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Revision as of 22:02, 3 December 2009

Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. On a large scale, a totally self-sufficient economy that does not trade with the outside world is called an autarky.

The term self-sufficiency is usually applied to varieties of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed outside of what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals. Examples of attempts at self-sufficiency in North America include voluntary simplicity, homesteading, survivalism, and the back-to-the-land movement.

According to Michael Allaby and Peter Bunyard, “there is nothing really new in the search of “self-sufficiency”. The pioneers who first colonized the New World, Australia, and parts of Africa were self-sufficient because they had to be and, in this context, the term suggests a kind of rugged independence associated with mastering a new and rather hostile environment.”

Practices that enable or aid self-sufficiency include autonomous building, permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy.

The term is also applied to limited forms of self-sufficiency, for example growing one's own food or becoming economically independent of state subsidies.

It should also be noted that any kind of information in order to help survive (or prepare) any sort of disaster.