It’s hard to boycott the price gouging bastards when it’s just 3 companies owning the entire market of what you literally need to buy every week to live.
The best I can do is make maximum use of my local farmer’s market but it’s closed for the season now. Which is a bummer because not only it was cheaper, but the produce was fresher and of higher quality.
Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Grocery store = Low quality crap; twice the price. An unpleasant experience of other miserable people and awful music. A chore of a thing to do. The whole layout trying to be themed like a fancy farmer’s market but you can’t even find the plum vinegar!
Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmer’s markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have.
i did a study on area needed for food production a while ago, and IIRC
per person, about 1000 m² are needed to feed them. depends a bit on where you live though
fertile land produces around 3.5 t of grains /ha on average. with modern technology, the peak is 7.5 t/ha
by far the most area is needed to grow calorie-heavy foods. like, you could get far with 30 m² for yourself if you only plant vegetables and buy the grains at the supermarket
grains are really cheap, compared to vegetables. that’s because vegetables are labor-intensive (difficult to automate because they’re often fragile and sensitive) while grains can be automated on ultra-large-scale farms with farming machines, so they’re really cheap.
Land available isn’t true at all. A sunny windowsill could provide a family with herbs, leafy greens or something like tomatoes. Check out the kratky method for a pretty cheap introduction to hydroponics
I believe the “grow your own” suggestion is intended to be supplemental, rather than a fully developed subsistence farm in your back yard.
The beauty of growing your own is that you can decide what you want to grow! There are some things which are very easy and cheap to grow (such as fresh herbs) that are actually quite expensive and inconvenient to buy! Other things, such as potatoes, are very cheap in any grocery store (when purchased in bulk) such that growing your own is more of a hobby/curiosity than a budget saver.
Tomatoes happen to be one thing you can grow at home that are simply far more delicious than anything you can get at a store. Sometimes you might be able to get nice heirloom tomatoes at a store but they tend to be very expensive and usually seasonal.
If you get some experience growing tomatoes then you can produce a pretty large crop in a relatively small yard. With home water bath canning you can then outfit yourself with up to a year’s supply of home made pasta sauce (or even simply peeled and blanched tomatoes with basil leaf in the jar).
Valid concerns. I won’t ignore the orphan crushing machine and every situation is different, but a lot of food can be grown in an apartment.
I had a 300sqft bachelor pad in Vancouver where I managed to grow tomatoes, goji berries, greens and ALL the herbs. I kept my herbs in pots under a full spectrum light indoors, clipping and drying as they grew out. After set-up I only had to water, fertilize sometimes, and prune as needed. Greens, I kept harvesting young and re-seeding. Aside from watering, it took almost no effort to put a significant dent in my grocery bill.
Now, I have a 4x8ft fenced garden in a shared yard where I grow so much I barely buy produce in the summer. Aside from weeding, sprouting and transplanting in the spring, the main labour is watering, which only takes like five minutes. I get my seeds from things I eat or the public library seed share, so those are free, too.
I legit grew three pumpkins, four ziplock bags of sunflower seeds, beets, snap peas, opium poppies, carrots, tomatoes, gooseberries, strawberries and still have a herb shelf inside.
I get that’s still not a year’s worth a food, but it’s a lot for tiny bit of dirt, considering I knew nothing about gardening before.
Oh but get GMO pumpkin seeds. White mildew rot is a pain in the ass and everywhere. And a dehydrator if you don’t know how to deal with lots of food at once, you can make chips and crackers out of anything.
I’m pretty lucky in that my friends hunt, too, so I get a butt load of deer meat every fall.
100% Agree, I thankfully have a local grocery store close to me so I can avoid the big 3, but this isn’t a realistic option for everyone. I’m hesitant to just buy online for things like produce as my experience with them has been mediocre (I haven’t tried costco though).
This really isn’t a problem the everyday Canadian can fix without the government stepping in and breaking up the monopoly of Loblaws, Sobey’s and Metro.
I’d love to see a future Canada where there was more local grocery chains, with the same access to product that the big three have. Also would be great if they were closer to where people lives so people wouldn’t feel like the need to drive to get their groceries.
Costco produce ordered online can be a bit hit or miss, unfortunately. You know how when you shop at Costco, it’s usually better to dig down a layer with produce since the top box always has everything that’s been rejected by someone else? I’d guess, based on our mixed success, that some Instacart shoppers just grab from the top of the pile. We’ve had some shops with bad produce, but most have been great.
What sucks is that if you return it to the warehouse, you don’t get the full price back because of the Instacart markup; on the either hand, you can sometimes return things at a net profit because of Instacart offers (like the $10/mo. Executive Members thing.)
It’s hard to boycott the price gouging bastards when it’s just 3 companies owning the entire market of what you literally need to buy every week to live.
The best I can do is make maximum use of my local farmer’s market but it’s closed for the season now. Which is a bummer because not only it was cheaper, but the produce was fresher and of higher quality.
My parents have had decent success packaging and freezing some farm stand stuff for later.
Your folks have the right idea! I’ll add that canning certain things is also a great skill to learn
This is the way, though.
Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Grocery store = Low quality crap; twice the price. An unpleasant experience of other miserable people and awful music. A chore of a thing to do. The whole layout trying to be themed like a fancy farmer’s market but you can’t even find the plum vinegar!
Farmers markets have never been cheaper where I live. Fresher maybe, but as expensive or more expensive than supermarket produce.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmer’s markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Cool if you got those, but most people don’t.
i did a study on area needed for food production a while ago, and IIRC
Note: 1 t = 1000 kg, grains = cereals
Land available isn’t true at all. A sunny windowsill could provide a family with herbs, leafy greens or something like tomatoes. Check out the kratky method for a pretty cheap introduction to hydroponics
I believe the “grow your own” suggestion is intended to be supplemental, rather than a fully developed subsistence farm in your back yard.
The beauty of growing your own is that you can decide what you want to grow! There are some things which are very easy and cheap to grow (such as fresh herbs) that are actually quite expensive and inconvenient to buy! Other things, such as potatoes, are very cheap in any grocery store (when purchased in bulk) such that growing your own is more of a hobby/curiosity than a budget saver.
Tomatoes happen to be one thing you can grow at home that are simply far more delicious than anything you can get at a store. Sometimes you might be able to get nice heirloom tomatoes at a store but they tend to be very expensive and usually seasonal.
If you get some experience growing tomatoes then you can produce a pretty large crop in a relatively small yard. With home water bath canning you can then outfit yourself with up to a year’s supply of home made pasta sauce (or even simply peeled and blanched tomatoes with basil leaf in the jar).
Valid concerns. I won’t ignore the orphan crushing machine and every situation is different, but a lot of food can be grown in an apartment.
I had a 300sqft bachelor pad in Vancouver where I managed to grow tomatoes, goji berries, greens and ALL the herbs. I kept my herbs in pots under a full spectrum light indoors, clipping and drying as they grew out. After set-up I only had to water, fertilize sometimes, and prune as needed. Greens, I kept harvesting young and re-seeding. Aside from watering, it took almost no effort to put a significant dent in my grocery bill.
Now, I have a 4x8ft fenced garden in a shared yard where I grow so much I barely buy produce in the summer. Aside from weeding, sprouting and transplanting in the spring, the main labour is watering, which only takes like five minutes. I get my seeds from things I eat or the public library seed share, so those are free, too.
I legit grew three pumpkins, four ziplock bags of sunflower seeds, beets, snap peas, opium poppies, carrots, tomatoes, gooseberries, strawberries and still have a herb shelf inside.
I get that’s still not a year’s worth a food, but it’s a lot for tiny bit of dirt, considering I knew nothing about gardening before.
Oh but get GMO pumpkin seeds. White mildew rot is a pain in the ass and everywhere. And a dehydrator if you don’t know how to deal with lots of food at once, you can make chips and crackers out of anything.
I’m pretty lucky in that my friends hunt, too, so I get a butt load of deer meat every fall.
So envious of all of you that have cheap farmer’s markets. Where I am, my choices are
They’re so much fun to walk through though. If only I could actually afford to buy from them.
100% Agree, I thankfully have a local grocery store close to me so I can avoid the big 3, but this isn’t a realistic option for everyone. I’m hesitant to just buy online for things like produce as my experience with them has been mediocre (I haven’t tried costco though).
This really isn’t a problem the everyday Canadian can fix without the government stepping in and breaking up the monopoly of Loblaws, Sobey’s and Metro.
I’d love to see a future Canada where there was more local grocery chains, with the same access to product that the big three have. Also would be great if they were closer to where people lives so people wouldn’t feel like the need to drive to get their groceries.
Costco produce ordered online can be a bit hit or miss, unfortunately. You know how when you shop at Costco, it’s usually better to dig down a layer with produce since the top box always has everything that’s been rejected by someone else? I’d guess, based on our mixed success, that some Instacart shoppers just grab from the top of the pile. We’ve had some shops with bad produce, but most have been great.
What sucks is that if you return it to the warehouse, you don’t get the full price back because of the Instacart markup; on the either hand, you can sometimes return things at a net profit because of Instacart offers (like the $10/mo. Executive Members thing.)
You can order food online from Well, Co-op & Costco.
I have space, I keep 50lbs of AP flour, 100lbs of rice, 40 lbs of Maseca, and 40lbs of pizza flour.
Family of 4 goes through it all over the year and i re-buy. Then I make it a point to make stuff from each every week to keep costs down.