What is Self-Sufficiency?

A Definition and A Short History of Self-Sufficiency     by Gavin Edwards

  "So much for the ills of our present society. What is the solution? My solution as you may well have guessed, is what I call self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is the opposite of sitting back and waiting for some 'them' to come and do everything for us. It means doing it ourselves."

John Seymour (1977) Bring Me My Bow. p49.

So said John Seymour the man known as "the Grandfather of Self-Sufficiency". I'd like to take up his sword, shoulder the weight and speak the truth. Here's my definition and a short history:

Self-Sufficiency is about providing the things you need for yourself: growing your own food, building your own shelter, making your clothing, providing your power and making useful items rather than relying on others to provide them for you. Self-Sufficiency develops good people who love, respect and honour each other and find joy in living, It encourages life and respects nature - the original 'sustainability'. It's something that can be done by people who don't have a lot of money - in fact, I think it's an advantage to start without much money because you will learn the value of things, how to provide for yourself and learn compassion for others. These things, and other things you learn while being poor, make you become a stronger and better person. Self-sufficiency makes real people who appreciate life more fully, not grey and lifeless urban TV zombies.

People lived more self-sufficiently before the industrial revolution. They grew more of their own food, made and mended and tended their animals. Self-Sufficiency is closer to a more traditional peasant lifestyle. Something to be proud of - an honest and honourable way of living.

In Europe people have been losing their self-sufficiency for hundreds of years. Loss of self-sufficiency increased after the industrial revolution as people went to the cities to work in the factories. It wasn't the root cause of the loss, however. The root cause of the loss of self-sufficiency for most was the loss of the commons as the rich grabbed this land for themselves. As peasants moved to cities they became trapped in the city lifestyle working for money for food and to buy back a piece of the land which they had previously owned in common. They were swindled. The rich formed governments and big businesses and the process has continued.

In world war II in England there was a push back to self-sufficiency led by necessity and a Women's Land Army was set up to grow food. Behind this was the great English grower, Dr W E Shewell-Cooper (the head gardener for the English Royal Family) who taught food growing and wrote "The ABC of Vegetable Growing" and "The Compost Gardener", among others. Likewise, in the US in 1945, Early Vernon Wilcox wrote the Modern Farmers' Cyclopedia of Agriculture - these were important works on growing food when food had to be grown for hungry people. The war led to the development of tractors and poison chemicals and industrial/scientific agriculture was born. By using fossil fuels this led in turn to increased land clearing for agribusiness. This then produced an abundance of food (though not always healthy food) which resulted in a population explosion. It also meant that more people ultimately moved to cities as less workers were required on the farms and the ultimate collapse of farming (as it was known previously) and its almost complete replacement by scientific agriculture. From the 50's to the 70's this continued (in fact it's still happening) but in the 70's there was a counterculture developed from the 60's that led to what we now know as modern self-sufficiency.

There was suspicion that the new chemicals were not good for people's health and writers such as Rachel Carson were exposing the truth about pollution. This resulted in a backlash against chemicals forming the 'organic' movement which revived and promoted the works of Sir Albert Howard (advocate of composting) and Lady Eve Balfour (founder of the soil association) from the 40's, and the lifestyle of Helen and Scott Nearing in the U.S. who were pioneers of self-sufficient living in the fifties.

In 1961, John Seymour wrote the "Fat of the Land" and in 1973 John and Sally Seymour wrote "Self-Sufficiency". These books sparked interest in a way of living which had been almost lost to most. It also started the whole 'Back to the Land' hippy movement of the late 60's, 70's and 80's. John Seymour is known as the 'Grandfather of Modern Self-Sufficiency". John Seymour's "The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" is the world's best selling book on the topic and the well-known publishers Dorling-Kindersley started business by publishing this book. John and Sally Seymour's lifetsyle also inspired the BBC TV series "The Good Life". Eliot Wigginton in 1968 started Foxfire magazine which recorded mountain-country skills of people living in the Appalachians in the US and became a book series. Other writers on Self-Sufficiency in the late 70's and 80's were Hope L Bourne, Katie Thear, Richard Beckett, and Michael Allaby. All are worth reading.

John Seymour died in 2004. Since then his work seems to have been suppressed by the powers that be, ignored by the media until recently where TV shows have taken credit for what he wrote and did. It was John and Sally Seymour's story that inspired people then. It was John Seymour that tried to preserve the old ways of country living; skills and tools, old occupations, the use and management of woodland trees, horse-drawn implements, the lives of country folk and the gypsies. Credit where credit is due - he did an amazing job for humanity and got a lot of things right. He was a great man.
There has seemed to be a reluctance to mention John Seymour's later writings. Could it be that the solutions he wrote about were too unpalatable to the economists and the rich? Or was it that it took time for the powers that be to find a way for the media to present a similar, but less radical, version of self-sufficiency that still allowed people to be marketed to? Urban TV armchair self-sufficiency perhaps.

John Seymour wrote about decentralisation - that is, moving back to the country and not living in cities, of people taking control of their own lives and providing for themselves. It's self-sufficiency that should be leading that charge back to the country, with a focus on independence and self-reliance not permaculture with it's ties to government and the big businesses. It's real self-sufficiency (a la John Seymour) that will provide a future for people other than just the rich. It's self-sufficiency that will see people living in the country and having the values that country people used to possess and not acting like city people. People with good hearts and ethics. This is the way of the future.

"And if the great power shortage does come: if the sheiks suddenly take against Cadillacs, or the oil does get scarcer, and if men become unwilling to toil a thousand feet underground in abominable conditions, and if atomic power proves to be too impossibly dangerous to put up with, if 'they' - whoever 'they' are - don't find an 'answer', then we shall be forced into a more decentralized and self-sufficient society, whether we like it or not. It is better, in that event, to like it, and to be prepared for it, and to move toward it not because we have got to, but because we want to. To go of our own free will in fact." - John Seymour (1977) Bring Me My Bow, p.15.