Just How Much?

as I'm thinking long term livability on the land I'm wanting to buy, I keep asking myself just how much land do I need to grow how much food?
as this is my main purpose for getting the land in the first place.
so my question is How Much??


I found this info: what do you think?

To grow all the food for one person's needs for the whole year requires, for most people, at least 4,000 square feet.

How Much to Plant (For a Family of 4)

Asparagus
40 Plants Perennial
Beets
10'feet Spring and Fall Crop
Broccoli
5 Plants Cool Season Crop
Brussels Sprouts
5 Plants Cool Season Crop
Beans, Bush
15' feet Succession Plant
Beans, Pole 3 Poles Single Planting
Cabbage
5 Plants Spring and Fall Crop
Carrots
10' feet Succession Plant
Cauliflower 5 Plants Spring and Fall Crop
Chard
5 Plants Re-Grows after Harvesting Outer Leaves
Corn
15' feet Succession Plant and Multiple Varieties
Cucumbers
2 hills Single Planting
Greens 10' feet Spring and Fall Crop
Kale
5 Plants Single Planting
Lettuce, Leaf
10' feet Succession Plant
Onions
5' feet Single Planting
Peas
10' feet Succession, Spring and Fall
Peppers
3 Plants Single Planting
Radishes
5' feet Succession Plant
Squash, Summer 2 Hills Single Planting, Multiple Varieties
Tomatoes
5 Plants Single Planting, Multiple Varieties
Turnips
10' feet Spring and Fall Crop

Based on this: how much meat would you need?(not wanting to go into bigger animals)
Chickens?
Pigs?
Rabbits?
Goats?
Ect..

How much is difficult to answer because there are so many variables....
...length of growing season
...water availability
...climate zone
...fertility of the soil
...terrain
...experience of the person
...growing techniques used
...types and number of livestock (important if you don't plan to buy commercial feed)

When we bought our land we bought as large a parcel that we could afford in the area we were interested in. I don't regret buying 20 acres. It gives us a buffer for the mistakes I've made along the way, and the crop failures that happen from time to time. The extra acres mean that we can raise lambs for sale/trading, have a wood lot, have areas for experimental gardens, have a pond. Yes, we could feed ourselves on less land but it wouldn't be as interesting nor as much fun. Plus the extra land gives us privacy.

That doesn’t seem like enough vegetables to me.

Fruit and nut trees would be a good addition.

I haven’t had the opportunity to try to grow all my own food, so this is just speculation. I have thought about it and studied the options for years.I’ve gardened long enough to know that you have to plan on some crop failures. You should try to grow too much in the good years to be ready for the bad.

Animals should be as diversified as possible.  I’d want around 15 chickens and a rooster. Also around five breeder rabbits. A milk goat would be a great addition. You could substitute multipurpose ducks for some or all of the chickens. You might consider geese, turkeys, and guineas.

I don’t think you’d want to keep mature hogs, but the smaller breeds are interesting. You could buy a feeder pig now and then.

Hopefully, someone who has done this will join this thread.

I assume you are going off John Jeavons BioIntensive Numbers from his book/mini farm in Palo Alto, CA in USDA zone 10.

He has no winter, so where he can get 10 harvest of greens in 12 months from a 8ft by 4ft bed.
I can only get 4 or less. So 3x more land.
He has been doing this for years so he doesn't make mistakes, and 'perfect' soil so another 3x more land.
He has perfect locally adapted landrace/cultivars so 2x more land
So I would need 18times more land than him, esp when I start out.  

But if 4,000/sqft can feed a 160lbs human.
Then the same amount can more than feed dwarf goats/sheep/pig of similar to 2x weight.
I think that if you feed the same amount of food a human would eat to a group of chicken/rabbit/etc. You will get at least 160lbs of produce from it.

CLARIFICATIONS AND EXAMPLES
(General Aids for Planning Your Diet)

• 60-65% of the area — "Carbon-and-Calorie Crops" — High-Carbon-producing and
   significant-calorie-producing (weight-efficient [see below]) crops

Grains: Wheat, Cereal Rye, Oats, Barley, Triticale, Corn, Sorghum, Amaranth, Quinoa, etc.
Fava Beans (grown to maturity for dry bean and dry biomass production)
Sunflowers (sunflower seeds very high in fat; maximum to avoid copper toxicity = 0.62 lb / day)
Filberts
Raisins

• 30% of the area — "High-Calorie Root Crops" — Area- and weight-efficient crops for     calories
Crops for this category need to be both area- and weight-efficient. As defined for this worksheet, a crop is considered to be "area-efficient" if the annual area needed for total calories is 16 beds (1600 sq     ft) or less, assuming GROW BIOINTENSIVE intermediate yields; it is considered to be "weight-
efficient" if the daily weight of food to be eaten for total calories is 9 pounds or less.1

Potatoes (12.2/6.7) Maximum to avoid potassium toxicity = 2.5 lb /day
Jerusalem Artichoke (12.3 / 7.0)**
Garlic (10.8 / 3.6)**
Leeks (6.6 / 8.7)
Parsnips (10.8 / 7.1)
Sweet Potatoes (11.2 / 5.0)
Salsify (11.8 / 6.5)

AREA in 100-sq-ft beds / WEIGHT in lb: e.g., it takes 12.2 beds of potatoes to produce the 2,400 calories per day needed by an average person—who would have to eat 6.7 lb of potatoes per day.
** Jerusalem artichoke and some varieties of hard-neck garlic may produce significant amounts of dry biomass.

The crops below are weight-efficient, but require more area to grow and produce relatively little biomass. Therefore, they should be included in the 10% "Vegetable Crops" category.
Peanuts (34.1 / 0.9) Very high in fat
Soybeans (58.0 / 3.8)
Beans (except Fava Beans) (56.8 / 4.7)
Burdock (17.8 / 7.3) (assuming Carrot yield)
Cassava (20.1 / 3.3) May produce modest amount of carbon

The following crops can be area-efficient if yields are high enough, but the daily weight of food exceeds the guidelines, so they should be included in the 10% "Vegetable Crops" category.
Onions, Regular (12.7 / 14.0)  
Turnips + Tops (8.8 / 19.4) (assuming 2 crops are possible OR yield is two times intermediate)
Rutabaga (13.4 / 14.7)
NOTE: For diet diversity, you may choose crops that are less weight-efficient (e.g. regular onions, 14.0 lb per day); in which case, you need to have a significant amount of food from crops that are more weight-efficient (e.g. filberts (0.8 lb per day) and/or increase your design area.

ROOT CROPS THAT ARE NOT GOOD CHOICES FOR THIS CATEGORY:
Carrots (30.0 / 12.3)  
Beets / Mangels (roots only) (40.8 / 12.3)    
Radishes (48.1 / 26.4)

• 5-10% of the area — "Vegetable Crops"
Low-calorie-producing, low-carbon-producing miscellaneous vegetables for vitamins and minerals

I guess it would depend on the size of the family being fed. Ours is a family of two.

We have two acres. On it is a small 3 room house, my husbands workshop for his business, two sheds, wood shed, chicken coop (with a run way bigger than my house), vehicle parking for ours and boats in for repair, the garden and berry patches.  We eat about 8 months of the year from the garden, plus the eggs and meat from the chickens and when my husband fishes. The birds get to free range, but it averages that I buy maybe half their feed.

For me, I know that there are things I have to buy or trade for if I want to eat them. Horrible squash bug problem I havent overcome means getting melons, cucumbers and squash from some one else.  Waffling on adding beehives, so buy honey locally at this time.  Need to get better about preserving food, but we usually eat from garden as long as we can and share with other people and the chickens.

As far as meat, we process about 16 meat birds a year, but plan to increase to 24 this year.  We trade fish with friends who hunt and this along with the chicken and eggs takes care of most meat needs.

We are working on increasing the fruit production.  10 blueberry bushes gave us over 50 pounds of berries.  Grapes produced for first time. Blackberries greatly improved. Clearing an area,with some dead trees to use for wood stove and will fill in with fruit trees.

Its a ongoing work in progress, but I aim to add improvements each year.

Ecology Action has determined that it takes a minimum of 4000 square feet to grow a nearly nutritionally complete vegan diet for one adult using Biointensive growing methods.  This amount of land is under good conditions.  Poor land or difficult conditions will require more area.  Using different methods is likely to require more area.



http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html

Potatos is not on the list. You might consider it. Sweet potatos offer the greens as well as the tubers. Double duty. Both store well. Hold some back for replanting.

If you are asking how much meat, break it down into meals. To have chicken once a week, and if 1 chicken makes a full meal, you would need 52 chickens. That could be 50+ chickens at once, 25 chickens twice a year, etc.

With bigger animals that would be more than a meal, get the average of the animal weight slaughtered, figure a weight per person per meal.

Dont underestimate deer hunting. I've never eaten it as a meat(except backstrap)  it becomes chili and sausage. This month i met 3 people who use deer meat exclusively for hamburger meat. They mix a little pork or beef fat into.

Tina, do you have squash bug problems on the melons even when you don’t grow squash?  I don’t usually grow squash, so that my melons aren’t bothered. Sometimes, I plant them squash but not close to melons.

Wayne, old bucks make great summer sausage and chili. Younger does can make steak as good as the best beef. We have a lot of deer here, so the conservation department encourages taking antlerless deer. I would recommend any deer hunters read about chronic wasting disease and the Canadian study that infected monkeys.  We have CWD here. I think I’m done deer hunting, at least until some more studies are done. I really missed it this year. The science is contradictory and the disease too serious.  CWD is not everywhere yet though. I’m not saying that people should give up on venison, but studying the information before deciding seems reasonable. Sorry I got off topic.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Ecology Action has determined that it takes a minimum of 4000 square feet to grow a nearly nutritionally complete vegan diet for one adult using Biointensive growing methods.  This amount of land is under good conditions.  Poor land or difficult conditions will require more area.  Using different methods is likely to require more area.

http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html

I imagine that this would also need a long growing season. I have lived both in California with an 11 month growing season and in the Midwest with a shorter growing season, and an acre of California land will raise many times what an acre of Kansas last can raise, because the growing season is longer

In China, where people could double-crop, an acre would be a subsistence farm for 3-4 people. And, while the Chinese enjoyed meat when they could get it, the majority of their calories would come from grain.

I suppose they would also have has to sell some of their crop to pay taxes and whatever.

An account of a Chinese farm in the 1800's said that the farmer would raise "Chinese clover" in the spring, harvest it and immediately sell it in town, and 2 days after the Chines clover was harvested the land would already be plowed and then they would transplant the rice seedlings into the soil. And, after the rice was harvested some areas could put in a third crop as well.

Ken W Wilson wrote:Fruit and nut trees would be a good addition.

They are.

We found that they yield more food for less labor and have made them the dominant feature on our small piece of land. Grapevines are also excellent low maintenance high yield providers. While we're nowhere close self sufficient because it's not attainable, nevertheless we're still refining our methods in that direction and that's good enough for us.

Annual fodder production for the cow, using GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-Farming with zero grazing techniques, requires (at intermediate GROW BIOINTENSIVE yields) approximately 7,500sqft of soil (75, 100-sq-ft beds). In Zone 10a California, with an aditional 25% more land needed for space/walkway between beds.

http://www.growbiointensive.org/PDF/Sustainable_Application_of_Compost.pdf pg3

They did cation that to be sustainable we should grow an equal amount of land so that we can make our own high carbon compost to add to the cow fodder soil (7,500sqft)

I think that the major thing most people leave out is fat. Animals products are the easiest way to get fat. When I break down, and roast off the carcasses, and skin for 6 chickens for stock. I get about 1 cup of fat. Pigs are even better.

Fat=peanut, sunflower, other nuts, even soy bean.
Our body does need fat but not special purified oil/lard
Likewise we need vitamins but not purified multivitamin tablets.

Animals don't magically make fat, they turn imported feed or self-grown 'corn/carbs/nuts/etc into fat.
Similar to what our human bodies can do.

Growing 'extra animals' to process corn/peanuts/etc into oil to fry/bake with does take alot of work.
Involving extra land management, extra grass/nuts/grain production, extra daily work taking care of the animals, then actually turning the animal skin/etc into oil.

That said turning nuts into oil is work.
I like the piteba oil press https://www.piteba.com/en/
Here is a motorized version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQt6VeObnPs
And I sure do like having oil to fry/bake/etc. It is so yummy.

Ignoring potatoes I figure we need 500g of vegetables per day per person, or 182kg a year. I grow that in Zone 7b with 4-5 months frost free Average summer high 16C (will hit 25 a couple of times a year) with 326 inches rain evenly spread throughout the year.
I get 182kg from 300m2 mostly single cropped that works out at 3000ft per person. But that does not include potatoes or any perennial plants like rhubarb, artichokes, trees etc which I have elsewhere. I have not included their crop in the weight either.

Fat is very hard here, peanuts don't grow, sunflowers are marginal, soy doesn't grow, rape is the oil crop here and it is not easily processable at home. I have successfully turned potatoes, barley and pumpkins into duck fat.

As to your list it is obviously somewhere with a long season, and hot weather, most of his double plantings I cannot do.

Asparagus                    
40 Plants Perennial      40 plants is a lot of space if it's at a premium for very little back
Beets
10'feet Spring and Fall Crop
Broccoli
5 Plants Cool Season Crop
Brussels Sprouts
5 Plants Cool Season Crop
Beans, Bush
15' feet Succession Plant
Beans, Pole 3 Poles Single Planting I can only do these for fresh as season is not long enough to dry
Cabbage
5 Plants Spring and Fall Crop
Carrots
10' feet Succession Plant
Cauliflower 5 Plants Spring and Fall Crop
Chard
5 Plants Re-Grows after Harvesting Outer Leaves 5 plants? his chard must be very different from mine, 5 plants even clean cut will make maybe 2 cups of cooked chard, it's like spinach
Corn
15' feet Succession Plant and Multiple Varieties I doubt you have the climate to succession plant corn
Cucumbers
2 hills Single Planting
Greens 10' feet Spring and Fall Crop
Kale
5 Plants Single Planting
Lettuce, Leaf
10' feet Succession Plant That is an awful lot of lettuce
Onions
5' feet Single Planting 5 feet?! so planting 3 to every foot you get 15 onions for a year?!  and if that is 5ft of say 30" bed, it's still not enough
Peas
10' feet Succession, Spring and Fall And not very many peas
Peppers
3 Plants Single Planting No idea, peppers are marginal even in a greenhouse here
Radishes
5' feet Succession Plant   5 feet of radishes and you'll be eating a lb of radish every day
Squash, Summer 2 Hills Single Planting, Multiple Varieties I would say 1 summer squash plant per person rounded down. probably still too much, you'll get one squash every two days from every plant
Tomatoes
5 Plants Single Planting, Multiple Varieties
Turnips
10' feet Spring and Fall Crop

For a vegetable garden I would say go with (in my climate of course) 3000ft per person, plus whichever grains/roots you want as calories on top of that. Something else to remember, is that if you plant 5 broccoli plants, at least one will probably fail, so always plant more than you need.

S Bengi- No more magic involved than there is in growing anything. But my kids always thought their seeds sprouting were magical. I just find it simpler to render fats from animals. Generally speaking, getting cooking oil from plants is more difficult than animals. I like nuts and seeds, but I don't want to have to process them into liquid oil. To each his own.

Ken, I seem to have permanent squash bugs. Its a gift.🙄

I have tried growing squash, cucumbers and melons on separate planting years. I tried growing in pots in isolated areas of the yard away from the garden.  I didn't plant any of them this year and still saw squash bugs.  This year I had both cabbage worms and squash bugs in my collards.  Its been a super rainy year and a bunch of crops have been drowned, stunted and had other unhappy issues.

I pretty much gave up and trade my sister blueberries for squash since she keeps having issues with her berries.  Guess it all works out, but its pretty annoying.  

I have a different take on the animals than Ken. I would much rather have more chickens than add in another type animal.  Having 30 chickens is very little more work or expense than having 10 chickens,  other than the food, and possibly needing a bigger coop if you are starting with a small one.  You can negate a lot of the cost of feeding chickens with compost piles in their immediate area,  and growing some of their food,  especially with perennials.  If you are building your own coop, making it large enough for future expansion is a good idea. Chickens are easy to care for,  and it would take something pretty catastrophic to lose all of them.  On the other hand,  adding another type of animal adds a lot of expense and,  just as importantly,  work.  Generally speaking you need a separate building,  separate area,  different type of feed.  You have to visit two areas for feeding,  two for watering.  Other animals are generally harder to care for than chickens and bring different health problems.  Fencing is harder and more expensive normally.  You don't need  much room in order for your chickens to free range,  so you may not need fencing at all for them. All the drawbacks can be overcome of course,  but it makes your system more complex,  so if you decide you do want multiple types of animals,  my suggestion would be to raise chickens first for a few years until things are somewhat established before adding any other types.  Animals are much more work and responsibility than food forests and gardens.  

I can't really make suggestions for the amount of land you need to grow all your own food. I have quite a bit of land and I'm not even close to doing it. As others have said,  getting enough fat is one of the issues.  The eggs help a lot in that regard,  as well as being a great protein source.  You can get a great deal of

calories from eggs and potatoes,  and both can be used so many ways,  they aren't easy to get sick of. We eat potatoes nearly every day and I don't get tired of them,  so I grow lots.  They are by far the largest calorie producer I grow. I also grow lots of squash. I love squash and it stores well. I grow lots of other varieties,  but those are for vitamins and minerals,  along with variety,  not so much for calories.

thanks for all the chit chat on this topic, gives me lots to think about and more to research.

Raising just chickens would be more efficient. I just like variety. Also chickens and rabbits probably don’t get many of the same diseases. I’ve had some apparent botulism problems with free ranging chickens and there are probably some other things that kill chickens but not rabbits. I don’t think botulism is a very common problem though.

Ken W Wilson wrote: I just like variety.

Certainly nothing wrong with that.  Just giving another perspective.  One of the things I like very much about the permaculture path is that there are many ways to get from where you are to where you're going.  Much of it is personal preference.

Per Week Usage aka Harvest
Kale/Collard/Cabbage = 7lbs
Spinach/Swiss Chard/Beet Top = 7lbs
Lettuce/Dandelion/Sals = 7lbs
Onion/Leeks/Chives/Scallion = 7lbs
Herbs/Thyme/Garlic/Celery/etc = 7lbs

So a total of 35lbs of greens+herbs per week like a real CSA box
It takes 2sqft to produce 1lbs, so 70sqft will be harvested per week.
It takes 7weeks to reach maturity so 490sqft,
Once a 70sqft 'row' has been harvested just replant continuously.
If you want to store onions/herbs for the winter you will need even more space.
Lets say twice as much (70sqftX2) with you eating 50% and storing/solar dehydrating the other 50%

When it comes to calorie rich roots. I guess 3 times the above 1500sqft
Do at least 3 Bee Hive, so much honey/carbs/'sugar'/syrup/mead/water kefir soda could be made.

Then we have the the food forest so 1 acres.

So 1.5acres for house+beehive+other non animal food.
1acres for chickens/duck/etc + 1 acres for rabbits + 6 acre for 2 dwarf goat (30sub-pastures for rotational grazing).
1acre fence/pollard firewood/windbreak/etc
A total of 10.5 acres.

Stacy Witscher wrote:I think that the major thing most people leave out is fat.

We don't. We don't eat meat, but we eat eggs and butter... lots   of butter. (lol)

Animal feed would be a good thing as well, not to mention grain for bread