Comment by midtake
16 days ago
What do you mean? This is very much true. We are economically compelled to buy food from supermarkets, for instance, because hunting and fishing have become regulated, niche activities. Compared to someone from the 1600s who could scoop a salmon out of the river with a bucket, we are quite oppressed.
Most people lived on the knife's edge of starvation before the application of fossil fuel energy and nitrogen to agriculture in the 20th century. That's why the global population exploded after the introduction of these technologies. Read "Energy and Civilization" by Vaclav Smil. For most of history, it was an open question the crops you grew would even contain more calories than the physical effort it took to grow them. This means you were spending ~90% of your time (or money if you were in a specialized trade) just on getting enough carbs in grain to avoid keeling over. And, your diet was 90% grain with almost no variety.
Were there a lucky few who found an unoccupied niche where there was some surplus for a generation or two? Sure. But pretending like this was commonplace is like pretending that everyone in the 1600's was a nobleman.
> Compared to someone from the 1600s who could eat a gourmet meal prepared by their 10 cooks every night, we are quite oppressed.
and then the population exploded such that it could only be sustained through modern agricultural methods. We are married to the technology more than before
On the flip side, fishing quotas are the reason there are some fish left. However you are free to grow your own vegetables.
Actually, cities often regulate gardens:
https://www.savingadvice.com/articles/2025/07/07/10160132_th...
It was interesting to me finding out how many "urban farms" are nestled in our own cityscape, and how many of those "farms" are actually selling their produce, meats, and even livestock.
Until very recently (like 6 decades ago) the area where I live was right up against rural countryside, with sheep grazing, cattle farms, vegetables grown and everything. And those farmers sold out to real-estate developers.
But there are literally homeowners in SFHs with chickens out front and roosters crowing in the morning. And some of my colleagues own chickens and harvest the eggs every day for their own kitchens and families.
But just going through a few urban neighborhoods on Google Maps, it was not long before I found little farms. And these farms sometimes have websites where they advertise that they are selling produce and dairy: raw milk, fresh eggs, fresh fruits & veg, mutton and even live sheep or goats. And they may be doing it on the sly or under the table, and "raw milk" is especially a controversial marketplace right now, but they do it and seem to do alright.
These "urban farms" are often real close to tactical supply shops running out of some guy's garage, and other little "cottage industries" where people who purchased "McMansions" are recouping their investments, basically by skirting the city's zoning laws and tax regulations around businesses.
So yeah, if you've got a brown thumb like me, you can go shop at a farmers market, or you can look up one of these "urban farms" and buy direct, cash in hand.
... provided you own land that the government allows for agricultural use. And most people can't afford to own enough land to be self-sufficient.
So you're not free to grow your own vegetables either; just like fishing, farming is regulated to manage limited resources. Things get ugly fast when you start raising pigs in your city apartment, or start polluting with pesticide runoff, or start diverting your neighbour's water supply...
>.. provided you own land that the government allows for agricultural use
Gardens are a thing, and you do not need your house to be on agricultural land to grow a garden, at least in my state.
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