> It is really magical if you think of how much you spare our planet with growing your own food: You need to get a job to make money so that you can spend that money on buying food which was produced and delivered close to you by large, complex and very inefficient industries. This system spends incredible amounts of resources (time, energy, labor) which you can save by simply growing your own food.

It's not the first time I've seen this line of thinking. It's economically naive. I'll explain why.

Let's imagine everyone decided to grow their own garden like the author suggests. What does one need to start a garden? The common items are shovels, timber, soil, hoses, wires, fertilizer, knee pads, gloves, pots, pesticide, and many other things. Obtaining these items requires physically driving to one's hardware store. Most people drive SUVs. This means there is a sudden influx of people driving their gas guzzling machines to obtain these basic items. We also have to consider the reality that multiple trips will be made. People commonly forget to purchase basic things, need to make returns, or realize they are short on supply (such as soil) and need to purchase more. Now consider other realities. Most people don't know how to grow. Even fewer people know how to grow a plant to its maximum potential. It takes many seasons for individuals to learn the best techniques. Think about the wasted resources spent on this. Now think about the excess waste commonly found in gardens by those who finally learn how to grow. I see this all the time. Gardens filled with oversupply of produce. More than what even their friends want to take home. Consider the yield of produce in respect to time, labor, cost of materials, and CO2 emissions. For every shovel, glove, hose, pot, etc. purchased, for every car drive made, and for every supply chain used to produce these goods, is only put to work on a small plot of land in one's backyard. They are not used to their full potential. This is both a waste of resources and an unnecessary increase in CO2 emissions. If these same resources were used on an actual farm, then they will be used for larger portions of land which will in turn yield more produce. In effect, the costs are being spread across the land, thus making them more effective.

I'd like to explain this in the opposite perspective. The absurdity seems to become much more apparent this way. The author says that these industries are inefficient as appose to simply growing in one's backyard. If it truly were more efficient, then wouldn't it be most effective if industries simply adopted this? They are looking to save money after all. Instead of purchasing one giant tractor, why not revert to shovels and an army of physical labor? Instead of hauling supplies on a few semi-trucks, why not dispatch an army of SUVs? Instead of having one massive farm that spans hundreds of acres, why not break it up into thousands of 500 sq/ft "mini gardens", each of which has its own dedicated set of shovels, hoses, gloves, knee pads, etc. And for every "mini garden", instead of growing being dictated by farm owners with many generations of growing experience, they will be grown by individuals who hardly have any experience at all.