1 acre for 1 family might be enough if youre good

an acre is a lot of land

if you are growing wheat or corn, sure, acreage is key

t. farmers son, for what its worth

@neetkthx
Wouldn't it be ideal for a community to exist and each family/person specialize is growing their own thing instead of everything diversifying like crazy on their own plots

I mean that would help foster growth for an economy within our hypothetical homestead community too so

Here's a good infograph for what you can do with what kind of achreage.

@nERO I imagine that will happen naturally, people do what theyre best at and trade for the rest

or do whatever is the most profitable

thats a really good graphic cdemir

nero, yeah, basically in small farming communities it breaks out like that, if we arent talking about going full luddite or assuming that america falls apart tomorrow, most folks can get by with a victory garden that produces the interesting parts of their meals, while your full time farmers will grow staple crops/ranch animals/manage orchards

most broadleaf salad greens grow fast and expire/bolt quickly, so everyone growing spinach is silly

with things like tomatoes/squash/cukes, you are looking at canning/pickling to preserve them

taters are conditionable, beans/corn are dryable, wheat is storable, but you need an exponential amount of land for those

a lot of these infogormphics assume that you're just going to grow what you eat now, ie a shitload of corn and wheat

even living a 'simpler' life, you'd probably have a half acre at best of farmed land, some chickens in a chicken tractor, and you'd supliment your diet with weekly visits to the farmers market to sell your excess/socialize with people

i dont particularly ascribe to the 'build a huwhite community in the wilderness and relearn how to make the wheel' ideal that tends to get thrown around

yeah were not doing that

a few people seemed to want that but what they do is up to them

it might be the american in me, but damn if im more than a couple hours from a costco thats probably a no go

we just want a sustainable community

and this is coming from someone who has raised chickens from chick to processing

im unwilling to walk too far backwards

the urban farming stuff on the tubes is great info for what can be done on an acre, and what an acre actually looks like, curtis green is a hippie fuck, but he actually works his plots in most of his vids, and i think he's still under an acre total

whos curtis green, youtube search doesnt give me anything

curtis stone, excuse me

oh i saw his vids

understand that his business model preys on hipsters

but its still valid if you're close enough to a big city

he cash crops salad greens and rare-ish veggies mostly for upscale restaurant consumption

you also have jean-martin fortier who mass markets on >10 acres in quebec

they require a perpetual supply of chemical fertalizers though dont they?

haha nope

just compost?

their appeal is organic no-till

the reason jm fortier makes bank is because they can advertise as full organic, they dont even use a tractor to prep beds

im pretty amazed they can make that much food

the really nice thing about a lot of the urban guys, is that you have to grow holistically in those locations or you burn out your soil immediately

your backyard suburban lot doesnt have 200 years of loam in it to suck dry, so you have to take different steps

i mean, the big farm guys could do this too, but its economy of scale

if you have 1000 acres of corn, if you cant get a linear return on investment(money or time), you arent going to do it