Percent of Food Produced at Home: From 21% in 1935 to .6 % in 2009
I came across this fascinating data set at the USDA that gives the share of food expenditures by source including funds from families/individuals, government, businesses, and food produced at home. The way I read the chart, the food produced at home is a dollar equivalent if they had purchased it. I plugged the data into a graph pictured below. We've gone from providing 20 percent of our food expenditure equivalents from the home to .6 percent. Part of the story is obviously that most of us don't live on the farm anymore, but it also shows how disconnected we've become from providing ourselves with food. We could certainly do better than .6 percent.
