pure fantasy. Can you imagine a single mother with kids growing and harvesting enough wheat for bread, enough oats for hot cereal and squeezing in enough time to keep the bugs out of the vegetables? And what about crop failures? What's the backup? While it's a fine thing for those privileged enough to have the land and tend to their gardens and grow much of what they eat, it's totally unlikely to lead to the elimination of our complex food distribution system. Even the community garden setups, DIY and commercial, hardly make a dent in what is actually required to feed millions.
The limitations of Big Island geography might require more than 400 farmers to for self sufficiency, but the limitations of growing fundamental crops like wheat, rice or corn might be more significant. There was an attempt to grow alfalfa on Moloka'i which, IIRC, failed in spite of two or three crops a year and even the high going price of imported alfalfa because of the difficulties and costs of drying the crop sufficiently for storage and transport. We could all switch to poi instead, which might actually be doable economically.
The limitations of Big Island geography might require more than 400 farmers to for self sufficiency, but the limitations of growing fundamental crops like wheat, rice or corn might be more significant. There was an attempt to grow alfalfa on Moloka'i which, IIRC, failed in spite of two or three crops a year and even the high going price of imported alfalfa because of the difficulties and costs of drying the crop sufficiently for storage and transport. We could all switch to poi instead, which might actually be doable economically.