Also, remember that the COST of putting up food should be figured in. To freeze, jar, or can you need HEAT. The food must be blanced, boiled, or pressure canned. This does add to the cost. There is also a LOT of labor involved. If you've never done it you won't believe how much labor it takes. Find someone to help you.

In my town, (which is a BIG gardening town) there is a farmers market, and it makes more sense for ME to go there and buy the fresh, organic stuff just as we need it, and perhaps a bit to put up, than it does to plant a large veg garden for just the two of us.

When the kids were small, we did have a garden, 80'x 80'. We grew everything, and I put it all up. Spent the entire summer watering, weeding, mulching, harvesting, freezing, canning....and by October I was exhausted and sick of veg. If it could be canned/jarred, I did that, if not, I froze it. I know I put up at least 50 pints each (either jarred or frozen) of:

tomato puree, tomato sauce, tomato paste, green beans, yellow beans (wax), broccoli, cauliflower, sweet corn, spinach, summer squash/marrow, several different kinds of cucumber pickles but mainly dill and kosher dill, fruit jelly and jam from wild fruit (elder, sand plum, chokecherry etc), several kinds of peppers (both sweet and hot), potatoes, sprouts, cabbage, 2 kinds of peas (sweet and Oriental sugar pea pods), and the salad stuff like lettuce and radishes that can't be put by.

A successful garden is a LOT of hard work. I have a 'job' now and don't really have the time, but if I have to, I can do it again.

We also seldom bought meat because the Mr is a Hunter and we had wild meat in the freezer. It's not 'free' but is sure cheaper than store bought meat. We always butchered and processed our own wild meat, never took it to a 'plant'. We still do that, don't trust the processing plants to do it properly or give us back the exact animal we killed.

20 years ago, we lived in a place where it didn't take much fuel or ammunition to go kill something, and the State was being generous with permits, so we filled them all. I made all our own ground meat/burger/mince, many different kinds of sausages, both in bulk and stuffed in casings. I still have those recipes if anyone is interested.

I even usually pressure canned/jarred at least one wild critter, deer or 'antelope' in pints for Instant Stew meat, etc. Made jerky out of at least one more, and still had a freezer full of 'fresh' meat. (I did buy chicken...LOL)

Trust me, I have done it and it is a Full Time Job for about 6 mos.

I never did grow 'grain' crops, but we always had a place to buy them whole and in bulk, with grinding facilities available. I think Chiefs' idea of a nation wide co op of bio fuel could work, but it would take a LOT of cooperation and WORK to get it going.

In Wyoming, a lot of farmers are now selling corn to the ethanol plants instead of the feedlots. The ethanol plants pay a higher price. I've not seen rape (rape makes canola oil) growing out west but I have seen amaranth fields, sunflowers and chicory. Seems a lot of the farmers are getting out of human food crops like wheat. Just my take on it.