Self-sufficiency examined

It's a new year and thousands of people are resolving that this will be the one they take up gardening. They are planning their beds, ordering their seeds, and peppering social media groups with questions about cover crops and climate-appropriate varieties. Also, of course, they need to know the essential tools and accessories they must purchase, and which brands are best. It is during this post-holiday slump (a terrible time for resolutions) that they are realizing the healthy hobby that will allow them to save big bucks on the food bill will be very expensive indeed.

The fact that it need not be so is a topic I return to frequently, and of course was inspiration for starting my writing career. I feel sympathy for potential gardeners who are stymied on their journey by the sheer amount of materiel they feel they must acquire. It's sad, and it's wrong, (but in no way surprising) that the main message these folks receive is that they need a boatload of stuff. There are a few true necessities, the major one being access to land, preferably sunny. If you have it, plus some seeds and a few hand tools, you've got most of what you need.

Without land, there is less choice about purchases: Pots or grow bags, soil and fertilizers, perhaps some irrigation equipment, must all be acquired. Because of this, landless gardening is often expensive and inefficient. Alternatives like finding an allotment, sharing community gardening space, or volunteering in exchange for a share in the harvest make more sense as the best use of labor and resources. It's a sad reflection of our culture that these commuity opportunities are often unavailable, but anyone with the cash can set up their own personal “self-sufficient” herb/veg operation.

Of course, the need for stuff isn't limited to the container crowd and even those with in-ground gardens often have their own indoor seed-starting set up with trays, special soil, and electricity sucking grow lights, plus rely on a slew of amendments, biocides, and power equipment. While I am dismayed by the fact that the garden industrial complex works constantly to convince gardeners they need all this stuff, many will happily spend the money without judgement because they expect a big return in the form of self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency is a magical term that conjures appealing images of resilient pioneers relying solely on themselves. But if self-sufficiency means reducing dependency on inputs from outside the system, we need to ask exactly what dependency is being reduced. First you are dependent on money to buy stuff, and then you are dependent on the stuff itself. The main dependency that is reduced, at least during the period after the purchase and before the item wears out, is dependency on other people. It appears to me that it is this illusory freedom from human interactions and transactions that self-sufficiency acolytes seek to acquire.

There is real worth in learning to provide for yourself and reducing reliance on capricious supply lines for necessities. I've spent lots of time over the years working to do just that. But looking beyond home gardening, to hobby farming, homesteading, prepping — whatever you like to call it — I see the same trends of using stuff to create the feeling of independence. Homesteading in the current sense means family units set up to provide not only for their own food needs without reliance on grocery stores, but also as far as possible their own potable water, heat, energy, and other necessities. Sounds great, right? But the initiation into the cult of self-sufficiency requires a hell of a lot of equipment.

Tractors with various attachments, chainsaws, wood splitters, hand tools of all sorts, and of course solar panels, are all top items. Solar arrays are the holy grail of self-sufficiency, and the low-hanging fruit in any critique of the lifestyle. By allowing the user to disconnect from the grid by providing a way to generate electricity, they seem to offer the ultimate freedom, but it is temporary. Each year in use they deteriorate slightly, and by about year 25 they will reach a point where this amounts to significantly less power. By 30 years the system might need replacing altogether. By this time the storage batteries will have already needed replacing, perhaps several times since their lifespan is ten years under optimum conditions. Thirty years might seem like a long time to some, but on the homestead, in the big scheme of things, it isn't long at all and ten years is a eye blink. (I am currently finding some rotting fence posts, all installed in the last 22 years, and my reaction each time is “Goddammit, I just put that thing in!”)

When buying electricity from the power company, you are dependent on the vast network of infrastructure, personnel, and resources involved in its production and delivery. Purchasing solar panels merely transfers your dependency to the equally massive conglomeration of entities that work together to deliver the product to your local supplier. The main difference is that with solar you buy the whole thing all at once, along with the period of imaginary freedom. The same is true for any item you can't make yourself, of course, but photovoltaics with their enormous embodied energy and resources are the most outstanding example.

The other items listed above are slightly less high tech, but are subject to the same criticism. Tractors and other motorized devices carry huge loads of embodied energy, resources, and human labor and ingenuity. In addition they are totally reliant on fuel and parts to fix them. And anything from the fanciest Kubota to the simplest wheelbarrow is worthless if you have a flat and don't have a way to get air into the tire. (Ask me how I know!) Even hand tools have a limited life span, though once purchased need no inputs besides maybe cleaning and sharpening. The use of all such tools creates a reliance on everyone that was instrumental in the creation of the tool from engineers to salespeople, that is inescapable.

I think it's clear that what is being sold as self-sufficiency is something else entirely, namely a temporary ability to feel that you are reducing dependency on others. I'm not passing judgement on anyone who uses solar power or tractors. Like everyone else I'm dependent on tech, ligh and low, and would be very cold right now without the chainsaws that cut the wood for the stove, and the miners and fabricators that made its manufacture possible. I'm not suggesting we all return to a neolithic lifestyle and live off squirrels and deer that we kill with hand-fashioned tools of wood and stone. I just think we need to stop promoting the acquisition of planet-killing stuff by calling it self-sufficiency.

What if efforts were rechanneled from making lots of money to buy stuff, to working cooperatively with like-minded people to share equipment, labor, know-how, and resources? What if we addressed the question of land access, the foundation of a true self-sufficiency? What might be accomplished if the goal of a million tiny empires was given up in favor of new and creative models of communal living? These questions are fodder for futures posts; meanwhile I welcome your thoughts, reactions, and recommendations in the comment section.