In terms of food production it’s absolutely viable. It’s not economically viable though because farming has extremely low margins that can only be made up at scale.

Also, most modern machinery isn’t useful on a small scale, though there are some exceptions. So small scale farming will be quite labor intensive. So the OP here is kinda right that most people don’t want to put that much labor into it.

This is why I think small-scale robotics is going to be important to future small-scale farming, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.

Thank you for that video - it gave me a few interesting articles and a new book for my reading list 😁

And one of the points in that video is there's a huge difference in the carbon footprints of different types of urban agriculture - actual urban farms make efficient use of resources, whereas home gardens and community gardens don't.

And even then, those urban farms are not "self sufficient" the way prepper fantasies like this meme promise - they rely on external inputs like fertilizer and building material and irrigation.

Which is, yeah. I love competently designed urban farms. I love competently designed home gardens. The image in my post is neither.

The image in my post is selling a rugged individualist, manifest destiny, pioneers breaking sod in the prairie image of homesteading - the lone smallholder supporting himself and his family solely through the production of his land - which has rarely been true and, when it was, really sucked for the people stuck doing it.

Small scale farming is viable. Rugged individualism is crap.