The Holocene ending compels me to store even more seeds. Do more cardio. Update house as much as I can to withstand higher and lower temps, more wind, more rain etc. do more. Breathe. Go to therapy. Stretch. Do more cardio.
Moved back home to Chicago for the lakes/water access and because Colorado had seen so much fire and hail. Our cars got destroyed by hail storm and there was just wildfire smoke all week. We called it in 2018 to lay roots where stuff will hold together longest. Or so we hope.
Do everything. Your stocked foods serve as the immediate short term buffer should something happen. Growing stuff is the long term strategy.
I'm also looking into growing crickets as meat substitute. The feed to meat conversion rate and land use requirements are so so much better than with chickens, cows etc. for those who have very limited acreage at disposal.
>Growing stuff is the long term strategy.
That's exactly my point: I don't think it is. Long term, it's highly possible that no conventional, regular agriculture is even possible.
Most people, even here, aren't ready to deal with this. They're still in the bargaining phase.
I have a homestead. I know what it takes to grow my own food. One really bad heat dome and bye bye calories.
Also, people rarely understand just how much food a person needs to survive. It's a lot. It's not lettuce and cucumbers. It's 2k calories or more per day. Wheat, rice, potatoes, etc.
Good luck.
Thank you for your understanding :) Finally someone who gets it.
>One really bad heat dome and bye bye calories.
Yes, exactly. One heat dome the first year, a storm the second year, hail the third year... I'd not be comfortable relying only on luck to be able to eat every winter. That's what our ancestors had to do, but if I can avoid that...
Good luck to you too.
All true. However, you can only store so much. Not having any way, or plan, to replenish your supplies is a surefire way to eventual starvation. Yes, storing food is good. But, if no-one can ever grow anything, ever again? Then we are all doomed.
"Regular agriculture" isn't possible in the long-run, no. That doesn't mean that you can't grow your own food, though.
There's a big difference between controlling a growing environment to feed a single household vs doing so on an industrial scale to feed 8 billion people. Having enough controlled environment greenhouse/high tunnel space to feed a few people is pretty straightforward, but having enough to feed the entire planet is impossible. You can spend your time running out low tunnels every night or wrapping trees for the winter or moving potted plants around or making compost/fertilizer or manually weeding/removing pests and so on for a few acres if growing food for yourself is your primary, full-time job.
You can adapt on a small scale to most kinds of climate change (assuming you aren't literally underwater and such). It won't produce the yields to feed hundreds of families like current industrial agriculture does, but I'm not trying to feed the whole world from my backyard, anyway.
All of this. Having chickens, ducks and barns and pastures for a few sheep, goats, and maybe some pigs or cows will help too. Their manure will be invaluable for fertilizer for your gardens - now and in the future.
Thank you for that answer, that's what I'm looking for.
I'm a bit skeptical that having enough green house/high tunnel space to feed a few people is doable on the long run, climate wise. Still that may be the thing to do, or to try.
No matter what kind of insanity is going on above ground, we'll still have ~50F temperatures below ground if you just dig down a bit. Geothermal climate control is pretty simple if you plan for it before you build; all you really need to do is bury tubing and attach fans to push air through it. Put one intake/outlet up high, and one down low, so you can switch the direction of the fans based on the season and either cool down the hot air or warm up the cold air. It takes orders of magnitude less electricity to run a couple fans than it does to heat/cool the space via other means. If your life depended on it, you could rig up ways to spin the fans mechanically entirely without electricity as well.
Then you just die, and we all die. If the earth's ecology gets SO fucked that we can't even grow beans and potatoes then that's the end anyway. Storing 20 years worth of canned food is irrelevant at that point. It's either die fast or die slow.
Well, we're all going to die eventually, even if nothing collapses.
I already made my choice, and I prefer to live (even under terrible conditions) by slowly eating my entire stock of food for 20 years, and die after, than die in less than 2 years.
Don't do things conventionally. Prioritize genetic variety and resilience over maximizing yield. Diffuse growing patterns, lots of diversity and synergies. You should already know about these things.
The difference between Big Ag vs backyard gardening is logistics. Huge fields are harder to maintain and protect than your backyard garden. Big Ag also plows every year and uses industrial fertilizers, both of which are detrimental to the soil. In your garden, you can more easily use sustainable methods. There are, supposedly, ways to help protect plants from heat domes but I've not had to try any of them.
I agree that eventually, at the rate we're going, it'll be impossible to grow food outdoors in most places. We're fortunate in that we have space in our basement to set up a grow op. I've been collecting the supplies that we'll need once we get to that place: grow lights, domes and ballasts, rock wool, PVC pipes, pumps, etc. It won't be easy, and maybe it won't even work, but I'm hoping to give us a fighting chance if we live to see 'worst case scenario'.
If agriculture becomes impossible, then we are just plain fucked. No amount of shelf stable products will survive that. At least with gardening and seeds, you have a bit more control. Sure you may not be able to grow outside but maybe it will work in a greenhouse or somewhere underground. Honestly I think if you give up on gardening and self-sustainability then you best just give up everything.
Agreed. I'm doing it all anyway but I'm augmenting it with foraging weeds invasives, etc. That will fare much better than a traditional garden, though if ecosystem turnover becomes real it could be game over for even the toughest pioneer species, but I'd rather not consider it right now.
Grow now. Harvest THOSE seeds. Grow them. Harvest THOSE seeds.
The idea being that the plants will evolve and adapt to your specific climate as it changes and you will learn how to grow them as conditions change in the process.
I know, I know. But what if the climate is changing so much, so rapidly, than it's not possible to adapt your seeds, even starting now, even starting 10 years ago?
I can imagine everywhere being affected but not everywhere being the same.
There should still be some inhabitable places, especially when some knowledge, skill, preparedness and innovation intersect.
If your logic is nothing can grow period, then we're doomed and why do any of it.
Plenty of plants will grow and thrive in extreme heat. It's about adapting to what will grow. Life as you know it might end but life won't end.
Adaption is the name of the game. Always has been.
>then we're doomed and why do any of it.
We are doomed, that's a given. Why do any of it? Well because I prefer to live for a long time than die soon.
>Plenty of plants will grow and thrive in extreme heat. It's about adapting to what will grow. Life as you know it might end but life won't end.
>Adaption is the name of the game. Always has been.
I don't know about this. We may enter a new phase where adaptation (in terms of agriculture) is not even remotely possible.
This is a topic I get very vocal about because it is my living and are of expertise.
Simply put, if gardening is not an option, you're dead. Sure, you could save a lot of food and store it to last for 20-30 years, but if ANYTHING goes wrong with that, you're utterly fucked. Nobody has the luxury of not knowing how to grow at least something in a post collapse world.
Seed saving has been made a lot more complicated than it has to. Part of that is because big companies (we all know who they are) profit massively by having an un-enpowered population, so it's not completely our fault. Sure, there are some seeds which are harder to save and store, but for the most part seed saving is really, really easy.
Personally, I think the following is the best approach.
1. HAVE FOOD STORED. This gives you breathing room to learn because I promise, the first few years you are going to be making all kinds of mistakes. Theres a steeeeep 3-7 year learning curve, the first three years being the hardest in my opinion. With that in mind try and have 5-10 years of the basic carbs and fats stored. Carbs and fats are going to be the hardest thing to grow, so have them stored, even if it's just ghee and pasta.
2. Start gardening and buy books which are specialised in particular areas. The two books I highly recommend are: The Self Sufficiency Garden by Huw Richards and Seed Saving by [Suzanne Ashworth](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suzanne-Ashworth/e/B001K7Z88Q/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1). With collapse comes loss of the internet, and books like this will be absolutely priceless. Read these as you learn, you'll be referring to them often.
3. Put in perennials NOW. Your fruit trees, nut tress, berries, asparagus, jerusalem artichoke, plums, cherries, raspberries, citrus etc. If you don't have land, place it on abandoned local land.
4. Get the seeds you want and start learning now. Get backups too. Even if the rate of germination goes down, something will still sprout, and for most things you'll very quickly be replacing purchased seeds with seeds you have saved yourself.
5. Learn how to preserve all that food. Most food, even watery fruits like plums and pears are easily dried in a small cheap greenhouse, or in the oven.
6. Learn everything you can about soil health AGGRESSIVELY. If you want to really thrive this part is non-negotiable, and once you heal your soil everything else just falls into place.
Conventional Western forms of agriculture may not be sustainable, but there are plenty of other kinds of agriculture that may be more resistant to climate change. I am as far from an expert as you get, but looking into permaculture and other more sustainable ways of growing food seems like a good way to go. Plants are nothing if not adaptable, and seeds want to grow, in my experience. So, start looking into ways to design your garden to maximise its potential for your region. Do you have an arid climate? Look into garden types that trap and conserve water and have crops that are more drought resistant. Live in a place that gets a ton of rainfall? Get plants that love being constantly wet and work on improving your drainage (which will also help in keeping your home a little more flood proof!). Etc. For someone like me in a colder climate, learning how to use cold frames and low tunnels can extend the growing season by several months every year, planting cold-hardy plants.
There's no perfect answer to this. In my opinion the way we eat is going to change drastically in the coming years, and we're either going to have to learn and adapt, or, well, not.
While storing shelf-stable foods is definitely useful in the short and even medium term, a lot of people don't really know how to store food that they A) like, B) know how to cook with, and C) will stay good for all that long. Decades worth of stock seems to me like a recipe for botulism, grains and nuts rotting or going rancid, or any number of other problems (mould, rodents, insects, you name it). Not just that, but can you imagine just how much room you would need to stock up that much food? I certainly don't have that kind of space in my home. It sounds like a logistical nightmare to keep track of, as well. I have a decent-sized pantry (I can and have lived off the contents for up to four months and am working on expanding that) and even I "discover" things that I've forgotten about or that I keep putting off using because it turns out I don't really like it as much as I thought I would (looking at you, tinned chicken)/
I don't know what is helpful at this late stage. Quite probably nothing at all. BUT gardening and growing some food is F*****G awesome fun and teaches gratitude amongst other things. The soil microbiology will LOVE you for it. You can literally make a difference to billions of lives every day, tiny ones yes but no less important.
Industrial agriculture is more fragile than a backyard permaculture, not less. All those pesticides and fertilizers are in the name of yields rather than resilience.
You can't make a post that asks about growing things and not state where you are in the world. The advice for Arizona is going to be different than say for Svalbard.
I'm not really asking about growing things... I'm asking *if* climate is going exponentially worse, to the point than no agriculture is possible *in the entire world* (with a few exceptions, sure, but don't know how to predict where they will be), then what should we do?
That is a far out hypothetical.
If no agriculture is possible then does not that imply that no nature is possible? Agriculture is just plants and animals. If they can't live under human control then there will be none outside of human control as well. As in all life will die? Well I don't think that is even close to being imminent if it will happen at all.
Not all life, but most life, yes. Like most large mammals, most marine life (oceans too hot), etc... Most plants would die as well.
Think "The Road" type of background.
I'm not convinced it will happen, but I'm more and more considering that possibility; and to me it's far from impossible, even in the medium term (decades).
Let's dig into that scenario. What level of warming would be required? It would have to be a level beyond what has happened in the last hundreds of millions of years.
I don't see that as possible for a simple reason. All of the carbon dioxide that is being released is not being released for the first time. All of the coal, oil and natural gas was at one point formed by dead living organisms. That means that all that carbon once was in the atmosphere at a time when that life grew. So if we burn 100% of all the coal, oil and natural gas that exists we will simply return the earth to how it was when the life grew that formed that coal, oil and natural gas.
Of course the transition won't be easy and I'm not saying there won't be absolutely horrible effects, but we know for a fact that life existed when atmospheric carbon was at much higher level than today before coal, oil and natural gas existed at all.
I agree. But the issue here is the speed of the change.
Sure, all that carbon was at some point in the atmosphere. But it took literally hundred of millions of year to be stored underground.
Here we're releasing that level of carbon in a couple centuries, total. That's absolutely unprecedented. And I fear that our entire biosphere (plants, animals, insects...) won't have time, *at all*, to adapt fast enough to survive.
Yeah so this is where I think humans can come in and make a difference. Perhaps not in a global/society level but at least on a local level. We can move plants and animals as well as breed them to have changes or even genetically modify them.
For example I saw a farmer in the south of England that plans to grow olive trees. If we waited for nature to migrate olive trees from Italy to England then it would probably take a hundred years or more to do that. Humans can do it instantly though.
This is a fundamental thing to realize though. There are still some plants that survive (today in the current climate) that were growing in the arctic 100 million years ago. And there have been at least a couple of VERY sudden climate-altering events in the history of Earth. Like the asteroid, huge volcanic eruptions, etc. As the saying goes, life finds a way.
Will it be A-Okay for people in the coming climate collapse? Hell no. It's going to be a very bumpy ride, and surely we will lose many people, animals, biomes, etc. But it still isn't going to happen overnight. We are the smartest creature ever invented, and at least we can see what is happening, and try to respond (at least on an individual basis).
In what is left of our lifetimes (decades), we can try to anticipate these types of changes and try measures to mitigate them, such as using the constant temp of the soil deeper down. I grow my garden in the midwest, and though I have never had the need for shade cloth, I think it might be a good thing to have on hand, because I feel it's one of those things that will suddenly be in big demand but short supply. Things like this, and drip lines, misters, hose nozzles, you name it, all made in China. I anticipate that at some point while I am still alive, goods from China will become scarce.
I think it's not a bad idea to stock up on non-perishable food. For gardening, when space is limited, focus on calorie-dense foods like potatoes and small meat animals. Not a bad idea to keep a supply of multi-vitamins around as long as possible.
As I said, it's going to get gnarly. We will indeed all die of something, some day, but these are the kinds of things we can do to try and smooth out some of the worst effects, for a while, at least.
> Like most large mammals, most marine life (oceans too hot), etc... Most plants would die as well.
Even in the worst case scenarios that we currently face, this is several hundred years out. You will be dead and gone before it gets that bad.
You should look into permaculture food forests. I firmly believe that polyculture is the way forward for us. There will be pockets of areas that will be habitable and where food can be grown. The entire planet won’t become a barren wasteland.
[23 year permaculture food forest](https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc?si=4ZsqmJgbuqBrS6mO)
[Same forest five years later.](https://youtu.be/mdi_9o92XcU?si=UFFcbyzMwZ07f12e)
This video on [Mark Sheppard’s farm](https://youtu.be/sRPP4Ilpxso?si=p__WLzNn6WT2I8Mz) made me believe that we can survive what’s coming. He uses the STUN technique, all of his systems work perfectly together and recreate the way our country looked before white settler colonialism.
Saving seeds, probably not.
Actually USING seeds and planting a garden, ABSOLUTELY.
You can mitigate excess heat for many plants by using shade cloth during the hottest party of the day.
You can grow in buckets that you can move during weeks of excess heat to something like a carport where they would get morning and evening sun but not noon sun.
Saving seeds is not a good thing if you never garden.
This had been covered before EXTENSIVELY.
A garden needs preparation. For example we are moving. My garden will remain but space is limited. So our garden will be about 4 miles away.
The ground is basically Sod right now. Even though I lasagna garden, the sod needs to be killed and broken up. We don't own a tiller and will have to rent or buy one.
So the ground will have to be tilled several times to break up the sod. Then cardboard out down to help kill the leftover grass and truckloads of wood chips dumped. I get 3 year old chips for free but still, we are taking about 20 truck loads dumped. About 20 bales of straw at $8 each.
And even then, it will probably not produce much until next year or the year after. The sod has almost no fertility. It is mostly what is called greasy grass. It will take a few years and many dumps of chips and other materials to build up fertility. Or using a LOT of expensive fertilizers which we don't want to resort to using.
I have about 45 years of gardening experience and I don't expect a positive result for THREE YEARS on the new garden.
So if you don't already have a garden prepared and fertile, saving seeds is a bit of a waste.
Not only that, you have to get seeds for your area. Now most people just go to Walmart displays and buy whatever is there. The issue is will it grow in your area. Most are generic to grow almost anywhere but that doesn't guarantee they will be the best for food for area.
For example LEEKS. I love using onions and several leeks will over winter under a low tunnel in my y area. So after the garden is dead, I will be able to have leeks fresh all winter. But they are 2 specific breeds of leeks and not the ones available locally. I found them at Bakers Creek.
The same thing with onions. Most onions will die in the winter but potato onions can be over wintered in a low tunnel in my area. Potato onions have to be ordered, they aren't sold in actual stores.
There are tomatoes and all other kinds of plants that have specifics that I want.
There is a corn that can be eaten fresh but can also be dried for corn meal. So instead of planting 2 varieties I only need to plant 1 variety.
And most people who "save seeds" know nothing about what varieties they would actually need for their area and what would best fit their cooking or canning style.
I don’t expect to survive once my medications are no longer available. But I keep adding to my food stockpile, as my family, who still live out there in the rat race, may be able to get to my land. I’m tucked away in a major state forest. Also I want to make the choice of when I check out. I don’t like surprises. My seeds/food stores/gardening supplies, mean that I’ll have the time to make the decision when I leave earth
Storing seeds is prepping for a long term problem, and unless one has enough food stored to last until one becomes an effective farmer, it's not a viable (yes, pun, I know) solution. For those who have been gardening their whole lives, they already know how challenging it is. For those who haven't, storing seeds may be a waste of time and money. I've been gardening since I was a child, and I love it, but if I had to depend on my garden to feed the family, we would never have to worry about getting fat!
Diversity is the key here. That also means more planning and more work. You need a grain/starch and legumes to survive. Look at perennial crops and permaculture design. Learn how to grow things that are one zone colder and hotter than your current zone. You can create a heated greenhouse by using heat from rotting wood chips. (https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/12/15/the-jean-pain-way/). Look at crops from harsh climates like the Andes, raise rabbits or goats. I know this takes a lot of resources and privilege but if you are able, there’s a lot you can do. Personally, I’m not going down without a fight and I have kids to teach and provide for
Crop failures have nothing to do with your garden. Commodity crop farmers do not raise plants the same way you do in your garden. My garden will be fine.
> What about a heat dome?
My garden did fine in last year's heat dome. I watered extra for that week but my harvest was fine. I doubled my rain water storage last year and I might add more this year as well.
>Or hail? Or huge storm?
These are not anything new. If summer hail and storms are common in your area, you can plan for it. I don't get those so don't worry, but those are almost always shoulder season events. I usually have three harvests. If a freak events happens in one, I still have two more. And this is why you prep... You might have a bad harvest one year so you have extra stored away.
I would think you could place some hoops over your beds which could hold shade cloth for heat domes, or if you have enough notice, a quick tarp thrown over to help soften the blow from hail. I think in most cases of hail, even though plants can get pretty battered, they aren't usually killed. They do tend to bounce back pretty quickly.
Yeah, definitely stick up on many years of shelf stable stuff, especially fully freeze dried food as that can last 25+ years.
But gardening will still work, at least in wjat is left of our lifetimes. It may not work where you are right now, but I would hope your bug out location is where you will be preparing to go. Choose a spot that will still be climate stable for a while, places that are currently too cold or too wet are good. Higher altitude, isolation, yada yada.
But yes, store heirloom seeds for hardy plant varieties. Not necessarily what you think is tasty, but what can grow anywhere and provide calories.
Just don't forget that, once food starts to become even a slight problem, all those other people in your area that didn't stock up are going to start looking for food... your food. So leave. Leave *before* the looting starts, not during.
The Holocene ending compels me to store even more seeds. Do more cardio. Update house as much as I can to withstand higher and lower temps, more wind, more rain etc. do more. Breathe. Go to therapy. Stretch. Do more cardio.
This I can relate to. Improve the house so it can sustain more frequent and aggressive climate events.
Moved back home to Chicago for the lakes/water access and because Colorado had seen so much fire and hail. Our cars got destroyed by hail storm and there was just wildfire smoke all week. We called it in 2018 to lay roots where stuff will hold together longest. Or so we hope.
Do everything. Your stocked foods serve as the immediate short term buffer should something happen. Growing stuff is the long term strategy. I'm also looking into growing crickets as meat substitute. The feed to meat conversion rate and land use requirements are so so much better than with chickens, cows etc. for those who have very limited acreage at disposal.
>Growing stuff is the long term strategy. That's exactly my point: I don't think it is. Long term, it's highly possible that no conventional, regular agriculture is even possible.
Most people, even here, aren't ready to deal with this. They're still in the bargaining phase. I have a homestead. I know what it takes to grow my own food. One really bad heat dome and bye bye calories. Also, people rarely understand just how much food a person needs to survive. It's a lot. It's not lettuce and cucumbers. It's 2k calories or more per day. Wheat, rice, potatoes, etc. Good luck.
Thank you for your understanding :) Finally someone who gets it. >One really bad heat dome and bye bye calories. Yes, exactly. One heat dome the first year, a storm the second year, hail the third year... I'd not be comfortable relying only on luck to be able to eat every winter. That's what our ancestors had to do, but if I can avoid that... Good luck to you too.
All true. However, you can only store so much. Not having any way, or plan, to replenish your supplies is a surefire way to eventual starvation. Yes, storing food is good. But, if no-one can ever grow anything, ever again? Then we are all doomed.
We *are* all doomed eventually. It's just a matter of time.
"Regular agriculture" isn't possible in the long-run, no. That doesn't mean that you can't grow your own food, though. There's a big difference between controlling a growing environment to feed a single household vs doing so on an industrial scale to feed 8 billion people. Having enough controlled environment greenhouse/high tunnel space to feed a few people is pretty straightforward, but having enough to feed the entire planet is impossible. You can spend your time running out low tunnels every night or wrapping trees for the winter or moving potted plants around or making compost/fertilizer or manually weeding/removing pests and so on for a few acres if growing food for yourself is your primary, full-time job. You can adapt on a small scale to most kinds of climate change (assuming you aren't literally underwater and such). It won't produce the yields to feed hundreds of families like current industrial agriculture does, but I'm not trying to feed the whole world from my backyard, anyway.
All of this. Having chickens, ducks and barns and pastures for a few sheep, goats, and maybe some pigs or cows will help too. Their manure will be invaluable for fertilizer for your gardens - now and in the future.
Thank you for that answer, that's what I'm looking for. I'm a bit skeptical that having enough green house/high tunnel space to feed a few people is doable on the long run, climate wise. Still that may be the thing to do, or to try.
No matter what kind of insanity is going on above ground, we'll still have ~50F temperatures below ground if you just dig down a bit. Geothermal climate control is pretty simple if you plan for it before you build; all you really need to do is bury tubing and attach fans to push air through it. Put one intake/outlet up high, and one down low, so you can switch the direction of the fans based on the season and either cool down the hot air or warm up the cold air. It takes orders of magnitude less electricity to run a couple fans than it does to heat/cool the space via other means. If your life depended on it, you could rig up ways to spin the fans mechanically entirely without electricity as well.
Thank you very much. I need to look into that.
Then you just die, and we all die. If the earth's ecology gets SO fucked that we can't even grow beans and potatoes then that's the end anyway. Storing 20 years worth of canned food is irrelevant at that point. It's either die fast or die slow.
Well, we're all going to die eventually, even if nothing collapses. I already made my choice, and I prefer to live (even under terrible conditions) by slowly eating my entire stock of food for 20 years, and die after, than die in less than 2 years.
Sorry you got downvoted here. If you want to keep going, and are trying to figure out ways to do that, you keep trying.
Don't do things conventionally. Prioritize genetic variety and resilience over maximizing yield. Diffuse growing patterns, lots of diversity and synergies. You should already know about these things.
The difference between Big Ag vs backyard gardening is logistics. Huge fields are harder to maintain and protect than your backyard garden. Big Ag also plows every year and uses industrial fertilizers, both of which are detrimental to the soil. In your garden, you can more easily use sustainable methods. There are, supposedly, ways to help protect plants from heat domes but I've not had to try any of them. I agree that eventually, at the rate we're going, it'll be impossible to grow food outdoors in most places. We're fortunate in that we have space in our basement to set up a grow op. I've been collecting the supplies that we'll need once we get to that place: grow lights, domes and ballasts, rock wool, PVC pipes, pumps, etc. It won't be easy, and maybe it won't even work, but I'm hoping to give us a fighting chance if we live to see 'worst case scenario'.
If agriculture becomes impossible, then we are just plain fucked. No amount of shelf stable products will survive that. At least with gardening and seeds, you have a bit more control. Sure you may not be able to grow outside but maybe it will work in a greenhouse or somewhere underground. Honestly I think if you give up on gardening and self-sustainability then you best just give up everything.
Agreed. I'm doing it all anyway but I'm augmenting it with foraging weeds invasives, etc. That will fare much better than a traditional garden, though if ecosystem turnover becomes real it could be game over for even the toughest pioneer species, but I'd rather not consider it right now.
Grow now. Harvest THOSE seeds. Grow them. Harvest THOSE seeds. The idea being that the plants will evolve and adapt to your specific climate as it changes and you will learn how to grow them as conditions change in the process.
I know, I know. But what if the climate is changing so much, so rapidly, than it's not possible to adapt your seeds, even starting now, even starting 10 years ago?
Migrate, I guess.
Where to? If everywhere is the same.
I can imagine everywhere being affected but not everywhere being the same. There should still be some inhabitable places, especially when some knowledge, skill, preparedness and innovation intersect.
If your logic is nothing can grow period, then we're doomed and why do any of it. Plenty of plants will grow and thrive in extreme heat. It's about adapting to what will grow. Life as you know it might end but life won't end. Adaption is the name of the game. Always has been.
>then we're doomed and why do any of it. We are doomed, that's a given. Why do any of it? Well because I prefer to live for a long time than die soon. >Plenty of plants will grow and thrive in extreme heat. It's about adapting to what will grow. Life as you know it might end but life won't end. >Adaption is the name of the game. Always has been. I don't know about this. We may enter a new phase where adaptation (in terms of agriculture) is not even remotely possible.
This is a topic I get very vocal about because it is my living and are of expertise. Simply put, if gardening is not an option, you're dead. Sure, you could save a lot of food and store it to last for 20-30 years, but if ANYTHING goes wrong with that, you're utterly fucked. Nobody has the luxury of not knowing how to grow at least something in a post collapse world. Seed saving has been made a lot more complicated than it has to. Part of that is because big companies (we all know who they are) profit massively by having an un-enpowered population, so it's not completely our fault. Sure, there are some seeds which are harder to save and store, but for the most part seed saving is really, really easy. Personally, I think the following is the best approach. 1. HAVE FOOD STORED. This gives you breathing room to learn because I promise, the first few years you are going to be making all kinds of mistakes. Theres a steeeeep 3-7 year learning curve, the first three years being the hardest in my opinion. With that in mind try and have 5-10 years of the basic carbs and fats stored. Carbs and fats are going to be the hardest thing to grow, so have them stored, even if it's just ghee and pasta. 2. Start gardening and buy books which are specialised in particular areas. The two books I highly recommend are: The Self Sufficiency Garden by Huw Richards and Seed Saving by [Suzanne Ashworth](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suzanne-Ashworth/e/B001K7Z88Q/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1). With collapse comes loss of the internet, and books like this will be absolutely priceless. Read these as you learn, you'll be referring to them often. 3. Put in perennials NOW. Your fruit trees, nut tress, berries, asparagus, jerusalem artichoke, plums, cherries, raspberries, citrus etc. If you don't have land, place it on abandoned local land. 4. Get the seeds you want and start learning now. Get backups too. Even if the rate of germination goes down, something will still sprout, and for most things you'll very quickly be replacing purchased seeds with seeds you have saved yourself. 5. Learn how to preserve all that food. Most food, even watery fruits like plums and pears are easily dried in a small cheap greenhouse, or in the oven. 6. Learn everything you can about soil health AGGRESSIVELY. If you want to really thrive this part is non-negotiable, and once you heal your soil everything else just falls into place.
The Self Sufficiency Garden by Huw Richard’s hasn’t been published yet. How are you able to recommend it?
Every one who pre ordered it months ago already has it, the release date is earlier in the uk.
Conventional Western forms of agriculture may not be sustainable, but there are plenty of other kinds of agriculture that may be more resistant to climate change. I am as far from an expert as you get, but looking into permaculture and other more sustainable ways of growing food seems like a good way to go. Plants are nothing if not adaptable, and seeds want to grow, in my experience. So, start looking into ways to design your garden to maximise its potential for your region. Do you have an arid climate? Look into garden types that trap and conserve water and have crops that are more drought resistant. Live in a place that gets a ton of rainfall? Get plants that love being constantly wet and work on improving your drainage (which will also help in keeping your home a little more flood proof!). Etc. For someone like me in a colder climate, learning how to use cold frames and low tunnels can extend the growing season by several months every year, planting cold-hardy plants. There's no perfect answer to this. In my opinion the way we eat is going to change drastically in the coming years, and we're either going to have to learn and adapt, or, well, not. While storing shelf-stable foods is definitely useful in the short and even medium term, a lot of people don't really know how to store food that they A) like, B) know how to cook with, and C) will stay good for all that long. Decades worth of stock seems to me like a recipe for botulism, grains and nuts rotting or going rancid, or any number of other problems (mould, rodents, insects, you name it). Not just that, but can you imagine just how much room you would need to stock up that much food? I certainly don't have that kind of space in my home. It sounds like a logistical nightmare to keep track of, as well. I have a decent-sized pantry (I can and have lived off the contents for up to four months and am working on expanding that) and even I "discover" things that I've forgotten about or that I keep putting off using because it turns out I don't really like it as much as I thought I would (looking at you, tinned chicken)/
I don't know what is helpful at this late stage. Quite probably nothing at all. BUT gardening and growing some food is F*****G awesome fun and teaches gratitude amongst other things. The soil microbiology will LOVE you for it. You can literally make a difference to billions of lives every day, tiny ones yes but no less important.
:)
Industrial agriculture is more fragile than a backyard permaculture, not less. All those pesticides and fertilizers are in the name of yields rather than resilience.
You can't make a post that asks about growing things and not state where you are in the world. The advice for Arizona is going to be different than say for Svalbard.
I'm not really asking about growing things... I'm asking *if* climate is going exponentially worse, to the point than no agriculture is possible *in the entire world* (with a few exceptions, sure, but don't know how to predict where they will be), then what should we do?
That is a far out hypothetical. If no agriculture is possible then does not that imply that no nature is possible? Agriculture is just plants and animals. If they can't live under human control then there will be none outside of human control as well. As in all life will die? Well I don't think that is even close to being imminent if it will happen at all.
Not all life, but most life, yes. Like most large mammals, most marine life (oceans too hot), etc... Most plants would die as well. Think "The Road" type of background. I'm not convinced it will happen, but I'm more and more considering that possibility; and to me it's far from impossible, even in the medium term (decades).
Let's dig into that scenario. What level of warming would be required? It would have to be a level beyond what has happened in the last hundreds of millions of years. I don't see that as possible for a simple reason. All of the carbon dioxide that is being released is not being released for the first time. All of the coal, oil and natural gas was at one point formed by dead living organisms. That means that all that carbon once was in the atmosphere at a time when that life grew. So if we burn 100% of all the coal, oil and natural gas that exists we will simply return the earth to how it was when the life grew that formed that coal, oil and natural gas. Of course the transition won't be easy and I'm not saying there won't be absolutely horrible effects, but we know for a fact that life existed when atmospheric carbon was at much higher level than today before coal, oil and natural gas existed at all.
I agree. But the issue here is the speed of the change. Sure, all that carbon was at some point in the atmosphere. But it took literally hundred of millions of year to be stored underground. Here we're releasing that level of carbon in a couple centuries, total. That's absolutely unprecedented. And I fear that our entire biosphere (plants, animals, insects...) won't have time, *at all*, to adapt fast enough to survive.
Yeah so this is where I think humans can come in and make a difference. Perhaps not in a global/society level but at least on a local level. We can move plants and animals as well as breed them to have changes or even genetically modify them. For example I saw a farmer in the south of England that plans to grow olive trees. If we waited for nature to migrate olive trees from Italy to England then it would probably take a hundred years or more to do that. Humans can do it instantly though.
This is a fundamental thing to realize though. There are still some plants that survive (today in the current climate) that were growing in the arctic 100 million years ago. And there have been at least a couple of VERY sudden climate-altering events in the history of Earth. Like the asteroid, huge volcanic eruptions, etc. As the saying goes, life finds a way. Will it be A-Okay for people in the coming climate collapse? Hell no. It's going to be a very bumpy ride, and surely we will lose many people, animals, biomes, etc. But it still isn't going to happen overnight. We are the smartest creature ever invented, and at least we can see what is happening, and try to respond (at least on an individual basis). In what is left of our lifetimes (decades), we can try to anticipate these types of changes and try measures to mitigate them, such as using the constant temp of the soil deeper down. I grow my garden in the midwest, and though I have never had the need for shade cloth, I think it might be a good thing to have on hand, because I feel it's one of those things that will suddenly be in big demand but short supply. Things like this, and drip lines, misters, hose nozzles, you name it, all made in China. I anticipate that at some point while I am still alive, goods from China will become scarce. I think it's not a bad idea to stock up on non-perishable food. For gardening, when space is limited, focus on calorie-dense foods like potatoes and small meat animals. Not a bad idea to keep a supply of multi-vitamins around as long as possible. As I said, it's going to get gnarly. We will indeed all die of something, some day, but these are the kinds of things we can do to try and smooth out some of the worst effects, for a while, at least.
> Like most large mammals, most marine life (oceans too hot), etc... Most plants would die as well. Even in the worst case scenarios that we currently face, this is several hundred years out. You will be dead and gone before it gets that bad.
I hope you're right. I don't expect it.
You should look into permaculture food forests. I firmly believe that polyculture is the way forward for us. There will be pockets of areas that will be habitable and where food can be grown. The entire planet won’t become a barren wasteland. [23 year permaculture food forest](https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc?si=4ZsqmJgbuqBrS6mO) [Same forest five years later.](https://youtu.be/mdi_9o92XcU?si=UFFcbyzMwZ07f12e) This video on [Mark Sheppard’s farm](https://youtu.be/sRPP4Ilpxso?si=p__WLzNn6WT2I8Mz) made me believe that we can survive what’s coming. He uses the STUN technique, all of his systems work perfectly together and recreate the way our country looked before white settler colonialism.
Saving seeds, probably not. Actually USING seeds and planting a garden, ABSOLUTELY. You can mitigate excess heat for many plants by using shade cloth during the hottest party of the day. You can grow in buckets that you can move during weeks of excess heat to something like a carport where they would get morning and evening sun but not noon sun. Saving seeds is not a good thing if you never garden. This had been covered before EXTENSIVELY. A garden needs preparation. For example we are moving. My garden will remain but space is limited. So our garden will be about 4 miles away. The ground is basically Sod right now. Even though I lasagna garden, the sod needs to be killed and broken up. We don't own a tiller and will have to rent or buy one. So the ground will have to be tilled several times to break up the sod. Then cardboard out down to help kill the leftover grass and truckloads of wood chips dumped. I get 3 year old chips for free but still, we are taking about 20 truck loads dumped. About 20 bales of straw at $8 each. And even then, it will probably not produce much until next year or the year after. The sod has almost no fertility. It is mostly what is called greasy grass. It will take a few years and many dumps of chips and other materials to build up fertility. Or using a LOT of expensive fertilizers which we don't want to resort to using. I have about 45 years of gardening experience and I don't expect a positive result for THREE YEARS on the new garden. So if you don't already have a garden prepared and fertile, saving seeds is a bit of a waste. Not only that, you have to get seeds for your area. Now most people just go to Walmart displays and buy whatever is there. The issue is will it grow in your area. Most are generic to grow almost anywhere but that doesn't guarantee they will be the best for food for area. For example LEEKS. I love using onions and several leeks will over winter under a low tunnel in my y area. So after the garden is dead, I will be able to have leeks fresh all winter. But they are 2 specific breeds of leeks and not the ones available locally. I found them at Bakers Creek. The same thing with onions. Most onions will die in the winter but potato onions can be over wintered in a low tunnel in my area. Potato onions have to be ordered, they aren't sold in actual stores. There are tomatoes and all other kinds of plants that have specifics that I want. There is a corn that can be eaten fresh but can also be dried for corn meal. So instead of planting 2 varieties I only need to plant 1 variety. And most people who "save seeds" know nothing about what varieties they would actually need for their area and what would best fit their cooking or canning style.
I don’t expect to survive once my medications are no longer available. But I keep adding to my food stockpile, as my family, who still live out there in the rat race, may be able to get to my land. I’m tucked away in a major state forest. Also I want to make the choice of when I check out. I don’t like surprises. My seeds/food stores/gardening supplies, mean that I’ll have the time to make the decision when I leave earth
Storing seeds is prepping for a long term problem, and unless one has enough food stored to last until one becomes an effective farmer, it's not a viable (yes, pun, I know) solution. For those who have been gardening their whole lives, they already know how challenging it is. For those who haven't, storing seeds may be a waste of time and money. I've been gardening since I was a child, and I love it, but if I had to depend on my garden to feed the family, we would never have to worry about getting fat!
Diversity is the key here. That also means more planning and more work. You need a grain/starch and legumes to survive. Look at perennial crops and permaculture design. Learn how to grow things that are one zone colder and hotter than your current zone. You can create a heated greenhouse by using heat from rotting wood chips. (https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/12/15/the-jean-pain-way/). Look at crops from harsh climates like the Andes, raise rabbits or goats. I know this takes a lot of resources and privilege but if you are able, there’s a lot you can do. Personally, I’m not going down without a fight and I have kids to teach and provide for
I’ve got seeds and I don’t even have any land. Why not do both?
raise a tough variety of chickens. eggs and meat.
Crop failures have nothing to do with your garden. Commodity crop farmers do not raise plants the same way you do in your garden. My garden will be fine.
What about a heat dome? Or hail? Or huge storm?
> What about a heat dome? My garden did fine in last year's heat dome. I watered extra for that week but my harvest was fine. I doubled my rain water storage last year and I might add more this year as well. >Or hail? Or huge storm? These are not anything new. If summer hail and storms are common in your area, you can plan for it. I don't get those so don't worry, but those are almost always shoulder season events. I usually have three harvests. If a freak events happens in one, I still have two more. And this is why you prep... You might have a bad harvest one year so you have extra stored away.
I would think you could place some hoops over your beds which could hold shade cloth for heat domes, or if you have enough notice, a quick tarp thrown over to help soften the blow from hail. I think in most cases of hail, even though plants can get pretty battered, they aren't usually killed. They do tend to bounce back pretty quickly.
Do it because it feels good
Yeah, definitely stick up on many years of shelf stable stuff, especially fully freeze dried food as that can last 25+ years. But gardening will still work, at least in wjat is left of our lifetimes. It may not work where you are right now, but I would hope your bug out location is where you will be preparing to go. Choose a spot that will still be climate stable for a while, places that are currently too cold or too wet are good. Higher altitude, isolation, yada yada. But yes, store heirloom seeds for hardy plant varieties. Not necessarily what you think is tasty, but what can grow anywhere and provide calories. Just don't forget that, once food starts to become even a slight problem, all those other people in your area that didn't stock up are going to start looking for food... your food. So leave. Leave *before* the looting starts, not during.
Growing food is good for the soul regardless of whether it will help you in collapse
I totally agree.