Belize

As a 14-year resident of Belize, this country is my favorite location for homesteading and the most viable for a self-sufficient lifestyle in my opinion.

With a low population of just 383,000, the population density here is super low, meaning lots of land.

And there’s already a high rate of self-reliance. The rural villages around Belize, especially those predominately of Hispanic or mestizo heritage, haven’t been hooked to the system for very long.

Though villagers now enjoy electricity, plumbing, cable TV, and access to stores to purchase their necessities, it was only 20 years ago that electricity didn’t exist in most homes, that homes had a rainwater barrel or folks carried water from the river, and that most relied on hunting and backyard food production for sustenance.

When a big storm or flood does hit, locals feel hardly any impact—they simply revert to their old ways of gathering food and cooking on open fires, and turn to the old amusements they used to know, until the system can be repaired and they can get plugged back in. Granny sends the children out to collect berries, avocados, mangos, and breadfruit. The men go off hunting for meat and to pull their bottles of homemade fruit wine out from the river after the hunt.

Belize has a long history of providing for self-sufficient communities, including what many consider to be the original: Mennonites.

Traditional Mennonite communities live isolated lives and grow and produce most everything that they use. Mennonites in Shipyard, Blue Creek, Springfield, and many more towns across Belize do this on a daily basis, most without many of the labor-saving conveniences available to us today. They live without power, cars, and often running water in the belief that a more complicated life leads to dissonance and dissatisfaction.

On the less extreme end of things, my friend Phil has been developing a self-sufficient community in Belize for the last 10 years. The community members live off-grid, with backyards and community gardens to grow food and a river to fish in or relax in after a long day.

Money spent in a community stays within that community, being used by the tailor to buy more cloth from the merchant who uses the cash to expand his store has that multiplier effect, enriching community members many times over before it might eventually escape to an outside economy.

Being self-sufficient is easier with like-minded friends.

CALLOUT: Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. —Mahatma Gandhi

• Climate: Belize has a near perfect climate for those seeking self-sufficiency, with the average year-round temperature of about 80°F but rarely breaking 100°F. There has never been snow.

• Water: Belize receives an average of 100+ inches of rain per year. Water is one of the most crucial elements in a self-sufficient lifestyle. With a little planning and design, you will never run short of water for your home or farm. This water doesn’t come from a shrinking aquifer or from a corroded pipe, it falls from the sky. With the many rivers and creeks that transect through Belize, there is ample potential for small hydropower.

• Growing Seasons: Subtropical growing seasons. Belize has up to three growing seasons per year. With the correct knowledge food grows all year long.

• Power: Belize’s sunny climate is nearly ideal for solar power generation, allowing better solar capture than many other locations on Earth.

• Access: You can drive to Belize from the United States. This is a big factor in any bug-out plan. It’s all very well to have a perfect Plan B in Brazil…. but if a pandemic hits and airports are closed (as they were during the coronavirus panic) you won’t be able to fly to your perfect self-sufficiency spot.

• Natural Disaster Risk: If your country of choice for self-sufficiency is subject to a natural disaster that could destroy your systems, then it’s not a very secure Plan B. Belize is only hit by 5% of the hurricanes that afflict the Caribbean. It is subject to flooding in river valleys, but with correct planning these risks can be mitigated.

• Legal Tenure Of Land: Foreigners can own land in Belize.

• Political Risk: Low.