Living Off the Land? - NOT!

[Timelord]

(2 October 2013, 20:58)Highlander Wrote:

(2 October 2013, 13:58)Timelord Wrote: "Living off the land" is different to "Working the land".

Sorry TL,.. but I dont agree, anyone who finds themselves with nothing and can find a meal off any land, be it farm land or wilderness,...is still living off the land

someone living off the land in the middle of Alaska is to a certain degree `working the land`, he will set up traps, make fish baskets harvest fruit, and gather and make different items etc

Just like a farmer works his land, albeit on a smaller scale

In this case "living off the land" means nothing because then we are all living off the land!
In an expedient sense, as for a prepper, then if you find a meal on any type of land that you have not "worked" yourself or even from a deserted house, then that can be regarded as living off the land in a temporary sense. Setting up traps, fishbaskets fruit harvesting etc is living off the land in a hunter gatherer up to transition state before farming. Once you get into actually breaking the ground surface to systematically "work the land", then that is "working the land" and is by definition different to what the term "living off the land" is meant to encompass.
In academic and historical studies, the term "working the land" is used when the ground itself is artificially modified in a systematic way to benefit food cultivation. This does not include planting a few bushes or trapping fish with a stick built enclosure.. Likewise, hunter gatherers, then or now, are regarded as "living off the land". Farmers are regarded as "working the land".