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I thought about this a lot during the peak of the pandemic. How much would you need to grow to not need to go to the grocery stores. But then I noticed, even fo

• fbdab103 3y ago
  Not a farmer but, I think potato yields are such that is achievable if you were dedicated to the task. According to[0], a hectare (100m x 100m) should yield 25,000kg in a year. That's a whole heck of a lot of potatoes. [0] https://savvycalculator.com/potato-yield-calculator/ https://savvycalculator.com/potato-yield-calculator/
  • franciscop 3y ago
    100x100 meters is a lot of meters to be "garden farming", it's not a hobby anymore but a part-time job.
    • lostapathy 3y ago
      That’s also WAY more than you need to farm - no household will eat even 10% of that total yield.
    • psunavy03 3y ago
      And this is why the human race only flourished after being able to have trade and a division of labor.
    • fbdab103 3y ago
      25,000kg (68kg/day) is a lot for a human to consume, that was just the scale given in the article. Drop it by 2 orders of magnitude (10mx10m) and you are looking at 250kg /year. Which sounds like a reasonable amount both for a large garden and human consumption.
      • MandieD 3y ago
        285 kg/year was the approximate per capita potato consumption around 1900 in Germany, before pasta and rice were inexpensive and convenient, and disposable income broadly high - as of 2008, it was only around 63 kg/year: https://taz.de/Das-Jahr-der-Kartoffel/!5170413/ https://taz.de/Das-Jahr-der-Kartoffel/!5170413/ This article also reports that Niedersachsen potato fields (large state in northern Germany) produce an average of 45,000 kg/hectare, or about 18,000 kg/acre.
    • cvoss 3y ago
      And from thence comes the whole concept of "it's my job to produce way more X than I need to survive, and I will trade my surplus X for Y" where Y is something you also need to survive but didn't have time to do because of X. It's way more efficient for everybody to divide labor this way than to have each household be its own independent and self-sustaining system.
      • qp11 3y ago
        Thats only in a day dream about how surpluses in the systems work. Read the history of banking. Wall St will show up and convince you to hand over surplus to protect it, and handle all the hassles of dealing with others who need it. This way they control the price others pay. And make sure they are in their debt forever or go bankrupt. As my econ prof loved to say all models of the world dont assume there is mindlessly ambitious J P Morgan out there. And have nothing interesting to say about what to do about him.
    • defrost 3y ago
      Sustainable food is steady work but not all time consuming. Potatoes alone take 60 to 90 days to grow (weather and varieties) and 'only' take up two to three days of full work (at most) per bed per crop (split the above into (say) three or four rotating beds). The work is to turn and fork grown potatoes out, and prepping | weeding soil at same time, and then (same time) working new potato cuttings with eyes back in - then cleaning and storing - as potatoes are consumed bits that have budding eyes can be cut out and set aside for planting next time. If you've got a spare back acre you can pretty much swap gym time for garden time and stay active, healthy, and mostly eat food you grow yourself (location dependant).
      • Foobar8568 3y ago
        And your back will be broken by the time you reach 60.
        • defrost 3y ago
          I'm already 60 - I still do agriculture work with my father who was born in 1935 and still gets up at 4 am and walks 10km before getting into the main work of the day. His back's fine and he spent a decade on shearing teams. Work steady, smarter not harder.
      • nenaoki 3y ago
        Courses/programmes for people interested in this would be a boon.
  • vGPU 3y ago
    A hectare is 2.5 acres. Most people in the US don’t even have 2.5 acres to farm. The average lot size is far closer to 0.25 acres.
• mortureb 3y ago
  It depends on where you live. In many tropical places you can essentially grow year round and there’s enough natural fodder that goats don’t really need a whole lot of supplemental nutrition. Also you can have fruit trees that bear a lot of food with only a small amount of work. You can grow enough rice and pulses to feed yourself on a pretty small plot of land.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    You can grow >20m calories of jackfruit on a single acre. The average person needs <1m calories per year.
    • mortureb 3y ago
      Yeah jackfruit, bananas/plantains, mangos, oranges, coconuts, a bunch of other local stuff basically just grows with almost no intervention.
• ChatGTP 3y ago
  I know people who farm for themselves and frequently have a surplus of vegetables on about 50m2 of land.
  • mortureb 3y ago
    You have to have a good soil on your land. I have acres and acres of land but it’s all clay. Tobacco is about the only thing that grows easily.
    • defrost 3y ago
      Clay is a plus/minus - it's good for dams, not great for directly growing ... unless you can carve out a trough in the clay, put drainage in the lower end, and start packing the trough with evrything that rots, kitchen scraps, hedge cuttings, stable waste, etc. Do that and you end up with a big clay garden pot that'll grow anything.
      • Foobar8568 3y ago
        Well it requires a lot of work but not impossible, south east of France soil is fairly poor quality (clay and iron) but we can grow nice fruits and vegetables, it would need manure and green fertilizer to feed the soil first, and to rotate culture as well.
        • defrost 3y ago
          We've got a block here in W.Australia that had a massive band of thick clay across it .. after twenty years it's been tamed by cutting long trenches into it when it gets wet enough to slice into with a sharp blade (it's harder than concrete in the summer) and blending those big chunks with dry sparse soil from other parts of the block - midway between the two is a nice mix that holds water but doesn't set like stone when dry. But yep, that's the game with agriculture, long term steady work to improve conditions, soils, drainage, mulch pits, septic lines, fruit trees, etc.
          • 3y ago
• paiute 3y ago
  It blew me away when i learned in roman times it took nine farmers per non farming person.
  • topkai22 3y ago
    I know in the US the percentage was similar all the way up to the early 1800s. It was 40% of the population in 1900. I don’t think the rest of the world was much different.
    • panax 3y ago
      Sub Saharan Africa is still mostly in this situation and much less productive in farming than most other parts of the world. They are slowly improving but they lack the capital to invest in more productive methods. If they could improve their efficiency it would probably lift a lot of people out of poverty.
  • fbdab103 3y ago
    Is the productivity mostly attributed to improved farming practices, better strains, or mechanization?
  • vintermann 3y ago
    Thinking of Rome again! Anyway, I wonder how much of that was due to limits of technology/knowledge (they just didn't know how to grow more) vs. limits in social organization (they didn't grow more because it wasn't worth it for them).
• 0_____0 3y ago
  People do it in parts of the world, generally referred to as 'subsistence farming' and not considered a desirable situation I think it's really awesome for people to grow their own food but at the same time we need to have our eyes open - industrial ag is the backbone of our civilization, our way of life, and our freedom to do anything else with our time is dependent on it. There are home gardeners out there who tout how much of their food they grow but curiously never seem to address that the bulk of their calories come from your industrial staple grains and starches.
  • fragmede 3y ago
    Growing food is more sustainable, but if I can just 50 years worth of rice and beans or MREs, do I need a sustainable solution?
    • bemmu 3y ago
      Out of curiosity, is there something one can store that would last 40 years (guesstimate of my remaining lifespan) while still tasting good so that I would actually eat it? I've had boxes of emergency rations (add hot water to get some rice meal) in our house, but they usually just advertise lasting for just a few years.
      • RetroTechie 3y ago
        I've had some fun trying over-date packaged foods a few years back. Regular store bought stuff. Personal record: a >25y old can of fruit cocktail - still edible. Conclusions: For dry / packaged goods (dried beans, lentils, pasta, rice, spices, toast, etc) you can basically ignore the best-before date. Sugar (or -syrups, honey) & salt keep indefinitely. 'Wet' stuff, as long as sealed hermetically (like canned goods, shelf-stable drinks etc): similar. Seal broken: all bets are off. Use eyes / nose / texture as indicator, or don't risk it. Long storage of these isn't a safe-to-eat, but a quality issue. Taste, sometimes texture, and vitamin / nutritional value deteriorates over time. 'Wet' stuff generally faster. Up to a point where you're left with tasteless calories with 0 vitamin content (but still safe to eat!). Also: say you have 5y worth of food stored. Then you'd need to replace that vast amount of food semi-regularly (like use 1y worth, give away & replace the rest), which is very costly. Or consume everything yourself (FIFO). In which case a 5y's worth store would mean eating -on average- 5y old food. Not to mention the cost/waste if that supply is somehow lost (flooding, housefire, bugs, rodents, whatever). Imho a 1 month up to 1 or 2y supply is a better compromise. Modest space/$ investment & most stuffs can be eaten within their BB date. But enough for peace of mind or ride out a wave of economic / social mayhem. Add some vitamin pills if you're worried about fresh fruits/veggies remaining available. I've grown my own food at times. And imho substinence farming is underrated. But as a hedge against catastrophy? No. Do it for fun, do it if you have a large garden & like your independence. Or prefer the organic-everything & knowing where your food comes from. Otherwise just buy food in bulk & stuff it in cellar (or wherever).
• quadcore 3y ago
  Something to take into account is we are all addicted to food. You dont know it until you have experienced it. Eating when you wake up, then at lunch and again at dinner is terrible, it's very addictive making you eat more and more and more, with less and less satisfaction. You can eat less and be healthier. For that, faste 16 hours a day and try to eat all your daily calories in a small window of 4 to 8 hours. In other words, sleep, wake up, coffee and no food until after you finished work. Thats what I (more or less) do and it's just amazing. You dont need to go nazi on this either, it's self fullfiling anyway. I can tell im very healthy as a result and my relation to food and eating is different. I can tell Im way less addicted. I can tell when i see someone he's just loaded intestines on legs, which is ugly. It makes me dam hot. I had been on half a litter of veg soup plus 2 eggs plus 2 sausages, some bread, some nuts. A day. For months. And I felt absolutely fantastic. Now okay its a tat too short, lack variety and all, and its to note i wasnt working much. I have since got more resources and been able to eat a more balanced diet. But this gives you an idea of what we are talking about here when we say you can eat less. You still need some amount of calories every day but its really all different on many levels and no chance you go on 4k calories for no reasons other than "youre hungry". This 16 hours fasting is marvelous. It's all about the intestines somehow. You want them clean. Please adapt to your own situation, you may have physical conditions that could affect your ability to do that, check with a specialist.
  • valec 3y ago
    with "half a litter of veg soup plus 2 eggs plus 2 sausages, some bread, some nuts" you likely have a borderline underweight BMI and little-to-no muscle to speak of. muscle is extremely important for maintaining mobility and independence as you age. with this diet, even with training, it will be impossible to build any. past 30, without outside intervention, humans lose around 10% of muscle mass per decade. what happens when you're 70 and can barely walk after losing what little muscle you have? best have a reserve...
    • briansm 3y ago
      Metabolism also slows with age, calorie requirements correspondingly drop and so should food intake really. There's a reason (healthy) seniors tend to be on the skinny side. Also something-something-three-score-and-ten.
• deleted 3y ago
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