Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. The term self-sufficiency is usually applied to a variety of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed outside of what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals.

So in other words: To be fully self-sufficient you would have to produce all you need for life in your own space by yourself. No need or use of money. You know what I am talking about; we have all watched The Good Life haven’t we?

The problem

There are several problems with this.

1. This tends to take a large sums of money to get started
2. It takes more space than the majority of us have to grow enough food for just one person, let alone for a whole family.
3. Not all of us want to (or even should) give up the things that make life more comfortable.
4. The world economy, which allows us the luxuries that makes life more comfortable, can only exist if there is money being used.
5. If we all stopped and tried to live this way, where would all the great advances such as global communication and cures for cancer come from?
6. And let us not forget that in the current world economy, many of us find ourselves in a position where we are finding it hard to meet even the basic costs of living. Let alone all the people with debt they will still need to be earning money to pay off.

No, in a world with nearly 7 billion people, there is no way we can all become self-sufficient in a sustainable fashion.

We need to make the idea of self-sufficient living more accessible to us all. Perhaps even, more desirable?

We need to lose the idea that being self-sufficient means sacrificing comfort. That to embrace the idea you have to produce everything you need yourself. That you can’t get started unless you have all the space, funds and desire to just drop out of society and isolate yourself. That the philosophy is, and can only be, embraced by “hippies”. Who have become so idealistically green that they have forgotten that the world is so over populated that it is impossible for it to be sustainable for all of us to join them, and have made the idea unpopular by the way they look down their nose at the rest of us.

The solution

I suggest an extra definition – an urban slang definition. Like so many words have these days.

Self-sufficiency: To produce as much of the basic necessities of living from the time and space you can comfortably use. To use as much of the technology that is practical for the production of sustainable energy and to reduce the use of energy.

The beauty of this new urban slang definition is.

1. The start-up cost can be as little as the price of a few bags of seeds and time.
2. Once you start harvesting your living costs go down.
3. The use of a few simple and free methods to reduce your use of energy saves you money.
4. Since you don’t have to leave society and are still earning money it just takes a matter of time to replace everything with energy-efficient products and end even add energy producing technology to your house.
5. In time your cost of living should come down and you will be able to afford extra comforts in life without ever giving up all the comforts you already have.

And you might have noticed it even makes your life more green!

So I ask again: Self-sufficiency – In this world economic situation, why aren’t we all doing it?