Back when I was still watching stuff I had a few “guilty” pleasures when it came to things to watch. I had television in all its forms down to nearly zero.
One of the things I did watch however, follow I should say, was watching the progress of Rob Greenfield on his quest to go an entire year without eating anything other than what he grew and foraged by his own hand.
I was thinking about this. Looking around, taking note.
Off the top of my head I can think of one retiree who has a small garden, and one tiny community garden, used little, and generally overgrown with weeds, not put much to use.
I was thinking about the times I’ve been on the west coast, thinking off how much water is piped in to have grass everywhere.
I was thinking about how just about any space growing anything could instead be space for crops.
Commercial agriculture grows extremely high amounts of calories, pretty much as efficiently as humanity will likely ever pull off. You can drive through crops for hours on interstates, the crop changing seemingly with the crossing of state lines.
I doubt that the world is at it’s max calorie production however. There is so much space. Suburbia could be homes and corn. Abandoned urban lots could be lots of potatoes.
It would be a time consuming thing, and it is not how society is set up, nor something that humanity as is is cooperative enough to do.
A utopian pipe dream maybe. Still I daydream.
Imagine all of suburbia being cornfields with intermittent homes and driveways. People would have to forgo the overtime, and audis to do so.
It’d be like that show “world without humans”, but managed acreage of crop mixed with the homes, skyscrapers, highways, etc.
At the least, if wheat is a grass, could not yards be of wheat, and become bread instead?
Instead of something begrudgingly mowed. Obviously photosynthesis is making the green grass grow all around the nation. It could be calories for human use instead.
I imagine a world where all use all their space for food production, it is something humanity really has done in the past.
It would require a far different lifestyle society wide however.
It’s crazy to think only a few generations back that far more land was small farms throughout the land, that a much higher percentage of the populance was involved in food production, and that the majority outside of the cities produced their food in part, not absolute zero like I’d bet 99.9% of americans today to be at in food production.
It seems to me that the country could have a far stronger balance between local food production, and commercial agriculture. The two could coexist, and that would be a very strong position for the nation to be in, health wise, and access to calorie wise.
Bodybuilding would not exist, access to calorie wise, in a nation of small farms.
People, all of them, whether jacked or obese, can thank commercial agriculture for those calories.
Commercial agriculture is why the country is not at WW2 era body mass indexes en masse.
A 50/50 mix of agribusiness and small scale local production would be less calories, but much healthier overall for the nation.
50/50 allowing healthier local foods to be a big part of the average person’s diet, while still allowing for larger height/weight than pre WW2 era BMI via big agriculture calorie production.
It’s not all in the quantity, nor all in the quality of your calories.
Very much produced is wasted, from food thrown out to food scraps thrown out. Food could’ve been eaten, food scraps could’ve been fertilizer or feed.
Think a little about your food consumption.