Does growing your own food make economic sense?

Worried about the rising price of food? Tom Bulford investigates the economics of growing your own. Allotments have long been popular and now only cost around £20 a year. So, should we start ‘Digging for Victory’ again?

Should I have an allotment? This is the big question in the Bulford household. My wife, fresh vegetable lover that she is bless her heart, is all in favour. My children, who have never heard the saying all a gardener needs is a cast-iron back with a hinge in it' and would like to see me out of the house, are keen too.

But much as I enjoy a potato with the mud still on it or a leek nourished by Oxfordshire soil, I am an economics man. Does this make financial sense, I ask myself? Forget the health benefits of fresh air and the energetic wielding of spade and trowel. Forget the joys of organic vegetables which if I am perfectly honest often taste worse than the chemically-enhanced supermarket variety. The question is could I be earning more by digging and hoeing, and planting and harvesting than I can from sitting here at my computer?

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

Tom worked as a fund manager in the City of London and in Hong Kong for over 20 years. As a director with Schroder Investment Management International he was responsible for £2 billion of foreign clients' money, and launched what became Argentina's largest mutual fund. Now working from his home in Oxfordshire, Tom Bulford helps private investors with his premium tipping newsletter, Red Hot Biotech Alert.