I have written quite a bit in this blog over the years on the topic of sustainability.  Most of the posts have concerned environmental sustainability and managing our impacts in order not to do ecological harm.  This morning I want to twist that topic around a bit and point it back at ourselves so as not to do self-harm.  How can we live lives that help us to be more self sustainable and less reliant on others, such as the phone company, electric company, bread, milk and cheese companies and other mass manufacturers of the sh** we consume into our bodies on a regular basis.

Having more control over one’s life is a good thing.  I know that to be especially true in business.  The more I can control, or at least exert a high degree of influence over, the better I can predict what will happen next and that is always a good thing in business.  And I believe the principle also should apply to the business of life.  In our quest for convenience and luxury I am afraid we have ceded far too much control to corporations who are more concerned with “shareholder return” than “customer well-being.”  Examples can be found lurking right inside your fridge.  Food that is mass produced is full of stuff we don’t know is there and if we did (and the long-term effect it can have) we probably wouldn’t dare eat it.  So why not produce our own food?

Some time ago I got into organic gardening.  The reason I did so is exactly in line with the topic of this post.  To be more self-sustainable and less reliant on the Acme Corporation to make sure I am properly nourished.  Oh sure those huge carrots and strawberries in the produce section of Walmart look healthy, but they’re not.  They are grown in food factories that inject all manner of chemicals and pesticides to make growing them as efficient and profitable as possible.  That stuff might be good for the bottom line, but it ain’t good for the personal bottom line….on which your ass is squarely placed.  So I tried to learn how to grow my own food.  Organic gardening is great as long as (1) you have a place to do it, (2) time to do it and (3) you don’t plan to move any time soon (organic gardens are not very portable).  But because I really had none of the above conditions met very well, I migrated to another form of self-production of healthy food…..hydroponic gardening.

When I first starting researching it I came across all these complicated systems of doing hydroponic gardening that were expensive and required an engineering degree from MIT to implement.  That is until I moved to Perez Zeledon and stumbled into my now good-friend, David Picado.  David, who is sort of a tico-whiz-kid, took a course offered by INA (which is the Costa Rican free education system for ticos to learn all sort of trades and skills) in hydroponic gardening and then started his own little business constructing and installing personal hydroponic green houses.  Like the kind I have had in my back yard for a year now.  They require very little space and can be moved relatively easily.  In fact the concept of hydroponic gardening the Picado way could be installed in space as small as a 50th floor balcony overlooking Central Park.  You can do it virtually anywhere.  And the cool thing is that the plants grow incredibly fast and delicious.  So fast that you can be eating lettuce from your garden in about a month.  All it takes is a little sustaining substance for the plant roots (we use carbon), sunlight and the proper amount of liquid nutrient that you administer to the roots daily.  That last part is a bit complicated for this blog post, but stay tuned for more.

Self sustainability, via hydroponic (or organic) gardening and other means is cool as hell and if the world caught on, there would be more health, less hunger and less greed.  That to me is a good thing.