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  • From: Bob Waldrop <bob@bobwaldrop.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] space for food self reliance?
  • Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 18:06:36 -0600

AFAIK, the most actual research that has been done on this is the Ecology Action folks in Willits, who produced the famous How to Grow More Vegetables, together with the less well know, but perhaps even more important, "one Circle" which is a guide to growing all your own food. Their calculations say that you can grow a vegan diet in 4000 square feet of growing area, per adult person.

For a complete sustainable diet, they prescribe 60% in compost and grain crops, 30% in special root crops and 10% in soft fruits and vegetables, which includes dry or hard beans.

Bob Waldrop, OKC


On 11/5/2015 4:52 PM, dhondt wrote:
Unless your soil is very unfertile it is generally thought that 1 acre should be able to feed 5-6 people well year round. And that is my personal experience also here in Ireland. Of course our winters are usually mild enough to grow fresh crops, chosen for their winter hardness) year round but then we don't have a long hot summer, We had frost in July this year.
Of course in our warmer months we grow storable products like peas, beans, quinoa, seed amaranth,oats, potatoes and pumpkin tribe. All crops that would not survive our winter.
As soon as these are harvested we plant with turnips, kale and winter radish and lettuce mostly and also crops that will start producing early in Spring such as sprouting broccoli and broad beans (these last in poly tunnel). And these produce really well on condition that they get planted as early as possible in October.
1/5th of an acre are sufficient for this and more and in fact we have mulched about half the beds now so that they will be ready for an early planting. We could produce another ton of rutabagas but we would frankly not know what to do with them.
Carrots, leeks, cabbages, scorzonera, etc remain in the ground until we need them
Berries have been mulched and poultry in the orchard is now giving us an egg or two per day until February when egg production will rise again to two dozen eggs per day or so. Two milking goats keep milking through the winter in their 1/4 acre paddock and guinea pigs keep mowing the grassy paths between the beds. A pond with fish is planned for next year and that space is now wild vegetation.

You will have to choose your crops to suit your climate but one acre should feed 5-6 people with some to spare if you do it right.
John


On 05/11/15 22:00, Georg Parlow wrote:
Hello there,

I have a question regarding the need of space for self reliance in food.

I am involved in the development of a kind of permaculturally biased cohousing development (you will hear more about it in the future). I will be approx 70 apartments in 2 story buildings, every 12 or so apartments have a commons kitchen, 1/3 of the inhabitants will be elderly in need of some care that will be provided by neighbors. There will be at least one full time market gardener in charge of food production, who can rely on a mostly unskilled workforce (we will have an internal LETS system in place) of, say 40 parttimers. For the ease of calculation lets assume it will be 100 adults and maybe 40 to 60 kids. We are planning on a 1000m2 greenhouse, intensely managed gardens, poultry and bees, and fish in an indoor aquaponic closed loop circulation system. Since land is expensive where we plan to build, we want to get by with the minimum necessary acreage. Now lets ignore the houses, recreation etc, and just look at food production:
How much land will we need to provide food security? Now don't get me wrong, I am not talking general self reliance, just basic food self reliance (no fiber, no fuel, just food). I guess we are talking mostly zone 1 and 2 here. Of course, we will stack and nest the different uses (closely managed orchard, chicken, staple crops, vegetables, fish) as much as possible.

We are in a wine growing area, with an annual average temp of 9.5 to 10°C, fairly long and hot summers, approx 400mm annual precipitation but we have easy acces to groundwater of acceptable quality, so irrigation is possible. Since manpower probably isn't the problem either, I even think that growing grain in garden style would be feasible, thus yielding more per area unit, by turning this part of zone 3 into zone 2. Quite a few nut trees should become integrated in the recreational part as shade trees, so this part of zone 3 won’t be big. Fertilizer should not be the limiting factor either, we want to upcyle organic waste with BSF and worms, and if the going gets tough there should be plenty of urine available, growing thing the Chinese style. Some indoor mushroom production should also be possible, the room with the fish tanks and the thus high humindity offers itself for this.

Please ask me your questions, if you need more input, and let me know what you think - how much land will we need for food production?

Thx,
Georg
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