EDITORIAL

There’s a lot of chat at the moment about the terrible increases we are seeing in the cost of living, and often growing a bit of food is mentioned as part of that.

- Jo McCarroll reflects on saving money through growing veg.

As I am sure most of you know by now, I am particularly passionate about growing food and much of my garden is dedicated to edible crops, so I am always interested to hear people’s views on this topic. And it seems to me that whenever the subject comes up, most people take one of two positions, neither of which I particularly agree with myself. Sometimes people say it’s quite impossible to grow food without spending far more than that food would have cost you to buy as you need to invest in all sorts of kit in order to succeed. And sometimes people say that families struggling to meet the truly astronomical cost increases we are seeing now are not showing sufficient Kiwi can-do and back in the day people had the initiative to grab a spade and plant a few spuds.

Now I do not agree with the first point at all. I think you can grow quite a bit of food without spending much money at all. I was talking to Angela Clifford from The Food Farm in Canterbury, which is featured in this issue, about this very thing and she made the point that in a society that often thinks of value in monetary terms we have simply commercialised the idea of growing your own.

“Just grow food. It’s easy,” is how Angela put it.

“You don’t need the fancy planters and soil. You can just turn up a patch of turf and start.”

But don’t get me wrong, neither I nor Angela agree with the second position either. I think it is simplistic – absurdly simplistic – to say people who are struggling to make ends meet could just dig their way out. Because when I say you can grow a bit of food, I mean that provided you have a little bit of space to do so and access to that space for long enough for your crops to grow, as well as the time to spare and someone in your life who can hopefully show you how to propagate from cutting or collect seeds and what you might want to plant when. And I don’t for one minute think that growing your own food is a solution to the problem of poverty: which is a terrible, multidimensional phenomenon without a simple solution.

But if you are privileged enough to be in a position where growing food is possible, then yes, I do think homegrown harvests can help stretch your finite financial resources a little further. I know that is true for me. That’s not the only reason to do it of course: there are too many other benefits to list on this one page, but I think it’s fundamentally true.

On The Food Farm, the 16 acre property in Amberley where Angela, husband Nick Gill and their two sons live, there are 60 different fruit and vegetable crops growing (as well as sheep, pigs, ducks and chickens, milking cows and honeybees; the family also hunt and fish). I asked Angela how much she spends at the supermarket each month.

“Not a lot,” she admits. “We buy things like cleaning products and toilet paper, table butter as I don’t have time to make it, coffee, chocolate. But my ultimate goal is to never step foot in another supermarket.”

But that’s not the only way to do it, she’s quick to say. You don’t need to grow food “perfectly” or grow everything your family needs to get the benefit: every little bit helps. A few lettuces in a wooden crate, herbs in pots on the windowsill, even knowing a few edibles you can forage for: all of that can help. Especially if you think not as an individual but as a community: Angela is very much of the view that community solutions are needed to increase food resilience for us all, and part of the solution is passing on the skills and knowledge gardeners have.

“The trick is not to overcomplicate it,” she says. “Somehow people have come to think you have to be an expert to even try. Because yes, you can definitely save money by growing your own food. And perhaps more importantly you also get the less tangible benefits too: it increases your physical and mental wellbeing, it creates a sense of control. You can get your hands in the soil and know you are contributing to the wellbeing of your family. And I think that’s something you can’t put a price on.”