Great ideal. But I don't think in today’s society it will work very well. I grew up on a farm in the middle of the United States. I am 43 now so this has been a few years ago. There were my parents and 5 kids. Both of my parents worked on the farm. My mother took care of the garden, chickens and us kids. We were pretty much what this video would call sustainable. We had a acre or more garden. We grew everything we ate. During the summer we would can and freeze the extra to be eaten during the winter. The only things my mother bought from the store was sugar, flour and yeast for making bread. We raised our own cattle, hog and chickens that we slaughtered and processed ourselves. My father had said that if we didn't have the garden we wouldn't have been able to make it a couple of the years 55+ years they have lived on the farm.
I could keep going on about the life we had but my point is that one person would need to stay home with the kids to tend to the garden, can or freeze the extra food from the garden. That doesn't include the animals. It won't work for every family to do this. Most people even if they had the space would not want to work that hard to get their produce. If they did there might be less obese people in the U.S.
I don't know what the answer is or who has it. But for people to do this there would have to be a horrific incident that would set us back at least 75 years or more for this to take effect. A lot more could be said on this subject.

I have to agree with your sentiments, Cliff. I'm not sure that this would be a truly progressive option. It was great to hear your response though after living what this guy is proposing.

Like Cliff, I also grew up on a farm in Central USA. Ours was 800 acres of Ozark Mountain land. Lots of rocks, but enough field acreage to raise alfalfa and corn to sell, plus a 2 acre garden and 5 acre orchard for our own family's use. My mother worked full-time tending the gardens, canning and raising chickens for egg money. My father farmed in the summer and installed carpet in the winter to supplement our low income.

While I appreciate the ideal of sustainability and do agree that we all use way too much petrol products, I have a hard time believing that we will all start raising most of our own food for our own families. It's a great ideal to have permaculture plants to supplement our needs -- whether our lots are tiny like mine or large like some of the folks had in the video -- but I doubt most folks in our society will want to step back into the Dark Ages and live like crofters anytime soon.

Permaculture is an interesting subject, but it can also be controversial. I'm especially concerned with the planting of invasive exotics that sometimes happens with some permaculture situations. You can read more about this on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture#Critiques

Of course, I could be wrong. It happens a lot.
;-)

Regards,
Dawn

On just a 1/4 acre this family does quite well in a very urban area.
But what you propose is happening with farmers markets and Farm share programs where you work for a committed number of hours each week for a share of the harvest each week.

For more information check out these links.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/specevent/CSA2006.html

http://www.angelicorganics.com/share.php

Somehow I missed adding two sites.
The first is Path to freedom which has made the news with their success on just a 1/4 arce.
The other is a sample of a working farm share.

http://pathtofreedom.com/journal/

http://www.7springsfarm.com/csaprospectus.html