For one person to live…Part Two
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Recap
In Part One of this series it was established that on average a person requires about 2,000 calories a day if male, about 1800 for females. On average that would be four to five pounds of food....a day.
................ about 2000 lbs of food per year,
How much land does it take to grow that?
look at the middle of the chart above the 190 grams of meat per day and you’ll see that this converts to about 0.45 hectares, which is just a bit over one acre.
By using conventional agricultural methods it requires one acre of land, on average, to support one person for a year.
As an aside...the United States current population is about 330 million people. The amount of land under cultivation is about 915 million acres. The United States isn't likely to be short on food any time soon. As a matter of fact we EXPORT a bunchaton of food to the rest of the world.
BUT...just for giggles...is there a better way?
Glad you axed that question....consider this.
Aquaponics can produc 35,000 pounds of edible flesh per acre in one year.
That same acre can also produce 100,000 pounds of vegetables in that same year.
do the math...and that's 135,000 lbs of food from one acre in one year.
Each person requires a bit less than a ton a year so
One acre by conventional farming can support one person a year. That same acre using aquaponics can provide enough to eat for more than sixty.
One acre = 43,560 square feet.
divide by 67.5 = 645.33 square feet.
to put that in perspective...
25.4 x 25.25.4 = 645.16
so there you have it...
a small area, only twenty five foot on a side.
can provide you with enough food to live on
using aquaponics.
BUT WAIT!
think out of the box..
don't be square
get a CUBE
go three dimensional.
Quadrasect the Square and you have four squares 12.7 foot on a side.
Then stack em...
How bout this....
dig a hole in the ground...four foot deep...twelve foot on a side...
make it water proof, fill it with water.
and stock it with fish.
Then make three more levels of grow beds,
stacked on TOP of the pond..
separate them by...oh...say four feet.
Whatcha got?
Twelve feet high?
Is that right?
Is it possible to grow all the food you'd need in a cube twelve foot on a side?
(not counting the basement)
BUT WAIT!
There's more
maybe
Suppose you put solar panels on the tippy top
(over the top-crop)
then mounted LED growlights above each growbed
(and batteries and stuff as needed)
(fish don't need light so much so don't' light them up)
How much would the efficiency increase if the 'grow beds'
were working 24/7/365?
I suspect that the 'grow cube could be smaller'.
How small COULD it get?
WHAT COULD BE GROWN
Fish :
- did you notice the crawdad? why not other types of shell fish too?
Only see food?
I call
fowl:
quail..and other types of feathered critters.
Meat AND Eggs..
Guinea Pigs?
Be Creative. What type and how MUCH food could you raise in a very small space?
another opinion
how bout this?
according to the video one 'stacked' container is worth about bout 7% to 20% of a commercial outdoor farm's production.
a forty foot shipping container is about eight foot wide.
Put five of them side by side forming a square forty by forty feet.
that would mean five 'stacked' containers would be worth 35% to 100% of an out door acre.
Why not stack em
HIGHER?
five wide by 4 high = the out door production equivalent of 140% to 400%.
All in a cube 40 x 40x 40 foot.
on less than 1% of an acre.
Imagine what could be done if the containers were stacked rilly, RILLY HIGH
(don't try this at home...exterior steel reinforcing might be required)