growing a million calories on an acre, the first year, starting with dirt

Are greenhouses and cold-houses allowed?

I've only read the first page and a half so forgive me if this has already been brought up...

.. but is there any reason Ants couldn't participate in the contest without a participation wage on their own plots?

They don't get anything except a shot at the prize

I would be open to anybody having a go at this.  But to win the prize, I do think they have to start on january 1 with an untouched acre here.

A couple of things:

1) Cross-contamination:
I see a point of tension in the A/B comparison.

On the one hand you want the permie and the traditional plots next to eachother to minimize differences in microclimate, soil, etc.  

On the other hand, that raises issues of cross-contamination from one experiment to the other.  That is, is the permie plot benefiting/suffering from chemical overspray or leeching from the trad?  Are the permie soil nutrients diffusing to/from the other side?  And of course those lovely pollinators are no respecter of fences either.

Either way, I'm thinking the plots should be East/West of eachother to minimize sunlight differences.

2) Why not try to pitch this to actual TV documentary producers (A&E, PBS, etc)?  They're always scouting for content and Paul has a verified following (such weirdos that we are).  

Not only would the media's deep pockets be nice, but more importantly, I'm thinking about getting the word out to a wider audience.  
You kickstarter and post a DVD here -- we watch it and love it, great!  But that's a bit of "preaching to the chior", as opposed to growing the movement.

Keep the kickstarter plan on the burner, of course, that way it will still happen.  (And, hey, then the pitch to the producers then becomes, "I'm going to do this with or without you. I'm giving you a limited-time opportunity to get in on it.")

We have a community Garden with 30 6'x15' plots located on college property.
Shut down due to covid.
I have also considered idea of competition number of pounds and / or amount of nutrients that could be produced on one of these 6'x15' plot.

Have you all seen the dope logo Andres cooked up?

This is a great idea!

And with the funding, there are quite some possibilities. Congratulations for getting the "stone rolling"

With me being outside the US, I probably can only participate here, by adding my ideas/thoughts

While counting the calories is an important piece of the competition, I would like to add another piece for thought.

Besides the calories, in the permaculture world, where the regenerative thought is very present, I feel like there must be an additional measure for success, besides the calorie-count.

While the goal of a million calories might be the first milestone to even qualify as a potential winner, I feel that at least one additional piece must be taken into consideration:

------------------> Soil Organic Matter (SOM).<------------------

Just from a quick conversation with a buddy of mine, I think that calorie count could be between 1/2 to 2/3 of the weight for finding the winner, but the remaining 1/3 to 1/2 should be weighted with SOM. In practical terms, each plot could be tested in certain predefined areas for SOM before the contest, and then tested again after the contest. The goal with the permaculture principle in mind must be to at least maintain, better increase SOM during the experiment.

There would be further thoughts necessary about the allowance of "importing" organic materials from outside the plot, but I leave this for a future discussion. Currently I mainly want to see if the thought of incorporating SOM  into the weighting of the winner is something which gets attention and interest.

What are your thoughts? Is SOM important, should other aspects also find consideration for finding the winner?

paul wheaton wrote:
Usually, we have a kickstarter and the kickstarter covers our operating costs.  But that's because we have a business plan that needs about $10,000 and then we get something more than $10,000 - and that provides operating capital.  But this kickstarter is bolder:  we would need about $120k minimum.  In fact, since kickstarter keeps 10%, we would need about $135k - far more than most of kickstarters get.  So if we get barely funded, we won't have operating capital for our other stuff.

So, yeah, maybe some deep roots stuff would be good.

What is the long term plan for the food that is produced? There are many crops that produce throughout the season, and others that have massive one time harvests. Will the crops be sold to help raise some of the $ for paying the gardeners?

One million calories is about the amount of calories to feed one person for one year.  

The food will be used to feed the gardener, the videographers, the manager and the other people at wheaton labs.

There will be a fair bit of food preservation happening as needed.

paul wheaton wrote:Of course a few million people are welcome to "garden along" - i don't see how we could stop them.   Are you suggesting that we would add some video?

A million calories and potatoes:  There will be minimums for 19 other crops, so that will add some to the challenge.  But it also opens the doors to how a million calories is pretty easy, and what techniques will lead to, say, six million calories.

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I'm in! I'm hooked. I think this is a brilliant idea - as well as being useful for landowners and tenant farmers, I think a project like this will provide hope and inspiration to a lot of people who don't know how to start or who fear their time investment in a garden would not be worthwhile. I think there would be a wider audience than for some of Permies past kickstarters - but the explanations and advertising for it would need to partly be aimed at that audience (and not come across as too 'alt'). It needs to have the persona of being a scientific endeavour to ensure ultimate credibility.

I have a tenant farmer and also a part time farmer that lives off property. They would love something structured like this that would encourage them, and train them into upping their game. The 'off-Labs' part of the project is a great idea, but I feel it needs some structure - incentives and restrictions. Anyone can, of course, garden along, but I'm sure a lot of folks doing that would feel more incentivised if there was a way for their 'results' to get published as well - so they could feel they were contributing to the scientific endeavour. Only gardeners/farmers who at least pledged to stick to the rules and whose efforts appear to comply with the rules, should be included in the off-Lab results. Obviously, compliance with the standards and rules is less enforceable off-Lab, so there would be no question of combining off-Lab results with on-Lab results. However publishing tabulated data from combined off-Lab results would be really cool and could be very useful for the additional useful information could be inferred - for instance, how do certain factors impact on results - Latitude (affecting sun angles), soil type, predominant native vegetation type (e.g. forest versus grasslands), USDA zone, altitude, min and max temp ranges during the growing months, rainfall, results that come not from a standing start (e.g. converted gardens, converted brushland, converted pasture land as the starting point) etc. The off-Lab results could also be reported in summary format as mini-case studies (which the farmers themselves would compose according to a template). While not part of the controlled experiment, the off-Lab contributors could at least provide interesting observations that might inspire the next experiment down the line (I'm sure there will be spin offs if the original is successful).

If you wanted more tangible incentives to an off-Lab section of the challenge, offering credit against some of the Permies products might be an idea. Also, maybe a requirement for participation in the 'off-Lab' section of the contest could require supporting the kickstarter at a certain level, with a special range of kickstarter rewards just for the registered participants.

I think the experiment - whether confined to on-Lab or incorporating some off-Lab component - will need more than videography, it will need quality control, rule-compliance observation, and editorial work. Perhaps you could find someone with auditing / compliance / editing skills, and retired (so they have the time) to volunteer their participation (which could be remote), and give them lots of kudos as their reward. That might be one person, or a panel.

Those are my initial thoughts -WELL DONE, whoever initially thought of this challenge - and yes, it is a challenge, not a race.

paul wheaton wrote:One million calories is about the amount of calories to feed one person for one year.  

The food will be used to feed the gardener, the videographers, the manager and the other people at wheaton labs.

There will be a fair bit of food preservation happening as needed.

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I'm wondering if part of the project could incorporate an end of season Open House event at Wheaton Labs, widely advertised to the local and permaculture communities. That might include meeting the farmers, touring the plots, presentations by the farmers AND sales of produce and maybe a second bite of the cherry where attendees not previously involved in the kickstarter could pre-order copies of the video and published data results?

Maybe you could find someone really keen on food preservation, to compile a record of what gets preserved from the experiment. Also, any thoughts on offering a reward for the best / most preserved foods from the experiment?

We have shelved this idea.  We offered to pay six gardeners $100,000 each for less than a year of work.  We couldn't get enough gardeners.

I really love this idea.  I am just not sure how to make it work.  


My favorite part is "from dirt" to demonstrate that a person can grow plenty of food their very first year.  

Next, I like the idea of seeing five different strategies.

paul wheaton wrote:We have shelved this idea.  We offered to pay six gardeners $100,000 each for less than a year of work.  We couldn't get enough gardeners.

I really love this idea.  I am just not sure how to make it work.  


My favorite part is "from dirt" to demonstrate that a person can grow plenty of food their very first year.  

Next, I like the idea of seeing five different strategies.

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My bad! I love the idea too and followed the link in today's daily-ish to get here, without then checking the dates in the thread. I thought this idea was current because of the context of it appearing in today's daily-ish.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Corn produces about 22 million K-calories per acre. Therefore, a million calories could be produced on 5% of an acre. That's a plot 45 feet by 45 feet.

Wheat produces about 6 million K-calories per acre.

11 beehives could produce about a million K-calories of honey.

One range cow produces about 3 million K-calories of milk per year, and requires about an acre of land.

Based on my visit to Wheaton Labs,  I would use goat milk to meet the challenge of producing only a million K-calories of food per acre.

If you are going to be one of the gardeners, I volunteer to be on your team for free.