New 'Victory Gardens'

We have several resilient activities already happening in our Bryn Athyn area (outside Philadelphia). A beekeeping network, a community garden, and a firewood club are active as a result of people doing what they enjoy. John Robb's Global Guerrillas site suggests some ways to raise the intensity/productivity of local food production:

RC JOURNAL: Money Garden?

Burpee is selling a new frugal package called the Money Garden. Sales pitch: $10 in selected seeds can "potentially" yield $650 in produce.

"Victory gardens" are smart way to hedge against short term system failure and as a cost cutting measure. However, a longer term solution for decentralized agriculture needs to be much, much more productive than traditional gardening. Subscription plots/farming, low cost sensor networks (water, light, PH, etc.), high intensity plot plans, accelerated local composting systems, lawn garden entrepreneurs, tinkering networks, etc. will be needed to flesh out an innovative ecosystem that will drive the productivity curve. Given these innovations, its possible to see a situation were 80-90% of food consumption is locally derived and sold at a small fraction of current costs and at a much higher level of quality/freshness. Resilience needs to be productive/affordable to become dominant.