Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

The remark contrasts two ways of meeting basic needs: direct self-provisioning versus participating in a cash economy to purchase necessities. It implies a critique of modern work patterns in which people devote large portions of their lives to earning money, sometimes at the expense of practical self-sufficiency and a closer relationship to the sources of sustenance. The line can be read as an argument for simplicity, household or community production (gardening, farming), and a recalibration of “productive” labor—suggesting that time spent growing food may yield not only material security but also independence from market volatility and consumer pressures.