Subsistence Farming In Ghana

I think a lot of us, particularly those who grew up in the city (like me), have a romanticized view of self-sufficiency and homesteading. For the Thoreau-reading, hippie-ish, over-burdened, ecologically minded, individualistic, dream-chasing, 5 Acres and Independence owning few, being a subsistence farmer looks about a million times better than being a desk jockey.

This is, until you watch something like this:

Though it seems like it would be nice to stand in muck with a few cute children, bending over like that all day in the blazing sun would be murderous – not to mention tilling a field with a short-handled digging hoe like the young man at the beginning of this clip. You’d be crying for fluorescent lights, a set of spreadsheets to edit and a diet Dr. Pepper in about five minutes.

In case you can’t tell what the lady is doing, she’s transplanting rice. Rice is often started in intensively planted beds, then later transplanted to the field. It’s time-consuming, back-breaking and inefficient. It also produces only a small amount of calories compared to the labor involved.

That’s why if we’re going to grow our own food, we need to be smart about it. It’s not all that freeing to be a slave to your land. The permaculture approach of building food forests as multi-layered ecosystems that produce an abundant food for generations after an initial few years of hard work makes sense.

If you plant when you’re young and strong, by the time you’re old and weak you’ll simply be able to wander about picking what you started long ago. (Also – I’ll bet you’ll stay a lot stronger as you age if you keep active and tend what you’ve planted.) When you plant a fruit or nut tree, consider it a gift to your future self.

That can’t be said about rice.

There’s a place for annual agriculture – I practice it myself – but to be tied to that wheel forever isn’t my idea of freedom. It’s also not a good survival strategy. If you have a drought, or get hurt, or experience a late freeze, or a swarm of locusts, or any of a number of awful things, you’re main crop can be knocked flat. If you grow a bunch of perennials, the chances of losing everything are very low. We’re coming into the fall and for most of the country, this is a great time to plant fruit trees. Do yourself a favor and grab a few… unless you really like backaches.

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