"Bob Peterson" wrote in message ...
"simy1" wrote in message
om...
"Bob Peterson" wrote in message
...

personally I suspect you can do a lot on 5 good acres with a continuous
water source, but I am leery of trusting my life to such a small area.


such a small area? In the US we produce easily 2 tons of wheat per
acre, which will cover the caloric needs of 7. Given that 90% of the
acreage is for feed,
we have much less than an acre per person to live on.

true, but this is using highly mechanized farming, specialty chemicals, and
hybrid seeds. what was being discussed was subsistence farming using all
manual labor. a radically different idea.

not sure I agree. On 1/6 acre, you can do things manually and
organically and still produce 300 kg over one year, and one can
certainly use hybrid seeds. As a matter of fact, in the best places we
do more like 4 tons per acre, so even if you want to save your own
seeds and use older varieties there is room for error. We have been
doing tons per acre for a long long time. Also, 300 kg of wheat are,
what, 60-70 bucks? I don't see the need to farm five acres in the
expectation of losing 97% of the crop. The guy has another job
apparently.