"How much land does a family need?" Topic

Thinking about SciFi type setting and wondering, if anyone has actual knowledge, not just guesswork.

A family of four. How much land would they need o grow all their own food. Assume water supply is good. Assume 1/4 of the year is winter so you need to stock up, can, preserve, etc.

Also, assume they have access to the right mix of crops, and need to live on this land a long time so extra fields for crop rotation or whatever.

In this scenario how much land would a family need to get by ?

North American 'normal' at least in 1865 using animal power wasn't it the Classic 40 acres?

My guess would be somewhere in the 40-60 acre range.

-Will

Will depend on the crops grown, yields, whether 2 crops a year are possible, how close they live to subsistence level.

Possible sites:

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Lots of sites out there – I googled 'land needed for subsistence'

17-18th Century frontier farms could be anywhere from 25-200 acres, depending on soil conditions and water. The Piedmont Region from northern VA to New England has particularly fertile soil, so farms tended to be smaller there than in the South.

You might like this quote:

'On the contrary, Chinese farmers are cultivating less than 2.5 acres on average.'

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Food yields per acre have increased quite a bit with technological advances so depending on how far you set things in the future, you'll want to adjust things down a bit as well.

Hard to guess. I doubt there would be many subsistence farmers since technology and equipment allow people to grow vastly more land than the past. Even a bare bones community would likely have specialists.
The nature of the region is going to drive styles of settlement. The US style of isolated independent farms spread out requires that the threat would be limited and something that could be handled by the farmers. If it is the wild with dangerous denizens, a European style of villages clustered together surrounded by fields would likely dominate

Two acres is sufficient for crops, as well as a few goats and some chickens. Add in cattle and your acreage shoots up dramatically.

In a sci-fi setting with advanced tech? 1 acre should be amply sufficient, if not excessive. You could do it now, with sufficient energy supply and hardware. With the right attitude, you hardly even need the technology. As noted above, the Chinese (and Koreans and Japanese) made small plots go a LONG way for a LONG time, before they adopted western methods. Check out King's "Farmers of 40 Centuries. "

Doug

Based on my hobby vegetable garden I'm pretty sure I could feed my family of four (with vegetables) on an acre of land using intensive gardening. If I was homesteading I would probably want three acres so I could leave an acre fallow each year. I know my grandfather (who inherited his father's homesteaded ranch) had an acre vegetable garden, not including the corn, and fed his entire family from it (five kids if I recall correctly). Chickens, goats and pigs would take less acreage than cows but I'm not exactly sure how much. Remember that if you're not running down to the store to get feed for the animals you also have to grow food for them. Plus growing enough for trade, canning supplies and tractor tires don't grow on trees after all. Bare minimum, subsistence farming stumbling from crisis to crisis but still using 'modern' methods and equipment you're probably talking about 6-10 acres with goats, pigs and chickens. A an overabundance of water and you can cut that down a bit (the square foot method I use in my backyard garden needs watering pretty much constantly during the summer). Of course I'd assume that colonists would be supplementing their diet with something vat-grown like in The Matrix.

My maternal grandfather raised a family with 7 children on a 1-1/2 acre irrigated parcel. He raised vegetables and fruit for consumption and cash – he had a truck and traveled from Canon City, Colorado along a circuit through the mining camps as various vegetables and fruit came into season.

He also raised rabbits, chickens, and a couple of hogs per year exclusively for consumption.

Grains and other food items were purchased with the proceeds of his peddling.

The fruit trees – apricots, cherries (three varieties), plums, apples (three varieties), and peaches were planted in rows with space between for the corn and other vegetables. These included potatoes, tomatoes, snap/green beans, leaf lettuce, cabbage (some for sauerkraut), and turnips.

There was also a row of concord grape vines and a strawberry patch.

All in all quite a variety.

In a sci-fi setting, don't forget hydroponics. It's always growing season indoors, and yields would be huge with gene-engineered crops tailored for hydroponics.

In sci-fi setting are we including soylent green calories?

Aquaponics. How many acres is a garage?

I'm kinda wondering what a farm community would look like. I was thinking more post apocalyptic. So threats are more sporadic, not organized. And I had in mind farming with limited tech. So Based on the above I'm gonna go with 3-5 acres, but if you have access to hydroponics somehow, maybe less.

Thanks all.

Here read this:
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Amish always want a minimum of 80 acres for a family.

Five acres. Plenty to provide for a family if properly managed. Does require good soil and plentiful water to work. By the way, five acres will support a couple of cattle and maybe a horse or two. And you want at least one cow – not just for her milk and all that comes from it (milk, cream, cheese, yogurt, etc.) – but for her most important by-product. And that comes out of her backside. You must have plenty of organic matter to keep that soil healthy and that rear end resource just can't be beat. : )

With no animal power, gardening using hand tools, one adult can manage about an acre. A family of two adults and a few growing children, maybe four acres. Gardeners would be as likely to work large fields collectively by extended families as for nuclear families to cultivate individual plots, especially if there was need for collective defense, for men to guard the fields while the women and children work. Think American Indians, or early Slavic settlements.

With animal power, 40 acres and a mule was an American standard. Farms could be bigger, with land left wooded or allowed to lie fallow in rotation. But family farmers are easy pickings for bandits.

Mechanization of course allows modern industrial farming.

Ranching/herding is a whole 'nother story. Big herds are a good way to use lots and lots of marginal land, maybe with a few rows of corn and beans planted at the cabin, or small farmers generally keep a few barnyard animals for dairy, wool, feathers and eggs. The mix can vary a lot.

I have read that in early Medieval England it was reckoned that each family needed an acre. It may be that this is the reason an acre is the size it is!

Of course, they were not too concerned with the welfare of the peasants back then!

19th century technology to get 2000 cal per day year round takes about 5000 square feet but is boring (beans, squash, corn, potatoes, eggs, honey) and doesn't leave room for error. Inputs are also needed (humanure). Could be supplemented by hunting. Add technology and energy and the equation changes.

Ummm… In a sci-fi setting it's pretty much whatever you want isn't it? After all, if the "farm" has access to advanced fertilizers etc., yields could always be "bumper crop." If you're talking about alien plants and tubers, once again, the sky's the limit, or below starvation level.

Or… why can't people simply live on direct sunlight producing nutrients in some sort of scientific whiz-bang box they drink like a galss of tang. Then take a few spoons of oat husks and wheat chaff or ground up sawdust for fiber.

Or… why can't humans alter their biology for the specific envioronment.

It's sci-fi you know.

The best sci-fi is rooted in accurate information. If you know what can be done *today* then predicting what might be possible *tomorrow* is much easier. All of your suggestions also make sense, but the question wasn't 'how would you get away from farming', just 'how much land you need'.

-Will

My wife's family had a dairy for generations and now just raises cattle, but I am told 5 acres done correctly would be enough to subsist as a family. The point about marginal land, above, is a valid one--some land is much, much better for crops than other, and that can be a big wildcard.

Farm family next to us in Chatham County, NC, mid 1950's
had 12 acres. They raised cows (milk, butter, cream and
meat) on a couple acres (rotated after cows 'fertilized'
the ground for a season), pigs (small lot, traded piglets
for other things), had 2 mules (plowing, etc), a
3-acre woodlot and a chicken pen. Grew fruit trees
(apples, pears) in the yard, grapevines behind the house
and other berries (strawberries, mostly) and melons in
season.

Some land was in hay cultivation all the time except dead
of winter

And worked their butts off as long as the sun was up.

If you can see the smoke of their fire they're too damn close.

Early American settlers thought so, Boers too.

No scientific data behind this, just practical experience from our farming…

If we are talking crops only the amount of land to support a family will be much less than if animals are part of the equation.

For crops only, a family can get by with 2 to 5 acres. I've fed (fruits and vegetables) a family of 6 working as little as 1 1/2 acres – actual land in production at any time was less, allowing for rotation.

With animals in the picture, you need more land – we are on 10 acres now and it doesn't support our animal population very well. If we assume animals to be just a couple/few cows, pigs, sheep or what have you, 10 acres would be 'ok'.

Chickens, geese, turkeys and the like (rabbits too, they take little space and are a good and efficient source of protein) can fit in with your smaller plot of land for crops. It all comes down to animal, crop and land/soil management (assuming good soil, plenty of water and appropriate weather).

Again, no hard science, just practical experience.

I believe that in 16th century England a law or whatever was passed saying that houses had to be sold with 4 acres of land attached as this was thought to be sufficient to sustain a family. Not sure of the exact details of how this was arranged in towns and cities, it might have just been a rural thing.

With modern tech Id be surprised if you couldnt get by with less.

If this more than just a one-off question, the Traveller "World Tamer's Handbook" contains lots of useful info and tools for setting up sci-fi settlements. I'd say the colonial economics and mass combat chapters are easily adaptable to post-Apoc campaigns.

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A study done in the '60s came up with 2 acres would be enough for a family of four.

In Manhatten or Hooterville?
YouTube link

The lower numbers (5 acres and less) are reasonable for intensely cultivated land in the short run. But if you are taking multi-generational, it gets a bit iffy.

First, during many portions of the Middle Ages, there was a fair amount of open space between farming areas that supplied the needed firewood, protean, and miscellaneous products needed for the village. It is important to note that something like an oxen, that can easily feed directly on grass, is not a great producer (compared to horses/mules) but works otherwise marginal land very well.

In the United States, the homesteading laws often found that 130 acre = sized farms were needed in dryer areas to give enough diversity of operation to ride out rough spells.

It is also important to note that almost all farming in the U.S. has historically been commercial farming. Even at the time of Bacon's Rebellion and King Philip's War (1670s) the Virginians found themselves hard pressed because New England (which came to loss about 1/2 its villages in the War) was unable to supply them with the food imports that they were accustomed to bringing in.

To use some alternate numbers (from John R. Stilgoe's Common Landscape of America 1580 to 1845) In New Spain the peonia (Indians) who were used to individually owned plots prior to the Spanish got 20 acres. Soldiers and civilian settlers received 106 acres (a caballeria) and a 1 acre houselot (solare). Officers received various estancia depending on the live stock raised: Cattle: 2,200 acres, and sheep 4,700 acres.

It is important to note that if the cultures cluster villages for social or protective reasons that there is a need to be able to walk out to the fields.

The classic 40 acre comes from the May 20, 1785 compromise that called for townships of six statute miles sauare divided into thirty-six lots of 640 acres each. As time went on the size of the sections kept getting halved (320,160, 80, and finally 40) to assist poorer and poorer families. So think of the 40 acre farm as an East Coast U.S. political reality rather than an exact formulation based on bare substance. When they went further west, as I noted above, the 40 acres was found to be much to small.

Treehugger have a nice info-graphic:

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This video has information how a group produced
"1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost" [ YouTube link ]

YouTube link
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Also depends how much technology they have access to, if using greenhouses (or 'warehouse' and lighting) & hydroponics can produce a lot of vegetables in small space & all year around.

Regards

My family name means a family sustenance farmer with about 50 acres, a traditional amount.

The answer for any situation depends on the situational issues above. Also, the risk of catastrophic event and the extent of the support network. The support network can either help each other or turn on each other in the face of a big event, depending on the available resources and their ethical base.

The more risk of catastrophe, the more land you need, up to the amount the family unit can cultivate given the technology available to them.

In England, the size of "hides" varied according to the productivity of the area (c. 30 to 120 "acres" each). A hide was what could support a single family. As an assessment of value, the number of hides was stipulated without regard to acreage or an other areal considerations. So the implication is that the size of a hide was determined primarily by the productivity of the area where a particular hide lay. Once you introduce better technology, a hide could be made to support two and then even more families. And as already pointed out, in scifi, with even higher technology, productivity can be enhanced beyond anything we are capable of. Just make it sound realistic and "your world" will buy it….