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That estimate seems more than a little high! It depends on what you mean by "balanced diet" (are you going to require meat?) but let's just work an example wit

That estimate seems more than a little high! It depends on what you mean by "balanced diet" (are you going to require meat?) but let's just work an example with sweet potatoes, which are pretty nutritionally packed and can be ludicrously productive. Let's say you planted just one acre over with sweet potatoes; you could grow roughly 5 tons of usable roots, about 10,000 kcal/day. Swap some of that area out for other crops for nutrient balance and you'd still have a huge excess for one person, even accounting for a farmer's caloric needs. You might also end up hating sweet potatoes after a year, but that's why you specialize in a few calorie crops and then trade with others for what you need. Anyway, it seems to me that an acre would be more than enough for a whole family.

carbadtraingood 4y ago
An acre might be low, five acres might be high. Depends a lot on what the local conditions are like, what you can grow, what tools you have. I keep bees, for instance, and my hives produce about 50-100lbs of honey per year. It's not super nutritious, but it's low effort per lb. Ten hives could produce a lot of raw calories. But it's also a skill, and you can kill your bees if you aren't careful. The point I'm making is that, we're all bringing different skills and backgrounds. I've grown potatoes but never at the scale of an acre. I don't know what challenges that brings.
- eru 4y ago
  For bees, I suspect the limiting factor is land for their foraging?
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    It’s not theft because the bees are stealing from your neighbours for you!
    - eru 4y ago
      Yes. But I was more worried about every neighbour on the block trying to run a hundred hives.
    - carbadtraingood 4y ago
      Bees don't steal anything humans want. Nectar and pollen are not something we collect ourselves. The bees, however, do pollinate the plants that provide us with food, so keeping bees can increase yields for neighbors who are growing things.
      - phyzome 4y ago
        There is a limit on how many hives you can have in an area. Flowers only produce so much nectar and pollen.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
OP says they "live far from farmland". I assume this means they live in a big city, where most space is taken up by buildings and roads. Where are they going to find one acre to grow crops? More to the point, how is everyone in a big city going to find that space?
- ls15 4y ago
  High density rooftop farming is a thing, but of course that would never feed an entire city.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    I'm tired and this is going to come out all jumbled, I fear, but I think the maths just don't work with this kind of thing, just like you suggest. Imagine a high-rise building with say 10 floors, each with eight flats, each flat housing a family of 3 to 5 people. Now, each of those families needs an area to grow their crops that's at least as large as the area of the house they live in. Sure, they can plant the rooftop over their heads. The only problem is, there are 10 families under the same area of rooftop. So it just can't work. I think this generally holds for living in cities. Since residence is basically vertical, it gets progressively harder to also grow and raise food vertically also. All the space is already taken. And all the space that isn't housing is infrastructure (roads, sewers, cables) that would all have to be ripped out in order to plant enough to sustain the city. So the food production moves away from the city, and away from the people who need the food. The OP is right to wonder: what happens if the supply lines from the countryside are cut? That would be a huge disaster, and whenever this has happened throughout history, it was a huge disaster. E.g. when Greece was occupied by the Axis, in the 1940's, the people in Athens died in droves of famine while the people in the countryside, well, they subsisted. In fact, anecdotally, my friend's grandma told her there was no other time they were so fat in their lives because they ate all they had everyday, just because they didn't know if they would have any more food tomorrow. But the countryside had food to eat while the city was left with scraps. btw this was originally caused by the Nazis who requisitioned crops to feed their war effort, assholes. in the greater Athens–Piraeus area alone, some 40,000 people died of starvation, and by the end of the Occupation "it was estimated that the total population of Greece [...] was 300,000 less than it should have been because of famine or malnutrition" (P. Voglis).[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece#Economic_exploitation_and_the_Great_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece#Econ... (When I'm tired, I write too much :P)

carbadtraingood 4y ago

An acre might be low, five acres might be high. Depends a lot on what the local conditions are like, what you can grow, what tools you have. I keep bees, for instance, and my hives produce about 50-100lbs of honey per year. It's not super nutritious, but it's low effort per lb. Ten hives could produce a lot of raw calories. But it's also a skill, and you can kill your bees if you aren't careful. The point I'm making is that, we're all bringing different skills and backgrounds. I've grown potatoes but never at the scale of an acre. I don't know what challenges that brings.

eru 4y ago
For bees, I suspect the limiting factor is land for their foraging?
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  It’s not theft because the bees are stealing from your neighbours for you!
  - eru 4y ago
    Yes. But I was more worried about every neighbour on the block trying to run a hundred hives.
  - carbadtraingood 4y ago
    Bees don't steal anything humans want. Nectar and pollen are not something we collect ourselves. The bees, however, do pollinate the plants that provide us with food, so keeping bees can increase yields for neighbors who are growing things.
    - phyzome 4y ago
      There is a limit on how many hives you can have in an area. Flowers only produce so much nectar and pollen.

YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago

OP says they "live far from farmland". I assume this means they live in a big city, where most space is taken up by buildings and roads. Where are they going to find one acre to grow crops? More to the point, how is everyone in a big city going to find that space?

ls15 4y ago
High density rooftop farming is a thing, but of course that would never feed an entire city.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  I'm tired and this is going to come out all jumbled, I fear, but I think the maths just don't work with this kind of thing, just like you suggest. Imagine a high-rise building with say 10 floors, each with eight flats, each flat housing a family of 3 to 5 people. Now, each of those families needs an area to grow their crops that's at least as large as the area of the house they live in. Sure, they can plant the rooftop over their heads. The only problem is, there are 10 families under the same area of rooftop. So it just can't work. I think this generally holds for living in cities. Since residence is basically vertical, it gets progressively harder to also grow and raise food vertically also. All the space is already taken. And all the space that isn't housing is infrastructure (roads, sewers, cables) that would all have to be ripped out in order to plant enough to sustain the city. So the food production moves away from the city, and away from the people who need the food. The OP is right to wonder: what happens if the supply lines from the countryside are cut? That would be a huge disaster, and whenever this has happened throughout history, it was a huge disaster. E.g. when Greece was occupied by the Axis, in the 1940's, the people in Athens died in droves of famine while the people in the countryside, well, they subsisted. In fact, anecdotally, my friend's grandma told her there was no other time they were so fat in their lives because they ate all they had everyday, just because they didn't know if they would have any more food tomorrow. But the countryside had food to eat while the city was left with scraps. btw this was originally caused by the Nazis who requisitioned crops to feed their war effort, assholes. in the greater Athens–Piraeus area alone, some 40,000 people died of starvation, and by the end of the Occupation "it was estimated that the total population of Greece [...] was 300,000 less than it should have been because of famine or malnutrition" (P. Voglis).[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece#Economic_exploitation_and_the_Great_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece#Econ... (When I'm tired, I write too much :P)