this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
89 points (97.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43881 readers
1015 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the answer is potatoes. Other root vegetables might be equally reliable.
Aha! Poland will survive in the post-apocalyptic world.
In spring, I put a few sprouting potatoes in the compost, waited a few month and since July or so I have a huge bucket of homegrown potatoes that I have problems to use up. So very easy food source. Can recommend. There were a few pill bugs/ potato bugs who love the taste of the plants, but their damage had not much effect on the harvest in the end.
Not what I heard from an Irishman....
But jokes in poor taste aside, yeah. I'd have to agree. A lot of grains can also do really well, but potatoes are hearty, have a lot of what you need to live, and require no attraction work to make into food after you dig them out of the ground. Onions would also be high on the list, but aren't as viable for keeping you alive as long when eating them, nutritionally.
Kinda hard to have a stable food system when an imperial power is stealing most of your food in a rather genocidal fashion!
@ColeSloth @IzzyData As I recall, the issue with the potato famine was more that, if you're *only* growing potatoes, while they grow just about anywhere, they'll also get diseases really easily.
Which is why on the Lemmy instance linked to, people mentioned a variety of crops is the trick.
So, potatoes, but *also* onions, and *also* wheat, and *also* corn is the true answer, as I understand.
Jerusalem artichokes > potatoes
Yams FTW.
Irish Potato Famine would like a word
The problem with the potatoes in Ireland at the time is that they were basically a monoculture and all had the same susceptibility to the same diseases.
If you grow them as they're traditionally grown in Central and South America, you have hundreds (or thousands!) of varieties of potatoes planted in different climate zones by utilizing mountains. You have basically no risk of a total crop failure as long as it rains or you can irrigate them.