How many people can land support?

[Mick]

I've asked that question in many survival forums over the years and have got widely-differing answers, so i just thought i'd throw it into the SUK playpen to ask your opinion..
So in a post-apoc world how many self-sufficient people could a place like this feed?-

[CharlesHarris]

An interesting fantasy for rural Britain prior to 1940, but a family could not subsist on 40 acres in much of the US, and or even on a full section of 640 acres in the high desert of the west.

[bigpaul]

you dont need as much land as you think.
the British Allotment society says an average allotment of 250 square metres or 300 square yards is large enough to feed a family in fruit and vegetables, obviously if your keeping animals you need more, about an acre for each cow or horse, but in a post SHTF world we would be keeping smaller animals, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs etc and they dont need so much space.

[Mortblanc]

If you try to sustain large stock on an acre each the Royal Society is going to come for a visit. You'll have starving animals within two months. You can only do it on an acre if you supplement with high nutrition rations, the produce of the 20-40 acres the horse or cow needs for natural subsistence.

Post apocalypse conditions, or living a 19th century existence, it takes extensive land management to starve graciously on a small plot.

The U.S. was settled in tracts based on how much land was needed to sustain a family with a nonmechanized technology. In the eastern U.S. in conditions and climate much like the GB midlands that area was 160 acres. Two plots of 40 acres were for raising two cash crops with a third 40 acre plot left fallow to graze the cow and horses needed to work the farm. The fourth 40 acre tract was to be left a perpetual woodland to coppice firewood, situate the cottage, plant the veg garden and hold the barn and small stock. Almost every farm kept extensive poultry flocks, some sheep, and raised one hog for each member of the family as annual sustenance.

In our western states that broke down due to arid conditions. Most of the land west of the Mississippi gets less than 25cm of rain annually. That is why we burn on an annual basis in the western states. In some areas of the western U.S. it requires 40 acres to sustain one cow on graze fodder.

Probably the best examples of intensive cultivation in 19th century conditions goes to the Chinese and the Irish. But that level of organization places the Chinese in such close proximity to their stock that they are the source for most of the worlds communicable diseases.

And we know what happened to the Irish and the results of their famine. Trying to sustain themselves on plots the size of an allotment on a single crop during the early 1800s resulted in there being more Irish in Birmingham and Manchester than in Ireland. We have more Irish in the U.S. than the total population of Ireland today. 1/3 of the population died and 1/3 migrated.

You wait for a full year to harvest and starve while you wait, and one bad harvest and you are done. Two bad years insures everyone is done. In many languages the word we interpret as "Spring" actually means "starving time", waiting for something to grow.

The reality is that GB has not been self sufficient since the Tudors were in power. Your land area in its natural condition can support a finite number of people and you passed that number 500 years back and had been pushing it for a few hundred more. Even with the famous "90% die off" you would still be looking for imports of food to make up the gaps.

Dial up the BBC history series called WW2 Farm. It gives some idea of the futility. Even cultivating every square inch of land available during WW2 GB still had to import 50% of their food. All large stock was killed off down to the pigs. You had to get permission to raise a hog! Almost all of the traditional heritage breeds of hogs went extinct in the course of a few weeks.

The land simply could not sustain both livestock and people. Even keeping a dog was frowned on as wasting food.

The grandads did not talk about that part much after the war, just about the beautiful allotments and rush to produce huge amounts of food. Neither did they speak of the continuation of the restrictive farm controls after the war under the Labor government, along with the continuation of rationing into the mid 1950s and the intense import restrictions on consumer goods to insure room on the boats for shipping food.

Then there is the dream that one will simply walk out into the countryside and "claim their spot of vacant land". Good luck with that!

[MaryN]

What a dinky little picture. The answer to the query is... it depends what you want to grow and eat. A lot of agricultural land in the UK is very good quality and produces high yields. I live in the Fens area in Norfolk, and agricultural land here is highly priced and very productive. All that silt from when it was undrained marshland is probably the reason for that. If you do not include "foreign" imports of oranges, coffee etc etc., 5 acres of land will adequately provide for a family in this country. If you are keeping livestock, it will depend on what you keep. Personally, we keep chickens for eggs. They don't need much space but they have their jobs clearing bugs and suchlike from the garden. I have 3 horses, and the recommended minimum is 1 acre per horse. Got to say, if I let the beasties loose on more than that I would be dealing with all sorts of over-eating problems. We also grow much of what we eat in terms of fruit and vegetables. How long is a piece of string?

[bigpaul]

most people have no idea how large or small a piece of land is, you see it all the time on the tv property shows, they think they need a acre " so I can grow some fruit and veg" when , as I have already stated, the actual amount required is much smaller.
of course we are told EVERYTHING is larger in America!!

[Mortblanc]

Come on Paul, it has nothing to do with nationalism.

If the dirt in GB were so rich it would feed a family out of a flower pot you would not have imported 80% of the food you consumed last year!

Sure, you can have a veg plot and some fresh food, even a couple of fruit trees along the wall on a 1/14th acre plot, put up a dozen bottles of jam and freeze a few zip lock bags of runner beans, but you are not going to feed a family full time.

With councils requiring new development to cram 14 housing units to the acre that gives only 3,100 +-sq/ft per unit, which must include whatever house is available. Most go from the back wall to the front sidewalk with flag lots tucked between and parking wherever it can be found.

Even your allotments are pitched on marginal land and most growers spend more time and much more money "building their soil" than they will ever take out of it.

And those fantastic small patch "bumper crops" are achieved with the use of modern fertilizers and pest controls, not with manure and wood ash and a dish of beer to keep the slugs away.

As for things being bigger in the U.S., well they are! Our houses are bigger on average, our plots of land are larger and our zoning actually restricts how many houses most new developers can cram into an acre rather than demanding they add more. I live in a middle class rural area with less than 100 people per sq/mi and there are 7 in-ground swimming pools in the back gardens within a half mile of me.

Outside city limits the banks and lending associations will not even issue a mortgage on a plot less than 5 acres unless it is in a rural housing development and has sewer and water utilities supplied.

In fact, by U.S. law you can not have a perk test for a septic system done on a plot less than 5 acres outside a development. TPTB simply will not do the test. No perk test, no septic system, no septic permit means no building permit. No building permit means no house and if you try to build they will throw you off your land.

But being "self sufficient" is the dream of most, and is just that, a dream. We have all seen how much work it takes from SS efforts on his holding. If he tried to hire someone to work like he does they would not stand for it! And most home owners will not work that hard either. I know I will not, I can't, not at my age.

He has invested decades of labor and spent hundreds of thousands to be "almost there". I truly expect that one day we will hear that he has had his fatal heart attack while trying to put up another poly tunnel or fill another raised bed. He, and most other homesteaders, will work to his death because the goal is always "almost in reach".

All the while 10,000 others hop in the car and go to Tesco for fruit from Algeria, wine from Chile, beef from Brazil and veg from Romania, all cheaper than the fertilizer it takes to grow it in GB.

[bigpaul]

sorry Mort wrong again, the UK is 60% self sufficient in food, thats official figures from the NFU(national farmers union) and much of what we do import is of the exotic variety which cant be grown here anyway.
what would change the game post SHTF is compost, fertilisers and pesticides which are all imported and would not be available, also on the low lands mono cropping is practised which takes more out of the ground and makes the ground infertile, that what all those imported chemicals are for.
as for land size, post SHTF we wont be farming large animals, heck we wont even be "farming" full stop, it will be more horticulture than farming, the land size will be determined by how much we can control, the more land one has the larger the group needed for labour and security, the larger the group the more land will be needed, its a vicious circle. small is better in both context.

[Mick]

Welcome to APOCALYPSE HALL..

99% of the worlds population have died of a plague or asteroid strike; the few survivors have lived off tinned goods and other items in the derelict cities for a couple of years, but it'll run out eventually so they've now decided to head out into the countryside to start a self-sufficient community.
At the moment the group is about 15 strong and they're thinking of setting up in this unoccupied country house, the plague got the previous owners and we buried them out back.
The hypothetical Hall is in a temperate zone anywhere in the world, so what do forum members think, does it look like a good location?

[Mick]

A close up of the Hall-