I've been asking friends how much land they think it takes to feed a person for a year.
I did a little research today and found this by John Robbins:
"To feed a meat eater for a year requires 3-1/4 acres of land. To feed one vegetarian for a year requires 1/2 acre of land. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10 percent, enough grain would be saved to feed sixty million people. That is close to the total number of people who die of hunger related disease each year. In a world where a child dies of hunger every two seconds, only an ignorant society can continue to view meat as a status symbol. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the World Health Organization - a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species - nearly 25 percent - been malnourished. " Original article.
So, I'm wondering, given the land I own, could I feed myself ? Using Google's nifty calculator I entered "30 feet x 90 feet in acres" and Google returned 0.0619834711 acres. I really had no idea how big an acres was. So, to feed myself I need a lot more space, about 8 times as much. And I wonder if it's true that 1/2 acre can feed a vegetarian in Vermont. I'm hoping to find some of this out this weekend at the gardening for self-reliance workshop.
Friday, July 15, 2005
How Much Land?
I've been asking friends how much land they think it takes to feed a person for a year.
I did a little research today and found this by John Robbins:
"To feed a meat eater for a year requires 3-1/4 acres of land. To feed one vegetarian for a year requires 1/2 acre of land. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10 percent, enough grain would be saved to feed sixty million people. That is close to the total number of people who die of hunger related disease each year. In a world where a child dies of hunger every two seconds, only an ignorant society can continue to view meat as a status symbol. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the World Health Organization - a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species - nearly 25 percent - been malnourished. " Original article.
So, I'm wondering, given the land I own, could I feed myself ? Using Google's nifty calculator I entered "30 feet x 90 feet in acres" and Google returned 0.0619834711 acres. I really had no idea how big an acres was. So, to feed myself I need a lot more space, about 8 times as much. And I wonder if it's true that 1/2 acre can feed a vegetarian in Vermont. I'm hoping to find some of this out this weekend at the gardening for self-reliance workshop.
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2 comments:
1/2 an acre definately seems like a little underestimated for vermont, but not for matt bucy who, i believe, could feed himself for a year on 1/8 of an acre with just a kids plastic bucket and shovel... there are so many clever and creative ways to garden and store food. for a single person 1/2 an acre might do. but the amount of land needed decreases in ratio as more people inhabit a piece of land, which is why community living and gardening works.
have you surfed for high-yield farming, ie: using small, fertilizer rich plots and tight spacing of plants. i believe that a half an acre of land would feed you all the vegetables and potatos you might desire, 11 months of the year. my cousins liz and michael have fresh veggies for 11/12ths of each year using uninsulated cold-frames in tunbridge VT, which is perhaps an average of at least 10 degrees colder -- at thier elevation of 12hundred feet, than white river jct. -- elevation 400-450 feet.
youre going to have problems with protein tho. soy (tofu), grains, etc are hard to grow intensively altho on my grandmothers farm -- right here in windsor county -- they grew wheat, barley, rye and corn, and had them ground at a nearby gristmill. (water power). a family of five survived this way, but there were 400 acres and a lot of cows and pigs and chickens thrown into the mix.
im wondering about deer. fish, etc.
in other words, im wondering where mr. robbins got his 3 1/4 acre for a meat eater statistic from... you might want to look into it. would that envolve using those 3 1/4 acres to grow grain with petro-chemicals to feed livestock?
in other words, wouldnt you need more land for meat if you didnt extend (and overuse) the land in this way?
or, if you used deer and fish for protein, as in abnaki culture, wouldnt you be part of a much much larger, wholly interconected eco-system for your intake of protien? the meat eaten by native americans here used the intire upper valley to feed them...a bit more than 3.25 acres, but how do we calculate this?
you live on the banks of the white river, loaded with crawfish. u could eat like the racoons. how many acres is this?
in other other words, who in tarnation comes up with these figgers?
go forit and the garden. my other cousin just up the road from wHartford, in pomfret, has all the cow-kaka you want.
ill help shovel.
bon apetite!
Ps: or you may just want to eat dirt. its the most direct way to get that potasium, nitrogen, etc.
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