Growing Food for the Future of Our Planet
“Growing your own food may be one of the most powerful steps you can take for the health of yourself, your family, and your planet.” ― Lindsay Oberst of foodrevolution.org
I often get asked why we spend so much time growing our own food. For starters, James and I want to feed our children high-quality food with as little carbon footprint as possible. Naturally, growing food in our backyard, in our windows, or on our patio is by far the best way to eat healthy and sustainably.
But growing our food is so much more to us; it’s also about helping the planet and teaching our kids an essential life skill. We firmly believe that if things continue the way they are going, in the future, only the people who know how to grow food will eat.
The scary fact is that there is an agriculture problem on our planet. So much of our food is being industrially grown, which is destroying the planet. Industrial farming is depleting the soil of vital nutrients and contaminating our food and bodies with pesticides.
Leading researchers warn that we’re losing our topsoil at record speed and could run out of farmable soil in 60 years. We’re also running low on freshwater due to industrial agriculture and raising animals for meat. We’re losing bees, butterflies, and other essential pollinators due to pesticides, threatening our food security. We are expected to run out of food in the next couple of generations.
One of the solutions is to simply begin growing food. Growing your own food is one of the most influential and impactful actions you can take to help the planet and our environment. It bears repeating—growing a vegetable garden filled with fresh organic food is more important now than ever!
The best part is that you don’t need to live on a farm to grow food or even have a garden. All you need to start growing your food is soil, compost, water, pots or garden beds, and a window or light.
Growing your own food means controlling how much or little water you use. There are lots of ways to save water, even in the garden. You also don’t need to rely on chemicals or pesticides since there are natural options for battling garden bugs. Like us, you can also grow food with little money and even with no waste. Our garden is a zero waste garden where we make our compost and mulch, grow food from seeds, and save our seeds. We grow our soil by adding lots of compost and mulch.
The best part about growing food is food security. Growing food on any scale will help you be more food secure because you can grow what your family eats. During the pandemic, when California was on lockdown and stores were closed, our family thrived compared to our friends and family. We ate well on what we grew in the garden at the time: kale, lettuce, herbs, potatoes, and tomatoes. It gave us, especially our kids, a sense of security that money could not buy. We learned how to preserve our harvest; we had plenty of food in the pantry, freezer, and canned food for the whole year, with extra to share with our community.
I highly recommend watching the documentary the need to grow that talks about this very problem and you can even watch it for free
If you’re interested in learning how to grow your own food either in your garden, on a patio or balcony or even indoors in a window check out my online course that will teach our how to begin growing food no matter where.
Learn how to start growing herbs in this post
Learn about how far your food might be traveling to get to the store here
