[alexandernst]

Where (physically) do you expect 500.000 (a small town example) people garden their own food? They'd need to travel outside town, garden, then get back (and all this while also commuting to work on a daily basis).

Also, the amount of tools every single person would need to buy.

"Decentralisation" is a goof idea, but not feasible in the real world, IMHO. And this is a small town example, leave alone a huge capital like Madrid or Barcelona.

[HarryHirsch]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)

In Britain and Germany, allotment gardening was promoted as a social measure and by all accounts it was successful.

[yorwba]

It's successful at giving people the option to occasionally put some fresh produce on their plates. It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round, let alone your family or everyone else who doesn't have an allotment. If an acute food shortage hit right during harvest season I might be able to hold out for a few weeks, but any other time of year would be pretty bad.

[pvaldes]

> It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round

In 2019 I produced almost 300 Kg of my own food at home without really trying hard, so maybe not all year round, but is possible to notice a difference. The garden had provided me with at least a piece of fresh fruit each day of 2020 and this point is covered until june-2020 at least.

The problem is trying to obtain your food without space, without feeding your plants, and relying in magical products. This never works as intended.

People needs to understand also that producing food at home is more expensive (but the quality is better).

[pjc50]

Possibly too successful. The waiting lists are usually very long: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-allotm...

[war1025]

Did you honestly just call half a million people a small town? That is a major metro in many parts of the world.

[ghaff]

Your idea of a "small town" has the population of Sacramento or Atlanta (and almost the population of Frankfurt, if you prefer Europe). I live in what would reasonably be considered a small town in the northeast US outside a major metro. The population of our town is about 7,000 people. (And most people would have the room for respectable garden.)

[gdubs]

Every bit counts and even on a small balcony it’s possible to at least grow fresh herbs and a few other things in pots and containers. There’s also the indoor microgreen approach. There have been some cool prototypes that look about the size of a mini fridge and can grow a decent amount of fresh salad greens.

[toomuchtodo]

Surrounding farmland, greenhouses if necessary. Can't scale now, but this is the result of fragile ag supply chains. Lessons for the future. Not just ag, manufacturing capacity and black swan preparedness in general.

Fragile systems break more easily. Make sturdy systems humans rely on, even if more costly and less efficient.

[yellowbeard]

Tools can be shared.

It's also amazing how little land is needed to grow enough food to live on. One person can be fed from around 9 square meters. In dense cities people may not have that much land, but in many areas, people do have that much land in their yards.

[GordonS]

Do you have a source that the 9sqm claim? It seems... completely unbelievable.

My wife's parents grow various vegetables in an area of that size, and there is no way it could provide all their vegetable needs.

[cma]

If you grew potatoes you’d get 15000-45000 calories out of 9 sq meters. Not enough. 9mX9m (81sqm) and at the high end of yield you could get above starvation.

[GordonS]

At least in the UK, I thought you could only harvest potatoes once a year? There is a 2-week school holiday in October, which in some parts of Scotland are still referred to as the "tattie holidays", because that's when the potatoes are harvested (I did it as a kid, it was back-breaking work...).

[thedance]

That's preposterous. You need 5-10 acres to be self-sufficient in the steady state.