I suppose they could've used some of the seeds to sow something. For that you do need the space to do so though and the materials. This is Stalingrad during the

I suppose they could've used some of the seeds to sow something. For that you do need the space to do so though and the materials. This is Stalingrad during the siege. I doubt it would've been easy to procure the materials needed to create the greenhouse and also hide it from the general population as well. They were trying not to draw attention to themselves from their fellow Stalingrad citizens, who were also starving. There were apparently 16 scientists in the building guarding these. For argument's sake, let's consider an easy find on Google: https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/1433/how-large-a-cultivation-area-to-feed-one-person https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/1433/how-large... and let's assume the first area cited there as it seems to be a "conservative"-ish estimate, which is 4000 sqft of garden per person per year. Which I guess is actually rather small considering Stalingrad's location, probable (based on a wild guess that the city doesn't have the greatest) soil conditions within city limits and the weather in that region, they need to use their own labour to farm this (using horses would draw even more attention, provided you could get horses in the first place and working the land requires more calories, which in turn you need to grow first. So 64000 sqft or 1.4 acres or about 6000m^2. I think that our ancestors weren't stupid, so they would've considered this and they seem to have come to the conclusion that starving themselves was the better option.