We are simply republishing this article and we are in search of similar. We have to eventually cross some of this information with other sources for validity.
Living off the land: How much land?
Suppose that you can no longer rely on any consistent source of food,
other than what you can grow on your own land. Your stored food
supplies have been exhausted. Some disaster has wreaked havoc with the
commercial food supply. How much land would you need to grow ALL of your
own food? For this particular article, I’m setting aside the question
of raising your own chickens, fish, goats, cattle, pigs, etc. For the
sake of simplicity, let’s consider how much land it would take to grow a
complete vegetarian diet, per person. Now I’m not a vegetarian, but I
eat a fairly healthy diet, and if the necessity arises, I’d adapt.
Certain assumptions are necessary to this type of calculation. For
example, we have to estimate the total calories per day per person, and
the percent of calories attributed to protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
[Technically, what we call 'calories' are kilocalories (kcal).] The USDA
nutrition labels assume 1800 kcal per day for an adult woman and 2200
kcal per
day for an adult man. So the average is that ubiquitous 2000 kcal diet
figure found on so many product labels. I suggest that this figure is
ridiculously low for anyone who is growing all of his or her own food,
largely by manual labor. My target for kcal per day is 2740, which is
one million kcal per year per person — a nice round figure, and plenty
of calories for a non-sedentary lifestyle. If you think that my numbers
are off by, say, 10 or 20%, you can easily increase or decrease the
final tally by 10 or 20% to get a result that you prefer.
