So many advantages that growing your own food is perhaps the best thing you can do while living through a recession.
When a recession begins, growing you own food may not seems like the top priority. Most people are focused on keeping their jobs for income but as you will see growing food should be one of your top priority.
The deeper the recession gets the more valuable a garden becomes and since we have not had a deep recession for at least a decade the value of gardening is sure to be overlooked.
Here is a list of why growing your own food becomes very valuable in a recession:
1. Inflation
Inflation is one of the first signs that the economy is headed into a recession. Food and energy inflation is usually part of the reason that the economy begins to slow down. People cannot afford the high prices for things like food and gas, and are forced to give up all other additional spending in order to purchase food to eat and gas to get to work. When you grow your own food, you have a shelter from food inflation. The governments’ response to a recession is usually to add new money and credit into the economy, so that people begin spending again, but of course this leads to more inflation which makes your own food even more valuable.
2. Government controls – rationing, price controls
Increasing prices on food leads to government controls to try to keep prices low. The government tries to help the public with price controls and rationing to keep people from buying in bulk to protect themselves from higher prices in the future. These controls never work out in the long run and prices continue to rise if the government continues to add new money into the economy. Growing your own food is one of the best ways to protect yourself against these attempts to control the food market.
3. Shortages
When the government starts to try to control the supply and the prices, you can bet there will be shortages. This means that you cannot get Milk, Eggs and Bread on a daily bases anymore. When the supplies come in they will be quickly sold or traded that day, leaving shortages the next few days. When food shortages begin people usually end up waiting in long lines to get what they want. Growing your own food in the best way to protect yourself from food shortages.
4. Credit limits
A deep recession can cause banks to limit the amount of money that can be taken out of your account each day. ATM machines can quickly change the cash limit per day to protect the banks from a run on cash. These limits are usually because people are trying to get their money out of the banks and into something that will hold value better than their currency, do to inflation. Growing you own food helps reduce the amount of money you need to spend on food, which is a vital advantage in a deep recession.
5. Bartering
Growing your own food gives you assets to the marketplace without having to use currency. You can barter directly with the food you have grown. This is very useful because high inflation causes bartering markets to pop up as people try to protect their wealth by avoiding the currency that is losing value. Growing your own food gives you inflation protected wealth.
6. Health
The quality of food deteriorates in a recession. Farmers are forced to cut corners and governments don’t have the resources to monitor supplies as well. Your health could be at risk. Growing your own organic food reduces your risk of health concerns with damaged or infected foods in the stores.
7. Avoid new sales tax and property tax
A recession causes government incomes to drop. Local governments respond by increasing sales tax and property taxes. Food is not supposed to be taxes, but many foods are considered non-essential and therefore taxable. It also depends where you buy your food as to whether it is taxes or not. The government can also add more foods to the non-essential list to increase the tax revenue. Growing your own food helps shelters your wealth from additional sale tax. Property tax is little harder to avoid, but if you grow your own food on your property, you are creating additional wealth to help pay for the increase in property taxes.
8. Avoid higher income taxes
When the government is facing a recession, they raise income tax to collect more money. This does not help the economy, but it does help raise more money for the many services that the government needs to keep going. Growing your own food reduces your burden to try to increase your wages to pay for the additional income taxes.
9. Family jobs – planting, watering, security, harvesting
Another good reason to grow you own food in a recession is that it can provide family jobs. If you or your family members cannot all find jobs, you can spend time in the garden producing food. There are many things to do and you can look for ways to expand your garden each year to give yourself a raise by growing more food.
10. Feeding your animals
Growing your own food can help feed your animals. Garden food is very good for house pets like cats and dogs. And if you raise animals garden food is a great source of food for them. My security dog loves tomatoes, carrots and apples.
Taken together, growing your own food has too many advantages to avoid it. In the last major recession, we would have had a massive increase in home gardening if the government wouldn't have added 40 million people to the food stamp program. The next time they may not be able to do that.
Growing your own food is very valuable in a recession and as a recession deepens, these advantages make growing your own food almost irresistible.
One of the best ways to be prepared for a recession is to start growing your own food before it starts.