How Much Land do you need to be Food Self Reliant

7/29/2019 How Much Land do you need to be Food Self Reliant

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How Much Land Do You Need To

Be Food Self-Reliant?

Marjory Wildcraft

www.GrowYourOwnGroceries.com

Being able to grow your own food is a cornerstone of

true personal liberty. I also assert that knowing how

to provide this most basic need for yourself is a partof being a mature adult.

We certainly live in some interesting times and many

of us are re-evaluating what is important. Liberty

and maturity aside, there is the practical reality that

we could be facing situations where food supplies are

disrupted for months or years. And there are

certainly viable scenarios where food is unavailable

forever. You can only store so much before you run

out. Certainly, being able to grow your own food is a

critical skill.

Even without concerns of disaster, growing your ownfood right now makes a lot of sense as the

commercial food supply contains high levels of

toxicities, chemicals, GMOs, hormones, and anti-

biotics. There is a huge amount of medical evidence


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demonstrating that the rampant chronic disease in our

population is primarily due to lack of nutrition. Over

the many decades of conventional farming the soils

have been depleted to the point that most of whatcommercial agriculture produces is only empty

calories.

Over the years, Ive worked with many different

people from lone individuals, to preparedness groups,

to missionary organizations, and universities that are

all concerned with how to grow their own food. The

most common question I get asked is how much

land do I need to be able to sustainably feed for my

family or group?

Lets go over that word sustainably for just a

second. Sustainability has come to have so manymeanings we need to define it here. In this article,

sustainably means you can grow food forever only

needing minor amounts of inputs to your system over

time. Over the years, you actually enhance the soil

and productivity versus depletion and soil erosion.

So how much land do you need? The exact answer tothat question depends on several factors. And

whenever you have a complex question such as how

much land does it take, you can learn a lot, and make

a pretty good estimate, by looking at extremes.


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it take to support him in order live sustainably as a

hunter/gatherer? How far does he need to roam

before he can come back and eat there again?

Since there are so few actual hunter/gathers left alive

on the planet, and the few places where they do still

exist tend to be jungles which look nothing like

anything in North America, we will turn to

anthropological data. The quick and easy answer is

that traditional peoples used on average, about 10

square miles per person. 10 square miles is 6,400

acres and that is for one person. There are

numerous studies and authors that cite this number

and one of the most accessible is Jared Diamond,

author of the popular title Collapse: How Societies

Choose To Fail or Succeed. Another excellent

source is Tending The Wild: Native AmericanKnowledge and the Management of Californias

Natural Resources which is a wonderful book

detailing how sustainable wild-crafting is more about

tending the land, rather than simply taking stuff.

Californias lush and diverse landscapes were able to

support some of the highest native populationdensities known in North America with the highest

being almost 1.5 people per square mile living on the

coast of the Santa Barbara channel. The plant and

animal communities in the Santa Barbara area have


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been largely destroyed by modern peoples and that

density is no longer possible today of course. As

another comparison, desert regions of California had

roughly 1 person per 12.5 square miles.

Ten square miles per person is a lot of land and not a

very realistic scenario for most of us. And as I

mentioned at the beginning, this is our first example

of extreme land use.

Before we head off into other more obtainable land

use scenarios, lets pause for a moment to

acknowledge that in addition to having access to a

huge tract of land for living the hunter/gatherer

lifestyle, you also need to have the many, many,

skills of living such as tracking and hunting, trapping,

botany, weather cycles, fiber and cordage, shelter,tool making, fire starting, tanning, and so much more.

OK, so you wont be going that primitive. Clearly

agriculture is much more productive in terms of

producing food. Agriculture has gotten us the these

high population levels so far anyway, hasnt it? Yes

it has. And of all the types of agriculture, the goodnews is that small-scale intensive agriculture is

definitely more productive than large-scale

commercial agriculture. Growing your own food in

gardens, food plots, orchards, livestock, and perhaps


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a bit of hunting or fishing has the highest density

yields possible and is the way to go for most people.

If the hunter gatherer is the one extreme of requiringthe most land, small-scale home-grown agriculture is

definitely the other extreme.

So how much land are you going to need for your

families food supply using the small-scale intensive

agriculture?

The answer to that question was started back in the

70s by a very forward thinking man named John

Jeavons. Jeavons has continued his research ever the

decades and developed a system called Bio-

Intensive Gardening. The Bio-Intensive system is

the most thoroughly researched and documentedmethod for sustainably growing food. The Bio-

Intensive method has been implemented worldwide

and is used to alleviate hunger and malnutrition.

There is a wealth of detail in the entire Bio-intensive

method, but the short answer to how much land you

need can be summarized as approximately 8,000sq.ft. for a complete diet for one person (you need

4,000 sq/ft. of actual growing space and at least 4,000

sq.ft. for pathways and access). That is also

assuming you have four growing seasons per year.


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So if you can only get two growing seasons, then you

need to double the space needed per person. For

reference, an acre is 43,560 sq.ft. So in a more

southern climate, you could theoretically supportabout 4 people per acre.

In the real world you are actually going to need more

than the minimum 8,000 sq.ft. per person because

youll have crop failures, accidents, and just general

losses. Anyone who is already gardening or growing

livestock knows of the many problems that can arise.

But having that benchmark figure of 8,000 sq.ft. per

person is a place to mark as a minimum on our scale

of extremes.

The absolute best reference for the Bio-Intensive

method is the bookHow To Grow More VegetablesThan You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than

You Can Imaginedby John Jeavons.

For another comparison, the average U.S. diet with

conventional farming requires 15,000 to 30,0000

sq.ft. and is done in such a way that it diminishes soil

i.e. it is not sustainable.

So the extremes we are considering is a hunter-

gathering lifestyle that requires about 10 sq. miles,


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and the Bio-Intensive method, which can be done on

about a quarter of an acre.

If you are living in a suburban backyard, dont let thesomewhat large size of a quarter an acre per person

put you off. A large part of the bio-intensive method

is used for growing compost materials to rejuvenate

your soil. Remember, the Bio-Intensive system is

sustainable and the foundation of sustainability is

building and maintaining soil fertility. If you can

gather compost materials from off-site, or simply

purchase compost, then you really dont need the

entire 8,000 sq.ft. per person.

Also, if you are just starting, I highly, highly

recommend you start small. The biggest mistake

made by beginners it to plant too large of an area.Dont try to plant the entire survival garden in the

first season! When I say start small, I mean

something on the order of a single 50 sq.ft. or 100

sq.ft. bed. As you gain experience, and add more

beds each season.

Below is a photo of me in my home garden-rabbitry.I have about 750 sq.ft. of bed space going, but I could

thin down my paths and fit in a total of about 1,200

sq.ft. of bed space. This is not a completely

sustainable system as I import hay and wood chips


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for mulch, and about half of the feed for the rabbits.

But I produce at least half of my own food supply

from this fairly small space.

I point this out to encourage you to start with what

you have. And remember, you want to start small

anyway.

My experience is that 2 acres in a temperate region

will completely wear you out and is enough room to

comfortably support a family of four with a variety of

food sources such as gardens, orchards, small


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livestock, and wild crafting. Below is a layout of our

homestead and the circled area is about 2 acres.

Believe me, I get more than enough exercise working

this area of land every day!

Note; drawing dimensions are approximate - not to scale

You can still do a lot in less area, and of course,

everyone always wants more. Additional acreage is

definitely useful for larger grazing livestock,


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woodlots, wildcrafting, and general buffering. But

on a day to day basis, it really is difficult to

intensively work more than a few acres.

Marjory Wildcraft is passionate

about self-reliance, primitive

skills, and growing food on a

family-scale. She is the creator of

a widely acclaimed video tutorial

titled Grow Your Own Groceries.Marjory teaches people with no

gardening or agriculture

experience how to successfully

grow healthy, vibrant, life-giving

nutritious food. Over 250,000

copies of her video are being used

world-wide. Her videos are

endorsed and carried by such

notables as The Permaculture

Activist, NaturalNews.com,

World Hunger Relief Missionaries,

The Organic Consumers

Association, Alex JonesInfowars, and The Weston-Price

Nutrition Foundation. Marjorys

website is

www.GrowYourOwnGroceries.co

m.

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How Much Land do you need to be Food Self Reliant