Would you continue to be vegan if you had to grow every single vegetable you wanted to eat? why or

[Jinendra Singh]

Would you continue to be vegan if you had to grow every single vegetable you wanted to eat? Why or why not?

what do you all think

 

[Veganite]

Personally, I love gardening. The problem is growing everything you want to eat. There's the winter months you'd have to think about. It is not impossible, but most of us simply don't have the skills or backyards to make something like this happen.

Even for me, an experienced gardener, this would take a lot of planning, and even then, it would be beyond labour intensive. I would still have to have a combination of purchased foods with homegrown ones. I would not be able to grow everything I want in my backyard for the entire year. I'd be doomed without my steady supply of bananas. Luckily I have fruit trees, but the fruit would not last a year without knowing how to make preserves. The skills needed go beyond just simple gardening.

For most people this hypothetical question is just unrealistic. You'd first have to have the skills, and not just for growing things. You'd have to learn to preserve foods as well, in order to sustain over the winter months. Your diet would be drastically limited to what you can grow in your area of the world, and also limited by the size of yard you have to work with. If you live in an apartment, this question is unrealistic.

So at the end of the day, I could probably sustain for a while, but my diet would end up being too limited. Where would someone find the time to do this, when we all work for a living? You'd almost have to be a full time farmer to make something like this even remotely possible. It's just not realistic.



*

 

[hopeful]

I would still want to. I think I would make a little indoor garden in my shed (with lights there) and grow some broccoli, tomatoes, and carrots. Those are the vegetables I eat the most.

 

[Kellyr]

It would be preferable to have produced everything I actually put in my mouth, but as Veganite pointed out, it would pretty much be a full-time job to do it. If I were a homesteader with a large enough property and a giant greenhouse, as well, then I wouldn't mind trying to grow as much of my own food as I could, learning how to properly preserve it, etc. I'd also have to learn to flat do without some foods permanently since not everything can grow in one single climate successfully. Like there's no way a banana tree could tolerate and be successful in the same environment an apple tree needs.

For right now, I'll just be satisfied with my Black Krim tomatoes and some Japanese eggplant that I'm growing in some containers (don't have a big enough back yard for an actual in-ground garden).

 

[Sax]

No. I don't think growing everything you eat on your own has ever been a feasible option. Even if it was a full-time endeavor I think it would probably take at least a large family or small community to produce the amounts, variety and availability needed. And if having enough food to make it through winter is even a remote concern you couldn't afford to show mercy to the small animals that try to eat your crops.

I suspect that before cooking over fire our ancestors were basically 100% plant based...but once cooking meat was an option it just made sense, as a matter of survival, to take advantage of that food source (cooking tough, starchy plants was also a huge benefit, calorie-wise). I don't think reverting to a plant based diet was ever a real option until some point in the last 100 years or so, with new ways to store and transport food virtually guaranteeing year round supply, even in the case of local famine.

So it seems to me that veganism is only an option because we no longer have to secure our own food supply.

 

[PrettyBarbie]

I wish I could grow vegetables in my own garden. Modern technologies allow doing it much simpler than in the past.

 

[veganDreama]

I couldn't grow my own vegetables as I live in a flat and so I don't have a garden where I could grow things even if I could which I can't. But luckily it is as simple as getting my com guide to take me to Sainsbury to get vegitables there.

 

[Forest Nymph]

My grandparents grew all their own vegetables and had a grape trellis. I've considered going off grid, so realistically it would be a diversified group farm so why not?

These kinds of questions are meaningless though because most of us don't have to grow our own so we can be vegan. Its sort of like the "stranded on a desert island" red herring that meat eaters occasionally sadly imagine is a rational argument.

 

[Forest Nymph]

No. I don't think growing everything you eat on your own has ever been a feasible option. Even if it was a full-time endeavor I think it would probably take at least a large family or small community to produce the amounts, variety and availability needed. And if having enough food to make it through winter is even a remote concern you couldn't afford to show mercy to the small animals that try to eat your crops.

I suspect that before cooking over fire our ancestors were basically 100% plant based...but once cooking meat was an option it just made sense, as a matter of survival, to take advantage of that food source (cooking tough, starchy plants was also a huge benefit, calorie-wise). I don't think reverting to a plant based diet was ever a real option until some point in the last 100 years or so, with new ways to store and transport food virtually guaranteeing year round supply, even in the case of local famine.

So it seems to me that veganism is only an option because we no longer have to secure our own food supply.

Except for all those pesky vegetarians in India? Lol.

 

[Forest Nymph]

Personally, I love gardening. The problem is growing everything you want to eat. There's the winter months you'd have to think about. It is not impossible, but most of us simply don't have the skills or backyards to make something like this happen.

Even for me, an experienced gardener, this would take a lot of planning, and even then, it would be beyond labour intensive. I would still have to have a combination of purchased foods with homegrown ones. I would not be able to grow everything I want in my backyard for the entire year. I'd be doomed without my steady supply of bananas. Luckily I have fruit trees, but the fruit would not last a year without knowing how to make preserves. The skills needed go beyond just simple gardening.

For most people this hypothetical question is just unrealistic. You'd first have to have the skills, and not just for growing things. You'd have to learn to preserve foods as well, in order to sustain over the winter months. Your diet would be drastically limited to what you can grow in your area of the world, and also limited by the size of yard you have to work with. If you live in an apartment, this question is unrealistic.

So at the end of the day, I could probably sustain for a while, but my diet would end up being too limited. Where would someone find the time to do this, when we all work for a living? You'd almost have to be a full time farmer to make something like this even remotely possible. It's just not realistic.



*

The inherent problem with his scenario is that people have specialized in agriculture for centuries. Even in Medieval times people didn't grow all their own vegetables or make all their own food. Subsistence farming has been a sign of abject poverty since Biblical times.

Might as well ask if someone would still eat junk food if they had to make all their own Doritos and candy bars.

 

[Nekodaiden]

Would you continue to be vegan if you had to grow every single vegetable you wanted to eat? Why or why not?

what do you all think

What, you mean I can still purchase my grains, my bread, tofu, bananas and other fruits, nuts and seeds/butters ... I just have to grow a few greens, tubers and a few colorful veggies?

Too easy. Yes.

If instead your question was that I had to grow everything I eat, including spices? I'd say, yes, it's worth it, but the variety of what I eat would go down and I'd be much more likely to get off my *** and grow more than I do presently. Thankfully, I don't think farmer's markets are going away anytime soon and even if I was growing partly for subsistence, there's always trade with the abundance of produce I know I'm not going to consume all of.

Even in Medieval times people didn't grow all their own vegetables or make all their own food. Subsistence farming has been a sign of abject poverty since Biblical times.

Or freedom, depending on how one looks at it. Governments often frown on individuals growing what they consume, as it's harder to tax, control trade (including direct barter which is hard to tax) and harder to manipulate a society generally when the means of production is in their back pockets through corporate control and subsidies, rather than the individual farmer.

 

[Jinendra Singh]

What, you mean I can still purchase my grains, my bread, tofu, bananas and other fruits, nuts and seeds/butters ... I just have to grow a few greens, tubers and a few colorful veggies?

Too easy. Yes.

If instead your question was that I had to grow everything I eat, including spices? I'd say, yes, it's worth it, but the variety of what I eat would go down and I'd be much more likely to get off my *** and grow more than I do presently. Thankfully, I don't think farmer's markets are going away anytime soon and even if I was growing partly for subsistence, there's always trade with the abundance of produce I know I'm not going to consume all of.

its pleasing answer I understand that farmer's markets are not going away anytime but as a vegan, I think that why we should depend on farmers when we can cultivate on own as i think we can grow fruits and some vegetables in the garden and many more. Because we can trust our corps as they are 100% organic and sustainable