pstarr, when gardening comes up, why do yall always talk about leafy vegetables, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, squash, cucumbers, radish.....
You only need to think of one thing, selected from three options, based on individual tolerance.
Wheat.
Rice.
Corn.
If it isn't one of the above, it is worthless to grow from the standpoint of self sufficient calorie plants. I can do rice or corn, I've never had a clue about what to do with wheat, and considering that it apparently makes me ill anyway, as much as I love it, I should likely pass on growing it.
PeakOil is You
The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational collaps
Re: The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational col
by AgentR11 » Sat 24 Aug 2013, 19:10:18
Yes we are, as we are,
And so shall we remain,
Until the end.
And so shall we remain,
Until the end.
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Re: The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational col
by ralfy » Sun 25 Aug 2013, 01:06:07
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '
')
Two hectors is huge. That could easily support 10 four person families. Not the same as the current system, but with a very comfortable but different lifestyle. You would have to eat in season and locally. Recipe books would be written based on the month of the year.
')
Two hectors is huge. That could easily support 10 four person families. Not the same as the current system, but with a very comfortable but different lifestyle. You would have to eat in season and locally. Recipe books would be written based on the month of the year.
It may meet food requirements, but that's dependent on many other factors, such as availability of water, soil conditions, etc. In general, one should probably look at subsistence farming in Third World countries to see what it is like, if not conditions in countries such as Cuba given predicaments related to peak oil:
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
But because there are many other needs (roads and transport of resources that are not locally available, intermediate and even advanced health care, security, etc.), then the equivalent of two global hectares might not be enough to meet these.
FWIW, for this measurement hectares do not refer to land used only for growing food but to resources in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_hectare
Living conditions in countries such as Cuba require a footprint of around two global hectares per person. The global biocapacity limit is less than that.
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Re: The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational col
by mustang1919 » Sun 25 Aug 2013, 10:03:19
Going back to the OP, just for comparison's sake:
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag22.htm
The utilities industry employs 500,000 people. Wind alone employs 300k and solar 200k, yet they produce less than 5% of total power.
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag22.htm
The utilities industry employs 500,000 people. Wind alone employs 300k and solar 200k, yet they produce less than 5% of total power.
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Re: The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational col
by Newfie » Sun 25 Aug 2013, 20:52:12
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'M')ustang, I hadn't noticed?
But I made a mistake. Jeavons figure is more like 4,000 square feet/one person for all food needs Link, not 15,000 sq. ft. To do so requires the skills of a master gardener, practiced over a lifetime.
But I made a mistake. Jeavons figure is more like 4,000 square feet/one person for all food needs Link, not 15,000 sq. ft. To do so requires the skills of a master gardener, practiced over a lifetime.
But, I think that is incomplete accounting. In addition you need sufficient rainfall, so if you have some marginal ground then your square footage goes up.
You also need to deal with your wastes somehow.
In temperate areas heat is an issue, you then need forest to grow trees for housing and heat and cooking. Just sufficient wood for cooking is a big deal in many places.
But then, what we often forget about in our footprint is all the "other" stuff that makes our culture work. We need land to support all those other things with heat and electricity: grocery stores, hardware stores, post office, the office buildings we work on, airports ,railways, government buildings of all kinds, churches,schools, hospitals, war ships, and tanks and football stadiums, and opera halls. Etc, etc, etc.
So land for food is one thing. Land to support even a minimal culture is something different. Land to support OUR culture is different yet again.
And I keep saying land, but this includes the seas as well.
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Re: The absurd impracticality of avoiding civilizational col
by careinke » Mon 26 Aug 2013, 00:19:50
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '
')Some of you folks have a few misconceptions about population. Population growth always expands under difficult circumstances. Populations under famine have one of the highest birth rates...... No way are rising oil costs going to lower population levels.
')Some of you folks have a few misconceptions about population. Population growth always expands under difficult circumstances. Populations under famine have one of the highest birth rates...... No way are rising oil costs going to lower population levels.
You have a misconception about what the word "famine" means. It doesn't matter what thebirthrate is because in a famine people are dying due to lack of food, babies included. This definitely results in population drops
AND If rising oil costs result in famines then population will definitely decrease
Point taken, I was actually trying to speak of birth rates, which does not necessarily mean the population will automatically rise.
As for the rest, permaculture requires land, real land. Jeavon's (not the 19th century coal louse, but the Mendocino permaculturalist) determined (after years of study and hard work) that he was able to reduce the arable-land footprint to feed one person/one year to around 15,000 sq. ft. USDA assumes 44,000 sq. ft, one acre. (At Jeavon's farm that assumes oil seeds/chickens. USDA livestock) These are vast properties. The average wealthy suburban lot is 1/8 acre, or 6,000 sq. ft. (but contains in addition to a home, patios, driveway, shade, etc.) All this talk of urban gardens are hooey. Why? because given those figures and the caloric content of garden vegetable crops, few Americans have the land to even put a side of coleslaw on their plates once a week..
Here are those numbers:
--pound of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli), 75 calories.
--land to grow pound of broccoli, approximately 9 sq.ft.
--time 3 months, a best two crops per year (indoor seed starting, row covers, etc.)
results: one (20 ft.x 3 ft.) garden bed==90 sq.ft.==ten broccolis==750 calories*2=1,500 calories (two crops per year)==calories to feed one person for one day require a rather large garden bed under cultivation for six months. How many such garden beds can be stuffed in a suburban backyard? At best maybe 10. Gotta patio, shade tree?, driveway, neighbor's fence. Down to five?
Without land we are slaves. Be careful how you discuss this. These ideas have always sparked trouble.
Jeavons was great. I have read all his stuff, and own his books. I own a broad fork, and sold the rototiller, because of him. I use a lot of his research everyday. That said, his system takes a lot of work, and does not take full advantage of other techniques such as exploiting edges, growing vertically on structures, aquaponics, and using other water based food systems, etc.
Your use of broccoli is also rather odd. Try some of these numbers:
Honey = 1298 calories per pound. Five hives will easily fit in a 50 sq ft area. You can collect a minimum of 20 lbs per hive with a one day collection. This will leave enough honey so you do not have to feed the bees. Raise them naturally, and you have no other inputs. So; 20 lbs of honey per hive x 5 hives = 100lbs x 1298 cal per pound = 129800 calories/50 sq ft = 2596 calories per sq ft. If you take the total number of calories and divide by 2,500 which is about what you need a day, you get 51 days of calories a year from 50 sq ft. Other by products include; wax, great pollination, and pollen in your honey (which you can't get from big honey makers).
Rabbit = 933 cals per pound. 3 does and one buck can produce about 72 kits a year, dressing out at around two pounds of meat per kit, for a total of 134352 calories per year. This can also be done easily with stacked cages in less than 50 sq feet. If you crunch the numbers, it works out to 2687 cal/sq ft/yr and 53 days of calories. Other products include; composting in 12 hours of all your weeds and excess biomass, fur, and the guts can be feed for the chickens.
Add the rabbit and bees and you are up to 104 days of calories on 100sq feet.
Fish = 394 cal/Lb here is a link to some guys who can get a continuous flow of two pound fish at the rate of 1000 fish a year, on a space of about 160 sq feet using aquaponics:
http://theurbanfarmingguys.com/aquaponics-how-to
that works out to 4,925 cal/sq ft/ yr with a total calorie production of 788000 per year or 315 days of calories. This also provides all the broccoli and other greens you can eat throughout the year. In addition, you can feed the guts to the chickens, and you get extra fish fertilizer everyday using home built vortex filters collect the solid fish waste. Probably more than you can use on your small lot. Liquid fish fertilizer goes for about $25 per gallon.
So, we got 419 days worth of calories, meat, veggies, fish, fish fertilizer, rabbit fertilizer, weed consumption, and chicken food all on 260 square feet of space. Now on your 1/8 acre plot, with 60 percent in buildings, you still have 2190 sq feet left!
OK I admit I cheated somewhat on this example. First, you have to raise or buy food for the fish and rabbits. Second living on rabbit, fish, honey, and broccoli would get old after awhile. Finally no redundancy. But, I still have 2190 sq ft to add; worm bins, chickens, fruit and Nut guilds, climbers, root crops etc. If done right and integrated well, the system will eventually feed itself.
A lot of fish food can be grown on site depending on the fish you raise. Some good sources, worms from your worm bins, soldier fly larva in the summer, etc. The deficiencies can be made up through sale or trade of excess produce. People are working hard to find a way to raise the fish food making it a truly closed system.
Rabbits eat a LOT of different vegetables. Plus the kits are on mothers milk for half their lives, and they are probably not going to develop nutritional diseases in eight weeks of feeding a variety of plants. The ones you need to worry about are the bucks and does, for those you may need to bring in additional nutrients. You can do that with common inexpensive hay.
Chickens give you fertilizer, eggs, pest control, feathers, but not usually meat in an urban setting. They also eat meat entrails, overripe fruit and other nasty things. Four Sussex hens will keep two people in eggs year round and cost 6 bucks a month in feed if you kept them locked up and give them no other access to food. This can be significantly reduced by supplementing their food with scraps.
Worms will eat your garbage, manures, newspaper and other stuff. They give you great worm tea, worm compost, and worms to feed fish and chickens. They self regulate their population, expanding with more food and contracting with less.
Here are some other high calorie crops:
Hazel nuts = 2854 calories per pound and can be grown as a tree, hedge or bush.
water chestnut = 439 calories per pound. Highly productive in areas with 7 month of frost free weather. Can be grown in pots set in shallow ponds.
Figs = 336 calories per pound. Easy to grow and propagate.
Apples = 237 per pound. One of my apple tree takes up 310 sq ft. It has five types of apple that ripen at different times. I get at least 300 lbs of apples a year. Under the tree I grow; Rhubarb, comfrey, strawberries, three types of mint, daffodils, borrage, Sea Berry, catnip, foxglove, and a few others I probably missed. This provides the tree with all its fertilizer and mulch needs to stay very productive, plus extra food for me and the chickens.
My wife finds the comment, (by another poster), about having to eat grains rather humorous as she is celiac and gets along just fine without them. I also know a lady who is allergic to ALL grains including the ancient grains, sorry to disappoint, but she is just fine. Remember, there are NO essential carbohydrates.
lets look at wheat anyway for comparison of yields. Under ideal situations, Oklahoma wheat produces 1800 calories per year per square foot. To get that, you need to add fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides,and sometimes irrigate. You need to physically drive or fly over that square foot at least four times. Finally, you lose about an inch of soil. If you don't plow under or leave the straw as mulch, you can get a little extra profit. The soil is dead anyway, so the addition of the straw only serves slows down erosion. All of these inputs are petroleum based. I've already shown you three systems that produce more per sq ft and require way fewer inputs.
Now lets address structures taking up growing space. My brother has an outbuilding that is 600 sq ft, (20' x 30'). From that structure, I get two 30' x 8' walls and one 20' x 8' wall (the other wall has two large doors). That gives me 640 feet of vertical growing space, 3 different micro climates to grow in, and an opportunity to reduce heating/cooling bills by using deciduous perennials. In addition, I could install solar power on the roof, which the power company will pay me up to 54 cents a KW while selling me power for only 7.5 cents a KW.
I kind of feel like the old Arab fable, where ten scholars were sitting around the campfire arguing for hours about how many teeth a camel had. Finally, a young boy said why don't you just get up and count them!
Well, with the help of my sister and brother in law, I'm going to try and find out. I used their urban lot as my design exercise, for my Permiculture Design Certification course. I just finished it two days ago.
Their goal is to raise as much of their food as possible with enough surplus to sell or barter for what they cannot produce themselves. Their lot is 100' x 140' (1/3 of an acre). It has a 980 sq ft house and a 600 sq ft outbuilding. I designed the system without hydroponics, because my sister does not like fish, but it could be an option later growing Koi or feeder goldfish. They are both pretty jazzed, and already have built some of the infrastructure (fences, greenhouse).
They are going along with this for a couple of reasons; 1. My sister has had debilitating headaches for the last year and a half. She has had MRI's, hospital stays, prescription pain killers, numerous specialist consultations, chiro, and every other thing you can think off. So far, her best results were to go off the pain meds and eat natural unprocessed foods. Working at a "regular job" is not an option for her right now 2. They really enjoy gardening and working together on projects. 3. They are on their second year of beekeeping and want to expand. 4. They got a free consultation. 5. I seem to infect my relatives with a desire to grow food.
They also love to photo document their stuff on Facebook, so we can monitor how successful they are. My sister will have control of the yard, My brother in law will work for the house-payment (They have no other debt), taxes, liability and health insurance. They have no kids.
Pstar - if your interested I can PM you my design submission, and the FB link so you can follow along.
I anticipate it will take less than three years to reach their goals, and 9 years to climax production.
OK I have babbled enough.
P.S. Lots of people practice permaculture with no land of their own.
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
