How can farmers sustain themselves all year with food if you can only harvest once a year?
In: Planetary Science
1. Most staple crops, like grains (rice, wheat, maize, etc) and many vegetables (like potatoes, carrots, onions, beans/peas, etc) can last for quite a long time so long as they stay dry and away from pests like rodents and insects.
2. You can further preserve food, usually by storing it in containers to make it more difficult for moisture and pests to get to it (like in jars, barrels, cans, etc) and by deliberately treating it to make it last longer, usually by drying it, packing it in salt, smoking it, keeping it cold (we use refrigerators and freezers today, but in times past you could store food in your cellar, where the earth would serve to insulate it and keep it cool), or by fermenting it (milk into cheese and butter, cabbage into sauerkraut/kimchi, vegetables of all kinds into pickles, etc)
3. Most places outside of very cold areas usually can squeeze in more than one growing season per year. I live in a Temperate environment, and we have two harvests per year if you plant at the right times: Plant in spring to harvest in summer, plant in summer to harvest in autumn
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