Urban Agroecoloy: 6,000 lbs of food on 1/10th acre - Urban Homestead - Urban Permaculture
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as proof of how much food a very small urban plot can produce.
What it is
A short film about the Dervaes family, who grow over 6,000 pounds of food a year on a tenth of an acre near downtown Los Angeles. They grow more than 400 plant species, keep chickens and ducks, and get most of their food from the plot.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2015 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Cites msandford · 2015-03 · on “Destroy the soil and we all starve”
Agreed, but industrial agribusiness is predicated on huge automation and the idea that one farmer can farm hundred or thousands of acres. That's an efficient use of labor, but not of acres. We might be getting to the point that land is more valuable than labor and thus it makes sense to spend more human effort per acre than in the past. Here are people in LA that grow a huge amount of food in their backyard, 1/10 of an acre: [this video] Here's a guy in Canada that makes a legit living urban farming 1/3 of an acre: [LINK] There are tons of additional examples on youtube of other people doing very similar things. The point, though, is that it's very intensive on a labor per acre basis. You can't d
Cites broahmed · 2020-03 · on “From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages”
You can grow a surprising amount on even 0.1 acres. Here's a video where a family grows 6000 pounds on about 4000 square feet. [this video] Granted, they have the whole family pitching in with the labor and it's a full-time job for them.
Cites kyuudou · 2020-04 · on “People are planting more vegetable gardens”
This family of 3 produces 6000 pounds of food a year on 1/10 of an acre that is organic, non-GMO and vegetarian: [this video] They have enough surplus to sell to local restaurants to the tune of about 20,000$/year to supplement their income. They use a lot of techniques handed down from antiquity, apparently. Shh, don't tell the eugenicists masquerading as environmentalists and conservationists!
Cites kyuudou · 2020-10 · on “Why I am building permapeople.org”
To add to this, folks like this family claim (or were when that video[1] was done) to harvest 6,000 lbs of food a year from a 1/10th of an acre and still have enough left over to sell to local chefs to the tune of about $20,000. The more I read about this the more I started doubting all the doom about sustainability. Granted, I think they were vegetarian (still had live birds for eggs) but.. I think the combination of pooling together ancient techniques with modern technology could provide better results than the "if GMO & Roundup are eliminated the WORLD WILL STARVE" type of propaganda that, the more I read up about things like Agent Orange and, well, propaganda, the more I want to hear fro