The key is, subsistence farming is not small scale. It’s why subsistence farming is often described as extensive farming as opposed to modern intensive farming. Natural yields suck and very very quickly degrade land. About the only real intensive agriculture historically is rice paddies where you’d have large amounts of labor planting and tending individual rice plants for a very large yield by area and to a much lesser extent but still significant terraced potato farms. Everything else used tons of land.
In the west, it was mostly large land and small labor (amount of people, not work per person) in the east, it was mostly large amount of labor and small amount of land. The formula is still in effect, we just enriched the land with synthetic fertilizers and replaced manual labour with mechanized labor in the form of tractors and harvesters and chemical labor in the form of pesticides.
About the only real intensive agriculture historically is rice paddies
Amazonian, Aztec/Maya and some northern American pre colonial people practiced intensive agriculture to support large cities. Crops included corn, beans, squash, cacao, hot peppers, manioc, pineapple, potato, sweet potato, and a lot more.
400 square feet is 20x20, which is much much smaller than the lawn we can see here. I understand her point but you could use this space far more efficiently. I’d like to see some actual math here since we know the overall size (1 acre), with calories per sqft and all that
An acre of entirely corn is approximately 15 million calories, and a family of four needs minimum about 3 million calories a year, so I’d give about it about 6 months before you murder each other from every-meal-is-corn psychosis
The image is 950x940 px, and an acre is 209x208 feet, so overall scale about 4.5 pixels per foot. “Lawn” is 250x310px = 55x68 ft or 3800 square feet, although the actual lawn-looking space is larger and several parcels. The fruit tree orchard is about 40x60 feet, chickens 30x30. The big cow is 15 feet long, which seems kinda big. House, excluding garage, is 32x22, which seems like a small 1 bedroom apartment.
If we assume the lawn is like 2/3rds of this plot then that’s 14,520 sq ft of cropland, which is better than the estimate, but also a singular cow requires 1.5 to 2 Acres of Grazing Land. To have the cows, pretty much all of the crops would go directly to them.
Hm, the Edenicity guy makes the opposite case here that small scale farming is actually quite viable (in the context of the viability of cities being self sufficient by growing their own food in urban areas) due to much increased yields compared to industrial scale farming based on studies referenced by David R. Montgomery, and it seems fairly compelling.
In terms of food production it’s absolutely viable. It’s not economically viable though because farming has extremely low margins that can only be made up at scale.
Also, most modern machinery isn’t useful on a small scale, though there are some exceptions. So small scale farming will be quite labor intensive. So the OP here is kinda right that most people don’t want to put that much labor into it.
This is why I think small-scale robotics is going to be important to future small-scale farming, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.
At a small scale you can take advantage of advanced irrigation, physical pest barriers, advanced fertilization, and even human or AI based individual plant diagnosis and weeding.
With what money. Cause your not making any selling that stuff and you’re going g to spend the majority of your time tending it leaving out external sources of income. My parents have 5 aces and are currently doing their fourth round attempt at something like this. It doesn’t usually last more than a couple of years before the effort isn’t worth it anymore.
Thank you for that video - it gave me a few interesting articles and a new book for my reading list 😁
And one of the points in that video is there’s a huge difference in the carbon footprints of different types of urban agriculture - actual urban farms make efficient use of resources, whereas home gardens and community gardens don’t.
And even then, those urban farms are not “self sufficient” the way prepper fantasies like this meme promise - they rely on external inputs like fertilizer and building material and irrigation.
Which is, yeah. I love competently designed urban farms. I love competently designed home gardens. The image in my post is neither.
The image in my post is selling a rugged individualist, manifest destiny, pioneers breaking sod in the prairie image of homesteading - the lone smallholder supporting himself and his family solely through the production of his land - which has rarely been true and, when it was, really sucked for the people stuck doing it.
Small scale farming is viable. Rugged individualism is crap.
I’m totally on-board with calling out the rugged ultra self-sufficient individualism, I just didn’t want people to come away with the idea that industrial scale farming is the only viable way to farm based on her second tweet. But you’re absolutely right that home garden’s aren’t the best use of resources though. I’d actually forgotten that section of the video, and only remembered the latter part that I linked to until watching it all the way through again just now.
Glad you also enjoyed the vid! He makes some cool stuff ^^
Bonus:
The key is, subsistence farming is not small scale. It’s why subsistence farming is often described as extensive farming as opposed to modern intensive farming. Natural yields suck and very very quickly degrade land. About the only real intensive agriculture historically is rice paddies where you’d have large amounts of labor planting and tending individual rice plants for a very large yield by area and to a much lesser extent but still significant terraced potato farms. Everything else used tons of land.
The general formula is
In the west, it was mostly large land and small labor (amount of people, not work per person) in the east, it was mostly large amount of labor and small amount of land. The formula is still in effect, we just enriched the land with synthetic fertilizers and replaced manual labour with mechanized labor in the form of tractors and harvesters and chemical labor in the form of pesticides.
Amazonian, Aztec/Maya and some northern American pre colonial people practiced intensive agriculture to support large cities. Crops included corn, beans, squash, cacao, hot peppers, manioc, pineapple, potato, sweet potato, and a lot more.
400 square feet is 20x20, which is much much smaller than the lawn we can see here. I understand her point but you could use this space far more efficiently. I’d like to see some actual math here since we know the overall size (1 acre), with calories per sqft and all that
An acre of entirely corn is approximately 15 million calories, and a family of four needs minimum about 3 million calories a year, so I’d give about it about 6 months before you murder each other from every-meal-is-corn psychosis
The image is 950x940 px, and an acre is 209x208 feet, so overall scale about 4.5 pixels per foot. “Lawn” is 250x310px = 55x68 ft or 3800 square feet, although the actual lawn-looking space is larger and several parcels. The fruit tree orchard is about 40x60 feet, chickens 30x30. The big cow is 15 feet long, which seems kinda big. House, excluding garage, is 32x22, which seems like a small 1 bedroom apartment.
1 acre = 43,560 sq ft
If we assume the lawn is like 2/3rds of this plot then that’s 14,520 sq ft of cropland, which is better than the estimate, but also a singular cow requires 1.5 to 2 Acres of Grazing Land. To have the cows, pretty much all of the crops would go directly to them.
This is why I’m an advocate for edible bugs for your chickens and you if things get bad enough
Yeah chickens in general are a way better solution. Better for the climate, too.
Here’s the Mother Earth News article with more details
Hm, the Edenicity guy makes the opposite case here that small scale farming is actually quite viable (in the context of the viability of cities being self sufficient by growing their own food in urban areas) due to much increased yields compared to industrial scale farming based on studies referenced by David R. Montgomery, and it seems fairly compelling.
In terms of food production it’s absolutely viable. It’s not economically viable though because farming has extremely low margins that can only be made up at scale.
Also, most modern machinery isn’t useful on a small scale, though there are some exceptions. So small scale farming will be quite labor intensive. So the OP here is kinda right that most people don’t want to put that much labor into it.
This is why I think small-scale robotics is going to be important to future small-scale farming, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.
At a small scale you can take advantage of advanced irrigation, physical pest barriers, advanced fertilization, and even human or AI based individual plant diagnosis and weeding.
With what money. Cause your not making any selling that stuff and you’re going g to spend the majority of your time tending it leaving out external sources of income. My parents have 5 aces and are currently doing their fourth round attempt at something like this. It doesn’t usually last more than a couple of years before the effort isn’t worth it anymore.
Thank you for that video - it gave me a few interesting articles and a new book for my reading list 😁
And one of the points in that video is there’s a huge difference in the carbon footprints of different types of urban agriculture - actual urban farms make efficient use of resources, whereas home gardens and community gardens don’t.
And even then, those urban farms are not “self sufficient” the way prepper fantasies like this meme promise - they rely on external inputs like fertilizer and building material and irrigation.
Which is, yeah. I love competently designed urban farms. I love competently designed home gardens. The image in my post is neither.
The image in my post is selling a rugged individualist, manifest destiny, pioneers breaking sod in the prairie image of homesteading - the lone smallholder supporting himself and his family solely through the production of his land - which has rarely been true and, when it was, really sucked for the people stuck doing it.
Small scale farming is viable. Rugged individualism is crap.
I’m totally on-board with calling out the rugged ultra self-sufficient individualism, I just didn’t want people to come away with the idea that industrial scale farming is the only viable way to farm based on her second tweet. But you’re absolutely right that home garden’s aren’t the best use of resources though. I’d actually forgotten that section of the video, and only remembered the latter part that I linked to until watching it all the way through again just now.
Glad you also enjoyed the vid! He makes some cool stuff ^^
This seems like an opportunity to cite ‘The Martian’ and estimated crop area of potatoes per person required.
Yes please