Is it possible to be 100% self sufficient?

Question

I mean grow your own food and heat your own home without relying on oil and gas. I think I read this once in a book called Bioneers. She used composting to heat home and so on. Anyone know about this.

Answer 1

The answer is yes, and no. To do the things you listed, like growing your own food, and living in a house totally off grid, then yes, you can do that.

To be 100% self sufficient....no, you cannot do that. Pretty much you need things from the outside world. Example, are you going to become a cobbler, and make your own shoes? Are you going to make pilgrimages to collect your own salt? If you can your own foods, you will still need lids for the canning jars. Will you grow your own sugar beets, or sugar cane, and make your own sugar?

My husband and I live on a permaculture farm. We grow most of our own food, or buy from the local farmers market (closed now that it's started to snow in my area of Idaho).

We grow rapeseed (canola) and make our own biofuel (that means we are independant of the gas station). With this we run our trucks and tractors, and harvest our crops (rapeseed and alfalfa). The alfalfa is fed to the animals. In turn they produce manure to fertilize our fields.

If you want to talk about a smaller scale, my rabbits provide manure. The manure falls into worm bins below their hutches. The lovely, rich worm/rabbit manure mixture is used on my garden area. The garden area provides a lot of our food. You need to learn how to waterbath can, pressure can, freeze, dehydrate, and smoke foods, to preserve your harvest. You must have a really well equipted kitchen, with sturdy, long lasting items.

When you raise your own foods, your life becomes about making, and storing foods. Grab one of the Little House On the Prarie books, and give it a read with a highlighter. Highlight every comment on food preperation, storage, planting, ect. That gives you a tiny idea of what your life will be like.

Frankly without a spouse commited to the same lifestyle it's really difficult.

We will be buying more land. We will grow our own wheat, and use the straw to build our totally off grid straw bale house. Powered/heated via solar, wind, hydro if it's legal, and a Central Boiler (that is a name brand).

My husband currently works on the commercial wind turbines. He is VERY mechanically gifted. Having a really good grasp of carpentry, or mechanical things will help you in this lifestyle.

You need to be very independant minded, and in pretty good physical shape to undertake this lifestyle. By the way, you also still need to earn, or produce an income, since Uncle Sam wants his tax money.

~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 2

I found both Bioneers - which seems to have become a pretty big organization, and Permaculture on Wikipedia. Just since clicking on your question a few seconds ago.

Two amazing resources - hope giving answers and contact info as well.

I just discovered Yahoo Answers two days ago - and my concepts about what is possible are really changing.

What is clear is that nothing can be done alone - it takes groups working together. The most difficult thing since we are all programmed to put our faith in big business and big government. And look how we are communicating. Through a very big business.

But then again even the web started on a very small scale by a relatively small group of people who gradually built what they called fido-net which was simply small bulletin boards on small servers in small communities linked together one small community to the next - all over the world. Way before the Internet. Without these simple ordinary people, who were completely out of the mainstream - the internet would not have happened.

Now I have to find others close to where I live and try to get some of these concepts working for me.

Thanks for the question. My answer - I think we can make something happen that is better than waiting for govt or big bizness who will never do it and probably will try hard to stop us - but I'm going to join the effort. I'm not saying to abandon the use of oil and gas just for the experience - I'm talking about finding ways to change over to a less expensive and locally sustainable way of living that reduces our servitude to the multinational machine - one solar panel and windmill at a time.

Answer 3

I don't think true self sufficiency would be at all easy, and it would probably put most of us back into caves.

You can live off the grid easily enough, yet to do that you would likely have to buy solar panels (hence not self sufficient). The same point can be made over and over for each different thing you mention.

What you certainly can do is invest in products which allow generate power from renewable sources to power all your appliances.

You can collect your own water, purify it for drinking and use it directly for other applications, recycling the waste water to the garden. In that sense, you can be self sufficient very easily provided you have some cash to put down to buy the things you need to make it so.

Answer 4

No there are some things we must have simple things like salt . You could probably get by with out a fridge and can your food . Even if you had the jars in time you would still have to buy the lids for them and i don't know a bunch of little odd and ends that make the world go around that no one ever thinks about. Sooner or latter your going to have to run to the market for something or another . Needle and thread so many things . As far as growing your own food i don't see why not . I heat my home from scrap wood i pick up all summer long . There's so much of it laying around all over the place just open your eyes it doesn't have to come directly off a tree if it was an old 2x4 it still burns. Tear an old couch apart its full of wood. Most of the time good heavy oak wood burns great .

Use your imagination There's all kind of free stuff out there you just have to look and think about what things are made of and what you can use those materials for. One mans junk another mans gold

Answer 5

I do not think that it is possible to be 100%self sufficient in the present day world where our requirements have multiplied. Our life is not like before.

100% self sufficiency means .... nothing to depend on others.

Nobody can become master of everything. Let us study few examples. Somebody has fallen seriously sick. He has to depend on doctor's advice. Every thing almost including house we live in is built by others, car we drive is made by others, clothes we wear are manufactured by others. Food is provided by agriculturists. Where is the question of 100% self sufficiency? No way.

Answer 6

It's possible though I think the biggest question is whether you'd really want to do it? There's also the question of what would happen to the environment if everyone decided to try it.

Specialisation has enormous benefits that you probably don't want to throw away (subsistence farming tends not to be such a good thing for the environment).

Pretty much no one, even those who grow their own food and have alternative power systems and no grid connection actually is completely self sufficient anyway.

Answer 7

Most self employed people are already self sufficient, they earn enough from their trade or business (if they are doing well) to provide for themselves.
Not true self sufficiency, but I should think that even for people who truly live off the land they cant get everything they need without some form of trading or exchange of goods and services.
John.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

What you're describing is kinda similar to what human's have been doing for most of history other than the last 150 years. Assuming you don't just mean living by yourself somewhere? That would be boring and overrated.

Answer 10

Well, obviously the above answers show we're in this together. The planet is part of the galaxy etc.

Learning more about permaculture and how we use and share resources and cooperate with our very sufficient planet is a great project. Go for it!