Sure, but I don't have to pay for the food they produce, just some seeds. Seeds are way cheaper than whatever is available from the local grocery.

It might yield a relatively small amount but I'm not feeding a city. I only need enough for me and my family.

If I can save a couple hundred bucks over the year, not buying produce at the shop, I'll fucking do it.

The economy isn't doing me any favors.

It depends on what and how much you grow in your garden. Growing up and even when our kids were young and at home, we grew a large garden to save money. Growing things that store well, like potatoes, squash, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and other root crops will save you money because they require no very little to no extra processing to store.

Tomatoes, while VERY tasty straight off the vine, often get highly processed into sauces and jarred to preserve. That is time consuming and expensive. But, if you have enough freezer space, you can freeze tomatoes and peppers very easily. But you need enough freezer space for them. Growing string beans are also fairly efficient crops that require little processing to freeze. But, there is still some extra work to be done with them. Sweet Corn take a lot of room to grow enough to make it worth your while preserve.

But best of all is to garden because you want to and you enjoy it. I no longer grow a large garden - me and Grandma don't need much anymore, but I still grow tomatoes and peppers, turnips, green onions, and amaranth. Amaranth is often used as a background plant in flower gardens, but the whole plant is edible. From the roots to leaves to the seeds. It has a wonderful nutty flavor and is stupidly easy to grow.

https://www.jacn.org/are-food-crops-in-the-usa-becoming-less-nutritious/

Ironically Jerusalem artichokes

This only true in places that aren't environmentally supportive of agriculture. My family never had to buy vegetables. Granted we had about 2 acres of farmable land. We didn't sell produce, we harvested and froze until we needed it

Edit: Initial start up is definitely not as cost effective as buying from the grocery, but once you're able to harvest your own seeds, it's not that expensive to sustain your production

The only thing I grew at home (in a pot, because dogs) was chili, because it's more scarce in stores than stuff like onions. Some do fear that the store ones are all "GMO" secretly, or even manufactured from some petroleum products, like my stepmother, who once learned that things like milk powder, egg powder, and meat powder exists, but she thought they all weren't made of the real things, because she couldn't believe the Earth could feed this many people, and the rich hoard all the good stuff for themselves.

Assuming it used all the same tools and techniques, making only minor replacements of tractors for voluntary domestic labor .. I don't see why it couldn't reach averages in a similar magnitude. Given them larger plots where they could use industrial tools and they should produce about the same on average.

Eother way there attempts more self sufficiency are to be commended... So the I'm not sure of the point of the post really.

If we had a socialist style of market economy like Vietnam we'd produce more crops.

Also in a correctly valued economy we wouldn't have to subsidize farming.