š± 3 benefits of growing your own food
Sustainability, Physical & Mental Health, Financial
This is article 2 of 7 for The Tech Progressive writers community, where we will post 1 article a day for 7 days.
Agriculture is one of the most important discoveries in our history. It has advanced our societies from wild hunter gatherers to civilized farmers as we are today.
Last week I met a friend of a friend from Brussel who grew most of his own food in his garden. Initially, Iām not surprised that some people like to farm, as I also have agricultural roots. My late grandpa used to farm and trade commodities such as coffee, oranges, and cloves.
However, I learned from this guy that there are several benefits to growing your own food, from sustainability, Physical & mental health, and financial.
š² Sustainability
Most of our food, especially fruits and veg, are grown in places where the climate is good and transported around the world (e.g., avocado toast every day).Ā
Unfortunately, it produced carbon emission from transportation (average distance traveled by retail vegetables is >2,400 km), food waste (14% of food is loss between harvest and retail), and packaging waste.
Growing middle class in the developing world pushes the global demand for food production, resulting in more forests to be cleared, such as the soybean fields in the Amazon or palm oil plantations in Sumatra.
In the last 50 years, almost 500 million hectares of forests (two-thirds the size of Australia) were cleared globally for agriculture.
Growing your own food means reducing the environmental burden elsewhere.
Source: the good shopping guide
š¤ø Physical & Mental health
Just like home cooked meals instead of junk takeaways, you are in full control of what goes to the fruit & veg that you are growing. For example, organic food that you bought in the shop is not necessarily pesticide free as what most people believe.Ā
Vegetables that ripen in the garden have more nutrients than some store-bought vegetables that must be picked early. Seems that we need to add time preference to the saying āyou are what you eatā.
In the garden, we are exposing our mind to nature, which could improve our mood and lower the stress level.Ā
Source: Pinterest
š° Financial
Inflation in the US and Europe in 2022 has reached its highest level since more than 40 years. For example in Germany, prices of tomatoes and cucumbers have risen up to 30% YoY.
Growing your own salad ingredients is one way to hedge inflation and reduce the impact of financial downturn, as we have seen in the great depression of the 1930s.Ā
I also learned from this friend that in Belgium, the government is actually paying their citizens to grow their own food, around a couple hundred euros per square meter of land.Ā
Source: The food institute
Conclusion
If you are from the harvest moon generation (farming game on playstation in the early 2000ās), you might remember how fun farming can be. Though I live in a small apartment, I am eager to walk the talk by ordering my first indoor farming kit from Amazon.
Let's have a growth mindset and grow our own food. Guten Appetit!
Thanks for reading this article and enjoy the weather āļø.
*Article poster by Jonathan Kemper