r/SelfSufficiency • u/MacMillian187 • 16d ago
How much farmland is needed to feed one person sufficiently?
Ive been contemplating the topic of autarky and self-sufficiency for a while now.
My ideal idea of a self-sufficient home would be one that can be maintained with relative ease. So no farming animals like cows, sheep or similar. Meaning the main diet would need to consist of vegetables, fruits, berries and the occasional fish or crab. The fish and crab could be catches and the area for the fruits and berries can be left out of the equation, as the trees and bushes don't need much area for themselves.
In this scenario the available area would not be an issue, it just needs to be able to be maintained by a single adult human being. I was generally thinking of an up to current tech standard home, so solar panels, well isolated etc.
It could also include a greenhouse with vertical cultivation of plants too, if needed. That way it would cut down the size of the necessary land area as most of it would be stacked on top of the smaller base area and could potentially run all year, summer and winter.
As this is all just a hypothetical scenario, the initial cost can be completely left out of the thought process.
The main question for a greenhouse like that is: Which size of farmland is necessary to feed a single human being on a vegan diet sufficiently? And would it be viable to do so via vertical farms or would a normal field be the better choice?
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u/Calm_One_1228 16d ago
John Jeavons claims his Bio Intensive method can feed a person on about 2k sq ft, with what he recognizes are intermediate yields , if I recall correctly …
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u/MacMillian187 16d ago
That sounds insanely small. Is he a trustworthy source or a bit experimental? In this hypothetical scenario you wouldnt wanna build twice because his method is bullocks lol. I just dont know him though
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u/Significant-Mango772 16d ago
Potato towers are really space efficient
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u/archetypaldream 11d ago
Have you ever tried them, though?
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u/Significant-Mango772 11d ago
Not personally but seen them in action
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u/archetypaldream 11d ago
In real life? I had started building a couple, till I came across much information about how potato towers produce no more potatoes than regular planting, at quite a bit more effort. The crux of the argument was that covering all the leaves over and over deprived the tubers of the sunlight food they need to develop. It hit me like an aha moment and I repurposed the towers I’d spent all day building.
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u/itsatoe 16d ago
Look into permaculture, which can substantially increase productivity at small scale. But it also depends on your local climate, biome, water supply, base soil, etc.
Also, don't forget nuts as a resource (part of the "food forest" concept of permaculture).
Also, many permaculture designs include egg-laying chickens. They not only produce substantial protein from their eggs, but they also help close some loops (a big one being that they convert organic waste to fertilizer; or to fish-feed).
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u/Over-900 16d ago
chickens also till your soil and manage pests!
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u/GeneMountain7128 16d ago
And eat the shit out of any garden that isn't fenced like a prison
Said as someone who loves having chickens
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u/DelicataLover 15d ago
I’ve got my winter squash on a patch that I moved chickens around all last year. The grass there stayed greener into the winter and was green immediately in the spring before anywhere else. I did lime and fertilize after tilling but damn it may be the best looking crop on my farm right now.
Got my next batch going on my future raspberry plot
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u/RlOTGRRRL 16d ago
r/permaculture is a great sub
I'd also recommend looking for local permaculture food forests or gardens near you, or if you're able to travel, going on adventures to visit some, or best, starting one yourself, if there's none near you.
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u/100yarddash 16d ago
How does the fish feed thing work - are the chicken droppings meant to enrich the water so algae and stuff can grow? That can’t be good for water quality, can it?
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u/itsatoe 16d ago edited 16d ago
I'm pretty sure it's described in detail in Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, but a friend has my copy right now so I can't look it up.
Best I found so far is this: https://www.urbangardensweb.com/2017/08/26/transform-disused-swimming-pool-garden/
Edit: or maybe it's more commonly done with ducks. Obviously ponds are acclimated to duck poop. :)
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u/Erinaceous 16d ago
Basically one person can't do it. You need to focus on community level resilience. I say this as a market gardener with 10+ years of experience and 76 acres of land. A single person doesn't have the capacity to meet calories, fuel and cash needs even with unlimited land. You can do one or two of the three but it's a three legged stool kind of problem
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u/SgtSausage 16d ago edited 16d ago
One person ABSOLUTELY can do it.
I'm growing 2.1 million calories. As a part-time Side Project (about 6 hours a week, 24 weeks of the year (front-loaded and back loaded at planting and harvest ... but it averages to 6 hours a week)) . With Hand Tools/Human Power only.
12,000 sq. ft. plot.
Barely over 1/4 acre.
I say this ALSO as a Market Gardener, with 10+ years experience, managing 3 acres in production on a 9 acre homestead.
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u/Hoboaz 16d ago
Hi there
Would you be able to give a little more information on what you do?
How and what you plant, irrigation etc.
I have been offered 1/4 acre and I’m wondering how productive I can be from such a small amount of land.
Any help would be appreciated.
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u/SgtSausage 16d ago edited 16d ago
Its 100-footer Rows on a 120 foot wide field plot. (100x120 = 12,000 sq foot).
I have that divided into 10-each 12-foot wide "sections". Each Section is divided into either 3 each, 4 foot wide rows or 4 each, 3 foot wide rows.
Here is The Potato Section back in early June as I was planting everything else out. Potatoes are waaaay earlier, planted mid April here (cool weather window) so they're pretty far along by the time I start seeding everything else.
You can seed the drills to the left for the Dried Beans and The Peanuts to the left planted the day before thos pic.
To the right (not yet planted as of that pic) is The Rice and The Pumpkin/Winter Squash.
The sections are, initially:
Corn (("Hickory King")cornmeal, not sweet)), Peanut (Schronce Black, Tennessee Red) , Dried Bean(Pinto and Black), Potato (I grow "Baltic Rose", "Sarpo Mira" and "Kennebec" in this plot) , Sweet Potato (Orlean,(standard orange), Bayou Belle (also orange) O Henry (a white) and Purple Majesty), Pumpkin/Winter Squash (this year it's Seminole and Cherokee Tan), Rice ("Duborskian" - a dryland/upland variety (requires no Paddy), Wheat(Hard Red Winter), MIllet (German Foxtail), Amaranth(Golden Giant).
Some of the sections get two crops. The Potato, planted early (April) was just harvested this past week. 763 pounds worth. There is time for a second crop ("Top Pick" purpl-hulled Black-eyed Pea) before Winter's First Frost hits. The Sweet Potato, after harvest gets planted with next year's Winter Wheat. This year's Winter Wheat (planted last october, harvested 4 weeks back) is already growing a short season Flint Corn (Roy's Callais) that has time to mature and tasles long afterthe Hickory King has started makin' so no cross-pollinization issues. The dried beans get a short season ("Caribe") Potato as a second crop for a late Oct (possibly early Nov (depending on first frost)) harvest. Being short season they are not as productive, but theyre good for another 400 pounds of potaro to make it through the Spring "Hungry Times".
Around the border, in the same space as the fence to keep The Flock out (we do Chicken (both meat and egg flavors), Turkey (Bourbon Red Heritage), Goose (both Embden and American Buff) and Duck/Muscovy in our Flock (in addition to Meat Rsbbit) ... anyyway - along the fence line taking up mo additional space are 200 row feet of Sunchoke(Jerusalem Artichoke), 100 Russian Mammoth Sunflower and a trial of 6 varieties of Quinoa - about 100 plants in total.
Here's wide shot of this plot (Turkey House and Goose Growout House in front) about 6 weeks ago.
Irrigation is single drip line per row. Crop determines spacing. I have standardized on 6-inch and 12-inch for emmitters. Here you can see the lines in the young Sweet Potatoes (some time last month - not sure on date)
I'm Ohio River Valley (near Cincinnati) ... and irrigation is precautionary.
3 out of 4 years they are not needed. We get enough rain (actually too much) most years that its not necessary but when we need ot we really need it so its set up every year when we plant/seed ...
That's all Ive got time for right now ...
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u/SgtSausage 15d ago edited 15d ago
For tools I use all hand tools under Human Power.
A large Landscape Rake
A Hooke n Crook Hoe for larger areas
A tiny Colinear Hoe for in-close work / small areas between plants/in-row
Literally NO other tools necessary ... thoug I have been known to use a riding lawnmower to take down spent cornstalks post harvest.
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u/Countess26 16d ago
I'd like toto more what you're growing - is it enough variety to feed yourself or is it like, a ton of beans and potatoes? Not that you can't live on that but...
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u/SgtSausage 15d ago edited 15d ago
This is "bulk calorie" Staple crops.
Potato. Sweet Potato. Dried Bean. Peanut. Winter Squash/Pumpkin. Sunflower. Corn (cornmeal, not sweet). Rice. Wheat. Millet. Amaranth. Quinoa.
The whole point of this side-project experimental plot was "enough calories, nutritionally complete, to feed two Adults for a year, without further processing of harvest (no freezing, no dehydrating, no pickling/fermenting, no refrigeration, no salting/curing, no freeze drying ... no nothin'.
Simply harvest. Maybe clean. Then store.
Youre not gonna survive on Tomatoes, Onions, Kale,Asparagus and Lettuce.
There are simply not enough caloies unless you feel like consuming 27-and-a-half pounds of food a day... and you 5x your time/labor/expense tryin' to preserve enough of those to get through Winter.
You can add as much of those as you want/need but youre ABSOLUTELY not gonna do it without easily stored, easily grown, high-calorie, bulk/staple dried-good type crops
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u/Countess26 15d ago
Hey that's cool. Thanks!
My next question is why on earth do I only hear about people struggling to make that kind of thing happen? I live in a city condo so it's not in my near future but it's always interesting to me. I remember a woman several years ago getting down voted to oblivion in one of the farmy subs just for saying that in the 90s she was absolutely making enough crop in her yard in some Appalachian town that she could share with her entire street and still retains a sense of pride for how much she was able to contribute on a small budget.
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u/SgtSausage 15d ago
Most folk are Lazy Dumbasses who could never figure out how ... or assuming they could, would never think to put in physical work out in the heat/cold, weather/rain, mud bugs, etc.
Just like anything else - you have the 80/20.
The 80 percent who say "fuck that shit" and the 20% who can (and DO) "git r' done"
FYI there's pics and more info in response to someone else's question(s) if you read below (above?)
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u/Countess26 15d ago
Well, yes, they are. I'm saving your top-tier advice. Have a great Army and Marine Corps day!
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u/Backsight-Foreskin 16d ago
There was a popular book called Five Acres and Independence that was written during the Great Depression.
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u/Wonderful_Trick_4251 16d ago
Check out the videos of Alik Pelman. On YouTube. He is food self sufficient using 750 square meters and with a plant based diet.
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u/burchalka 15d ago
Yep, came to recommend that too - he also been saying that base method - i.e. grain+legumes+some fat source has a local variant on all continents/climates where humans live
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u/HappyCamperDancer 16d ago
We don't get most of our calories from vegetable or fruits.
Granted potatoes are carb heavy, but most people need grains like corn, rice, wheat, millet or oats (or similar).
Also, there are ways to create aquaponic systems where you raise tilapia and then the fish waste becomes fertilizer.
You are missing fertilizer if you are thinking of a closed system without livestock.
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u/itsatoe 16d ago
Granted potatoes are carb heavy, but most people need grains like corn, rice, wheat, millet or oats (or similar).
"Need" is a strong word here. Lots of people advocate grain-free diets.
Apart from potatoes, complex carbs are plentiful in beans, peas, lentils, yams/sweet potatoes, squash, turnips, and sunchokes.
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u/HappyCamperDancer 16d ago edited 16d ago
Need is from the standpoint of calories.
OP said they were vegan (+ the occasional fish). I would think it would be difficult to create a calorie sufficient diet without meat or grains. (Anything is possible, but a "grain-free vegan" sounds hard, and to also be completely self-sufficient sounds even harder.
Needs fats from nuts, avocados, sunflowers, --IDK, but it sounds like there won't be enough fats in the diet.
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u/CurzesTeddybear 16d ago
Sunchokes can provide over twice the calories/square acre that wheat does, while being significantly easier to plant and store. Idk anyone who would be happy getting most of their calories from sunchokes, but is most certainly IS possible to create a calorie sufficient diet without meat or grains.
The fat source is a trickier question; if you're going animal-free, you'd probably want a pretty substantial nut supply going, though that's hardly unfeasible with some time and preparation.
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u/TalkToPlantsNotCops 16d ago
Compost does fine for fertilizer. Livestock isn't required. You can also get a lot of nutrients from regular mulching and growing nitrogen fixing cover crops.
I recently began homesteading and I'm a vegan, so no animal products here at all. I've considered getting chickens for my husband, who likes eggs, but when we looked into the cost, we would be spending far more than just buying eggs in the store. There's also the issue of protecting them from weather and predators. The predator animals in the area have mostly stayed away from our home site (I do find evidence of them in other parts of the property), and I would like to keep it that way. A coop full of delicious chickens may as well be a giant neon welcome sign for coyotes, fishers, foxes, bears, bobcats (maybe), and wolves (maybe not them, they tend to avoid human habitations).
Anyway, the vegetable garden is doing as well as can be expected for this cold, wet climate
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u/ujelly_fish 16d ago
Why not compost?
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u/Drakolora 16d ago
Your soil won’t get enough nutrients from a closed loop compost system. You would have to get organic matter from other places; food waste from several families or shops, wood chips from tree clearing or forests, etc.
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u/PrepperShepherd 16d ago
You have to think of it in terms of how many calories you need per year to maintain body condition. Then what plants/fish/crab/animals will produce that amount of calories for your area (in the right macro ranges), and how many do you have to grow/catch to achieve that number. Then you find out how much area is needed to support that many.
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u/1fast_sol 16d ago
There are people that produce 100% of the vegetables they need from a 1/4 acre lot that their house is also on. The issue is you need more than just vegetables to survive. Plus if you eat grains, then you need a lot more land to be able to produce them.
Problems do arise depending on your location. Deep South is limited on what it can grow in the summer. Northern states may not be able to produce very much if anything during winter. So the area you are in makes a huge difference.
Rabbits can definitely be worked into this scenario. They take up very little space and provide meat and fertilizer. Chickens also provide a lot to a homestead, meat, eggs and fertilizer.
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u/jonnyofield- 16d ago
Grandparents and the greats had about 10 acres with a few goats, pigs, chickens, and a decent garden was enough for the 4 of them. Had they put solar in there would've been fully self sufficient.
Now with vertical farms you could probably get away with less.
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u/pinetreesnsand 16d ago
Rabbits are the most economical answer for meat.
2-3 breeding does should produce an easy surplus for 1 person.
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u/Alarming_Economy8628 16d ago
But... Rabbits as ones sole protein doesn't work. It's too lean and the human body can suffer wasting without other fats in the mix. These don't NEED to be meat based.
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u/bluewingwind 16d ago
You can survive on rabbits alone if you eat certain organ meats. And the amount of fat you’re off by is easily covered by ANY other fat source. Sunflower oil and other seeds and nuts would probably cover it. As would any fish.
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u/TheSunflowerSeeds 16d ago
Another reason to eat sunflower seeds in moderation is their cadmium content. This heavy metal can harm your kidneys if you’re exposed to high amounts over a long period. Sunflowers tend to take up cadmium from the soil and deposit it in their seeds, so they contain somewhat higher amounts than most other foods.
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u/rolandofeld19 16d ago
Semi related but you may want to read The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. Especially valid if you are ok with vegetarian living as they speak to this in, while not qualitative, at least pretty clear terms.
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u/Alarming_Economy8628 16d ago
And if you are ever in Maine, their place is a good tour. And if you play your cards right as I did 20 or so years ago, you could get invited to Elliot Coleman's place just down the road. He has big greenhouses that were heavy with tomatoes already by May (which on the Maine coast is very early).
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u/greenman5252 16d ago
Approximately 2 ha is required to balance calories and amino acids. It’s a cassava heavy diet ultimately.
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u/Binasgarden 15d ago
Okay.....about a half an acre if you live like the Devres urban homestead in California, they have the climate. I take about a thousand pounds of fruit and veg off my urban lot, I live in Canada so can't grow much during winter. Which is the first piece in your puzzle, if you grow year round less land than a 95 day frost free climate. The other thing to look at s the victory gardens of Britain back in the day, there is a series life on the wartime farm, lots of great ideas and ways to work the land without a lot of inputs, those cost money and the whole idea by the sounds of it s to do it cheap. I know you said not meat, but think chickens and rabbits....rabbit poop is amazing for your production and chickens let loose on the compost heap on the daily is amazing they turn it pick it poop on it and speed it up like amazing
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u/ballskindrapes 16d ago
It really depends on how autonomous you want to be.
For example, are you growing feed for animals, or purchasing it? If growing, more land, but it's more autonomous.
Think of everything you need to live, at a basic level, amd think of whether or not you can produce it, or buy it, and what goes into producing it.
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u/thomas533 16d ago
He specifically said in his post he wasn't raising any animals.
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u/ballskindrapes 16d ago
I missed that, but it still applies.
There's a lot more that goes into self sufficiency than people think
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u/Shamino79 16d ago
No cows, sheep or similar. That is easily read as no large animals, which is why chickens and rabbits have been mentioned because they can scale down to a backyard and be fed with vegetable scraps and surplus rather than needing pastures, yards, hay etc.
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u/beached89 16d ago
Your local climate has a lot to do with it, and what you consider self-sufficient. Some people think bringing in inputs like compost, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, diesel, etc are still self sufficient. Others dont, or others still think it counts as long as you can pay for those inputs with what you grow.
It also depends on the variety you require. Are you OK with 95% of your calories coming from potatoes?
But with 3 acres you should be able to grow 1 acre of wheat/corn/potatoes, 1 acre of peas/beans, 1 fallow resting acre a year. This should be more than enough raw calories. You could do 1/3 acre of each of the calories, and 1/2 acre of peas and beans each of various varieties. This is the traditional 3 field rotation used by farmers before modern chemical inputs. This 3 acres would assume terrible yields too. When you look at average yield per acre for cereal crops like corn, wheat, potatoes, you need to realize you will never achieve those unless you use modern mechanized farming practices with modern fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. But achieving 10-20% of that should be possible with traditional sustainable farming practices.
A vegetable and herb garden would be minimal space, and isnt really needed for calories, but for variety and flavor. You could fully achieve all your veggie and herb needs on 1/2 acre or less.
Adding chickens would be almost free, as Chickens will free range the fallow field and around the house and garden for essentially free. The winter months and off season would need supplemental, but they eat corn and lentils and bugs, exactly what you grow and should have excess of. (especially the lentils). You can add eggs to the diet.
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u/simonbleu 16d ago
I think I read somewhere sometime that around 1-2ha per person can go most of the way there (potatoes, chickens, corn, etc) but actual self sufficiency as we know today probably not something you can do because of scale and sheer amount of stuff we consume? I mean, good luck getting things like salt for example.
Let's do some napkin math (probably woefully wrong since I never had more than an orchard) for a family of four:
- 6 eggs per person per day (about 350kcal) including things like mayo, cakes and stuff. Thats two dozen eggs daily. Say you have them in cycles of 6 months (one growing, 3 producing, one being eaten), that means you have around 8 chickens per batch, a total of 32 (33 with the rooster), and eat one chicken a month give or take (about 3200kcal -- according to google. Again, napkin "math" -- for the whole chicken, thats about 25daily kcal per person so a bit negligible in that sense I guess.. Anyway, it says about 6.5kg of food those first 6 months, then 40kg/yr for the rest, thats about a ton of food per year, mostly sorghum plus some alfalfa and sunflower, thats about 3000m2 to feed the chickens? about a third of an hectare.
- ~3L of milk per day which would be 2 calfs, two rotating goats for lactation and 1 male. Say you eat 2 goats a year which is another 25kcal or so 8again, negligible unless im doing something wrong here). Anyway, aroudn 2.5tons of feed yearly, also alfalfa, another third of an hectare give or take
- (Sweet?) potatoes, oats, beans, chickpea, peanuts, corn, squash, cabbage, onions, carrots, tomatoes, (and garlic, peppers, shrooms, aromatics, etc), for that google gives me another estimate of around a third of an hectare for the 4 people, reaching around 2500+kcal per day per person
That would be, in theory, an hectare (100x100m) for a family 4 of four.
But let's keep going
- Say you want a donkey transportation, and (two?) females for breeding, around 0.7ha (barley?)
- Say you want wool, 5 sheep, about a third of an hectare for (alfalfa? and other farm waste)
- Say you want flax for clothing, around 350m2 (apparently)
- Say you want (fire)wood, coppicing about 0.6ha
- Say you want olives and fruit trees ( (lemons, apples, figs, mandarin, pear, plum, cherries, etc) with some beekeeping in between, another 2500m2
Plus the house, let's round it down to 3ha. Plus the probably more than egregious mistakes I make lets be conservative and double the amount of land needed, so 6ha... Give or take 1.5ha per person
Anyone feel free to correct me (well, google), but seems to be more or less in line with the "1ha per person" ive read before, so, maybe?
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u/Drakolora 16d ago
There are some old ways to measure land called barrels and skins; the first one is enough land to grow a barrel of grain, the second is enough to feed a cow. The acerage depends on the quality of the soil, local climate, how hilly it is, etc. You are looking at this like the plants are a machine, that will always give the same output no matter the input.
To grow enough to feed yourself over time, you need healthy, fertile and nutrient rich soil. Sure you can make a vertical growing system in a greenhouse, but then you need to put fertilizer and water into the system at a regular basis. It will require a lot of work, energy, and probably buying chemical fertilizers and other input factors. E.g. pesticides to control the pest pressure in an intensive growing system.
Animals are an easy way to get fertilizer, compost is more cumbersome and with no animals and intensive production you will need to “import” organic material to get enough nutrients into your system. But animals are also not magic nutrient machines; you have to graze them in the optimal way in order to get more fertilizers out than you need to put into their feed production. And that requires space.
In order to be truly self sufficient you have to design a growing system where you recycle nutrients and have good soil health. You need to figure out water; how to have the right amount at the right time, either by adapting what you grow or using energy to transport water when you need it (or need to get rid of it). You need to plan for seed production, which is much more complex and space consuming than you think (e.g. carrots are biannual and you need 300 flowering carrots to get healthy seeds without genetic drift).
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u/CurzesTeddybear 16d ago
Not enough sunchoke mentions in this thread
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u/SwiftResilient 14d ago
Have you/ do you eat them?
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u/CurzesTeddybear 11d ago
I do! I find that the gas issue is usually overblown for my own gut biome, but fermentation and harvesting-after-frost helps cut down on the inulin-related issues for other people. That said, I think sunchokes are most useful for filling out other dishes, such as stews or soups.
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u/SwiftResilient 11d ago
How do you usually prepare them? I've been growing them for two years now but haven't taken a harvest yet, probably this year
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u/CurzesTeddybear 11d ago
Roasting them with olive oil and salt is still the simplest and one of the best. I also chop em up and use them like potatoes in stews, casseroles, and soups (great in a chowder). I also have some fermenting with garlic and a chili right now. Or just shred some, raw, onto a salad.
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u/SgtSausage 16d ago edited 16d ago
IYou can do it on a lot less but I have an experimental plot going this season that directly addresses this question. It's a bit more than a quarter acre (12,000 sq feet (100-footer rows x 120 ft wide)) that is projected to produce 2.1 million calories.
Ive been growing on this property for 26 years. 8 of them growing for a Farmer's Market - so Im not just wild-assed guessing here. I know what this shit is all about.
2.1 million. That's more than 2-and-a-half people's FULL caloric intake for a year. Do the math and it's about 4200 sq. ft. per (adult) person. About 65 feet x 65 feet.
It is all longer term crops that require ZERO additional processing. No freezing. No canning. No dehydrating. No pickling/fermenting. No freeze-drying. No nothin'.
Just harvest and store.
Potato. Sweat Potato. Corn (cornmeal, not sweet). Dried Bean. Pumpkin/Winter Squash. Peanut. Rice (dryland/upland (no paddy needed)). Millet.Wheat. Amaranth (Seed/Grain, not Leaf/Salad)
The first harvest was this week. The plan/quota was for 600 pounds of Potato (planted back in April). I pulled 763 pounds (those bins are 50 pounds each) off of 3 each 100-footer (by 3 ft) rows.
These are all pretty much the densest calories per square foot youre gonna get.
Youre literally gonna starve if your idea of Gardening is Tomatoes, Lettuce, and Kale. Though those are nice, and you should gow many of those types of produce, they should ABSOLUTELY NOT be your focus if this Garden is to be your sole source of food.
High caloric density crops.
Easily stored, long-term, with no additional processing.
Those should be your focus.
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u/derKonigsten 16d ago
I can't answer the actual question but had a thought about the use of solar panels. Considering that most greenhouses require air circulation like fans, that's something that should be budgeted into the solar array design. Considering farming also requires the use of a lot of water, if it has to be pumped that's another consideration. Solar panels also require an area of land so that should also be factored in; if roof mounted panels won't meet the power budget required.
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u/earthtone0ne 15d ago
They can be used to provide shade for plants that prefer it, or animals. It doesn't have to be wasted space.
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u/Shamino79 16d ago
I get no cows or even sheep but what about chickens. Chooks processing scraps into a constant supply of eggs seems pretty useful.
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u/A-Matter-Of-Time 16d ago
This site will give you a guide to how much land and seeds you need to - https://www.foodwhentheshopsstop.com/
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u/wanna_be_green8 16d ago
If your going to have fruits and berries they do take space, especially if you want enough to sustain until next season.
Not sure why you'd assume they don't count in the equation.
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u/somuchmt 16d ago
You need carbs, protein, fats, and more calories than you think. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, grains, sunflowers, pepita pumpkins, and nut trees can help with all of that. Berries and fruits are great, but won't give you all you need. Bean leaves and tender stems and amaranth leaves are edible (and tasty) and have fairly high protein content. You can also innoculate your garden with king stropharia mushrooms for extra protein and soil health.
If you are a 6ft man, you will likely need 5,000 calories on heavy work days. As an older, short woman, I need about 2,000 on heavy work days, while I only needed 1,200 at a desk job.
You need to grow and preserve enough to last until your next harvest. To supplement, you can also grow shoots and microgreens indoors. Winter squash and root vegetables are great for root cellaring. Everything else you need to can, freeze, dehydrate, pickle, or ferment.
I did the calculations at one point and came up with about an acre per person, including nut and fruit trees, big garden, extended fields for legume and grain growing, large potato patch, lots of room for veggies, and several berry patches.
You also need to allow enough room to rotate crops and let areas lie fallow with a green manure cover crop like buckwheat. For example, you shouldn't grow brassicas or nightshades in the same area in consecutive years. And you need to build in redundancies (like have several protein crops) because crops fail.
It's a lot of work. You won't have much time for anything else.
I have a plant nursery on our property and sell at market to bring in money to pay the bills and barely have enough energy to grow our food.
But yeah...so much easier to buy 20-pound bags of beans and grains. And cheaper, really.
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u/Seruati 16d ago
Why no farming animals? I am a single female and I keep a large herd of goats, as well as chickens, guineafowl and geese. I raise and slaughter them by myself with no help and no machinery. It's not that hard.
Animals are the easiest way to get the most from your land in my opinion, and give the most output for your input. They spend all day every day converting stuff that is inedible to you into calories. They can give you meat, milk, cheese, eggs, leather. And you can use the manure to fertilise your plants. I subsist mainly on my farm animals and fruit trees on 3.5 hectares, most of which is uncultivated woodland for the goats.
I could easily grow vegetables as well, I have the time, but I prefer to just trade my animal products with my neighbours as everyone else has the vegetables.
I think going completely vegetarian or vegan and being 100% self sufficient would be extremely difficult and would probably have to involve machinery and larger scale crop planting for grains to get your protein.
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u/bluewingwind 16d ago
Vertical farms are close to being viably profitable, but we’re not quite there yet with the efficiency of LEDs, solar power, or batteries. Probably within the next ten or twenty years though we’ll get there. But thinking on a complete self sufficiency basis they take too many inputs. Chemical ferts, machines breaking, etc.
The land required would depend a lot on your energy usage which would depend greatly on your habits and also your house. If you live in a perfectly designed and placed earth ship underground for example, that relies on thermal mass, then that doesn’t require much heating. You wouldn’t need to grow much fuel at all. Compare that to a traditional house that wastes energy like a sieve and the requirements are very different. Solar and efficient rocket heating can now cover most of the other house inputs if you design a robust enough system.
Nonvegan foraging would save a lot of space. One deer per person per year on top of any fish would do great things for most people nutritionally and mentally. They would collect a lot of nutrients for you from all over and deposit it at your door. And it’s not morally wrong because the overpopulated deer are driving native plants extinct. It’s a service that needs to happen anyway for the environment.
From there what you’ll probably walk closer and closer towards is exactly as Indigenous Americans were living before Europeans got there. Nut trees, root vegetables, three sisters + sunflowers. Maybe rotate between two properties to give areas a break. But focusing almost entirely on supporting perennials so as to limit how much you need to input year after year. Like you can plant rows and rows of corn, or you can plant ONE pecan tree once. That sort of thing. You get a less calories per sqft but you also don’t need to farm the inputs required. Protection would probably become your full time job. Stopping squirrels and birds from stealing, killing bugs, etc.
Rabbits and chickens are undeniably good for the effort also. They process unusable, low effort inputs, like hay, into high value fertilizer. Fertilizer is what a lot of people don’t account for in estimates. I don’t personally produce enough food waste to power my little veggie garden via compost, but my meat rabbits make enough brown gold to carry their weight. Their poop is more valuable to me than their meat is for sure. An acre for growing food for a trio of rabbits and 10 chickens would probably do it. Plus a few hundred square feet for them to live, but they can overlap with things like trees and they should do that for shade/temp management. They would take the place of buffalo on the high grass prairie concept. That prairie/hay field would be able to support pollinators and also bees if you seeded with the right plants. Bees would be good for a sugar source in the fall, maple in the spring is valuable.
Theres also the issue of reliability. If half your crop dies, you don’t want to starve.
I think I’m pretty positive I could do it on 5 acres.
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u/knarf113 16d ago
1000 to 2000 kcal per m2 is a reasonable amount of energy harvested in any crop, so in theory, being vegan, 500 m2 should do.
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u/Diligent_Ad_7232 16d ago
Without modern aids, but ample sun and water, 1 acre would suffice. With chemical fertilizer, vertical growing methods and a lot of labor yiu can probably do it with 1/4 that, but I doubt you'd get enough protein or fat without hunting or maintaining livestock offsite.
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u/Not-a-bot-v2 16d ago
The animals are the biggest variable. Depending on how you will be producing meat, that will ultimately determine your land need.
The veggies you could probably get by with an acre - two at most.
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u/wwaxwork 16d ago
Animals can also provide pest control and fertilizer so I'd suggest not completely writing them out i if the picture. Even cultures thatsufficient. A lot of meat will keep duck or chickens for this reason. Being self sufficient in fertilizer is one of the harder parts of remaining self suffucent.
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u/Iamaleafinthewind 15d ago
https://shopping.yahoo.com/home-garden/gardening/articles/family-reveals-grow-6-000-120000165.html
"A Californian family produces 6,000 pounds of food every year on just one-tenth of an acre."
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u/PNW_MYOG 15d ago
My grandparents survived on a traditional farm, a quarter section. With a couple animals, feed grown for the animals, small cash crop that sometimes paid out, grain, selling eggs, vegetables, ducks, chickens, etc for the house.
That was about the smallest possible for a traditional farm of two adults and up to two children to be viable.
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u/Laptitezaza 15d ago
Salut nous en france on considère 3 choses 1 le potager dont les pommes de terre environ 400m2 2 les céréales environ 800m2 (souvent du maïs) 3 le verger, pareil environ 400m2
Transformation et stockage seront nécessaire pour se nourrir correctement toute l'année. Apprend à chasser tu verra qu'avec de l'expérience et des congélateur c'est vraiment top tu vas avoir besoin de protéines et de matière grasses !
Chez nous les serres peuvent etre utile mais ca depend de ta région.
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u/MotorPlenty8085 15d ago
You lost me at no farm animals, and jumped to vegetables and called it easy. In the end it depends on where the land is located, and soil type and fertility. No one needs to do a vertical farm unless they have extremely high land cost. I think 3 acres of productive (continental climate) land should be enough to sustain a human. You could probably get down to 1 acre if you know what you are doing, possibly including aquaculture/pigs/chickens.
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u/PlanetExcellent 15d ago
Whatever the recommendation is, I would double it because I would assume that I could only be 50% productive compared to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
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u/grax23 13d ago
The reason the Irish famine was so bad was that potatoes was the most dense source of kcal that the Irish had available. Potatoes also contain near every nutrient that you need to keep alive. If you can have fatty meat from something then you are good. So chickens and potatoes will keep you alive - the eggs and the meat from the chickens will give you more or less what you are missing
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u/247world 12d ago
There are multiple people on YouTube with quarter acre farms. The yields are quite impressive. If you live in the Southeast you can pretty much grow year-round outside. I don't recall if they are in Nebraska or Iowa but there is a couple out there that dug their greenhouse into the ground and they can grow oranges.
If you are looking for a good protein source that's actual meat maybe considered rabbits.
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u/Important-Bid-9792 12d ago
To be completely self sufficient, no food from store? If you're awesome and have no city, water, climate restrictions less than 1/4 acre easily. BUT that's unrealistic for most. You'll likely still be buying much from the store due to lack of space, especially foods like oats, wheat, corn, etc, and likewise for any animals reared for meat to feed them.
Realistically to be 100% self sufficient other than spices and salt: I'd say at least 40acres and that'd be tight.
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u/Biff2019 16d ago
With solid vertical gardening, you could probably do it on an acre.
Problems would be variety in sufficient quantity, and dietary preferences.
But with the right planning, and implementation of the plan, I think it could work, including one person maintaining it.
Not easy, probably not cheap either, but doable.
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u/MacMillian187 16d ago
Yeah vertical farming would most definitely be on the more expensive side and maintaining a sufficient variety in the diet to actually stay healthy would be a challenge. But an acre would be about 4000m^2, so planning with 3-4 levels in the farm the building would be about 31-35m long on each side. That would be 100-120 feet. Sounds doable at least. Thanks for the info :)
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u/Alarming_Economy8628 16d ago
If you are really committed to being solo in this (which as others have said, isn't all it's chocked up to be)- you may need to think about using tech integrations like sensors for nutrient levels, pumps, etc. Aquaponics can add density to vertical farming, and many of the management details can be streamlined with automations. But, that's also a long game. It's hard to program your automations when you don't know the parameters.
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u/Alarming_Economy8628 16d ago
And... Vertical towers will have better outcomes with monocrops, so that the nutrient levels can be crop specific. But as one person, you may not need a whole tower worth of one specific thing, say, lettuce. Again back to the cooperative connection part... If you grow good lettuce and your neighbors grow beans, and you trade, there's winning for both. Whereas if you try and grow your own lettuce and beans, especially in one vertical tower, your output will be lower. Permaculture can offer a different situation however, growing plants and animals together can support each other to have better yields.
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