SELF-SUFFICIENCY for a changing world
1960S WESTERN society’s more radical bookshelves used to feature books called ‘Five Acres and Self Sufficiency’. Elsewhere in the world the classic Aussie backyard was regarded as enough land for a small farm.
Fast forward 60 years: today buildings can be designed with ‘garden’ floors and grow lights; blocks of flats may come with attached solar heated greenhouses and/or green walls so that retiring baby boomers can still grow their own vegies and herbs; commercial ‘self-contained’ green houses for desert areas harvest moisture from the air, combined with fish tanks where the droppings feed the vegies; and NASA et al have come up with systems to feed astronauts in space or on Mars, though these have only been trialled so far on Earth.
I was reminded just how self-sufficient you can be on a small block when I emailed a friend in
