self sufficient life

How much land can feed a family?

After reading about people using several acres of land to be self-sufficient I started wondering how practical it would be where we live. A little more research on the subject lead me to a great article by Greenspree, which takes a detailed look at how much food a family needs and the yields per acre for different types of crops.

The bottom line of the article is that about a quarter of an acre, which is roughly 1000 square meters, can provide most of the vegetable needs for a family of four. Agric says that only about half of that area is needed to be self-sufficient, which sounds realistic, because you can plant different crops on the same patch of land at different times of the year.

The Crop Yield Verification sheet used for the calculations by Greenspree contains a big list of different fruits and vegetables that you can grow and their yield per acre. What I found interesting is the relatively high yield of apples and pears and when planted in the middle of a nice patch of grass where the kids can play, they don’t take up any of the space of your vegetable garden. The only problem with fruit trees is that they need quite a few years of growing before they produce food, so these should not be taken into account when figuring out what we can grow.

I have put 1000 square meters for growing crops on my list of requirements. This should be able to provide my family year round with vegetables and leave some extras that can be sold on the farmers market to bring in some cash to buy things that are not practical to grow on a small scale.