How Much Land Do You Really Need to Be Self Sufficient?

Most Americans think that miles of machine-planted row crops and crowded feedlots are required to feed everyone—that without large-scale, industrial agriculture, with its chemical inputs and GMOs, we would all starve to death.

Even people who know that organic agriculture can be just as productive as industrial agriculture often think you need to have acres of land to grow all your own food. Here’s why this is totally false…

How Much Land is Enough?

As any of the millions of subsistence farmers and smallholders around the world will tell you, depending on the quality of your land and the size of your family, you can grow all the food you need in a very small space.

It simply requires designing a food production system that works with natural processes to make the most of what you have.

Here are three North American examples of extreme productivity on very little land:

• Growing Power – On a 2-acre urban lot in Milwaukee, Will Allen grows over a million pounds of food every year, including thousands of fish, and a livestock inventory of chickens, goats, and bees.
• The Urban Homestead – A family of four produces most of their own food and $60,000 a year on just a fifth of an acre.
• Singing Frogs Farm – Just 3 harvested acres on this farm bring in over $100,000 an acre, using zero-pesticide, low water methods that sequester carbon and generate topsoil.

Using techniques and principles in the resources below, you can potentially grow all your food on as little as a quarter of an acre! Most people in the suburbs could start living off their land today!

Resources for Small Scale Self-Sufficiency

Planning and Maintaining Your Homestead

In recent years, homesteading and self-sufficiency have become popular—even trendy—and dozens of books have popped up that promise to teach you how to do it all. My favorite of these include:

The Suburban Micro-Farm teaches you how to grow food with permaculture principles, so you can get the most productivity out of a small space—while still passing HOA aesthetic standards.

This book will show you how to grow your own fruits, herbs, and vegetables on a busy schedule, improve your soil and save on water, as well as help keep you on track across the growing season, so you feel a sense of accomplishment for your efforts.

And if you want to make a little money from your backyard, The Suburban Micro-Farm has some great ideas for that, too.

The Backyard Homestead is a very comprehensive basic guide to homesteading, and will give you ideas and schematics for setting up all the gardens, coops, etc. you need to meet all your food needs on as little as a tenth of an acre!

There’s also tons of organic gardening information, food preservation techniques, animal husbandry knowledge and more in the book.

The Backyard Homestead is a thorough primer to get you started homesteading in a small space.

Ultra-Productive Gardening

Biointensive gardening or mini-farming is an elegant, small-scale agriculture system that makes the bold claim of enabling you to “grow more vegetables than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine.”

Ecology Action has been avidly teaching Biointensive techniques to smallholders worldwide, with the goal of helping as many people to become food-secure as possible.

In fact, Biotensive soil care and gardening techniques work so well that you can grow a complete plant based diet in less than 1000 square feet!

I love Biointensive gardening because, when combined with holistic land design strategies like Permaculture, you can create a complete homestead that is not only highly productive, but also low maintenance.

Biointensive gardens require a lot of soil preparation work up front, including the infamous “double digging.” But for all your efforts in preparation, your gardens will become extremely drought and weed resistant, and very easy to maintain for years to come.

My favorite book to get started with Biointensive gardening is called How to Grow More Vegetables. This resource is a must-have for getting very high yields out of a small garden space.

Getting Off the Grid – Permaculture

Gaia’s Garden will break down the Permaculture techniques you can best use in an urban or suburban setting, and help you implement them into your homestead design.

From planting fruit trees in multi-level, vertical guilds that increase yields to building renewable energy and greywater systems that fit your family’s needs, this book makes Permaculture accessible to the newbie homesteader.

The plant lists at the end are worth the price of the book alone, and as a certified Permaculture designer and teacher myself, I recommend Gaia’s Garden highly.

If you have a small plot of good land and a dream of greater self-sufficiency, then I hope these resources will inspire you to start planning your suburban or urban homestead now!