live off the land

Formerly referring to there being an adequately-abundant supply of wild food and clean water in a certain area that a human could survive there for extended periods, it nowadays is often a "grim grinds" reference to how wasteful the population in a given area is as a whole, and that a good scrounger could literally find enough edibles and other basic essentials in the neighborhood's dumpsters and waste-piles to sustain himself quite comfortably.

Visiting dude, accompanying his buddy to help scavenge for discarded returnables in a shopping-mall complex: Zheesh, Dude --- look at all these still-perfectly-edible half-eaten sandwiches and pizza-slices just tossed out in da trash-bins! There's enough here to feed an army!
Local dude who's showing his friend around: Ooooh, yeah --- fer sher, Pal! We are a VERY wasteful society --- feller could live off the land around here, 'specially in da summertime when all da tourists are flocking though!

by QuacksO October 5, 2018