How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?

[Spartacus]

How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?
Also how much land does a family of 5-7 need to sustain themselves?

Hi everyone, I have recently discovered permaculture and boy does it interest me or what! All my life I have known that things were wrong, I have been thinking and saying the things that permaculture discusses and somehow recently I stumbled across PERMACULTURE. I am currently reading "Permaculture; A designers manual" Very hard to get hold of- I had to get it from non local library as the only way I can get it is from Australia there and I cannot afford that. I have read some other short books and pieces and just ordered a permaculture book for the temperate climates (I am in England).

So yeah, I am looking at permaculture designs- everything and I have come across an important question: Just how much land does a family and a single person need?
I am not including industry such as timber and metals ect- just the home plot land.
(my preliminary design ideas have a plot of around 40-50 metres by 100-115 metres per family of 5-7. I cannot figure out if this is too large or too small. I also am wondering about how a `small` farm would be on the end of each road too. That farm would have certain livestock that perhaps the house plots didn`t and also would be where the fish farm would be for that road. (almost everything local)

Basically I am playing around with town planning designs and am curious how much space is reasonable (including the house itself).
:)

[christopher]

Spartacus,

Well, how much land depends on the kind of land, soil types, orientation to equator, tropical or temperate, wet or dry, etc. How self sufficient do you want to be? Veggies, fruit, grains, animals? Each of those need more space than the preceding component. Knowing its in England helps, but England is a big place, and is your place on a nort or south facing slope? Are nearby structures or trees a limiting factor in accessing light?

For a small lot, you should really check out Joels site: http://www.backyardaquaponics.com :wav: because this lends itself well to small yards inurban environments.

Or, this link was posted here recently by Garden Girl and is a pilot for a new show on urban permaculture, which looks very exciting:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-882082844236943883&q=Filmshack&hl=en

If you get a chance, take a Permaculture Design Course (like the one we are hosting in February, for one blatantly self promoting example :lol: ) as this will give you all the tools to really look at a piece of land. If you are going into owning a piece f land, no cheap proposition, then you owe it to yourself to take a course. I did, and it was the best money I have ever spent.

Where in England?

Christopher

[Richard on Maui]

Welcome Spartacus,
There is an old adage that you shouldn't try to farm more land than you can throw a stone over...
Post WW2 Australian suburban lots were sized at 1/4 acre in the belief that that is enough land for a family to be self sufficient in vegetables and small animals like poultry or rabbits. Obviously in many urban situations these days that amount of land would be a luxury. In those situations Permaculture designers would seek to make use of every available space - vertical space (sides of buildings and fences and by plant stacking - creating guilds of species that can productively coexist - root crops, edible ground covers, vegetables and herbs interplanted with shrubs and trees, both providing living trellis for vine crops), then there are roof gardens and other types of container gardens, reclaiming public space like roads and nature strips, parks into community gardens etc... You might not "own" any land that you can cultivate at all but still create access to food in the city...
I think a 1/4acre is enough to grow a lot of food though!

[Cornonthecob]

I agree with Richard, 1/4 acre (1000sqm) should be heaps for a family. Plenty of room to grow all the fruit/veges, space for poultry, even a pond/aquaponic system for fish perhaps. Fruit trees can be grown for shade/wind breaks.

The only reason we picked a larger block was so we could get away from town, other wise 1/4 or 1/2 acre would have been perfect.

[Jim Bob]

As certain kinds of blokes like to say, "it's not how big it is, it's what you do with it that counts." :D

Using 6 square metres of garden plots in 12 square metres of backyard area, I'm able to produce about 50kg of vegetables a year, but I'm quite lazy, and don't bother with harvesting everything the moment it's ready and replacing it with seedlings, etc. It's about 45 minutes work a week.

The Australian Vegetable Garden by Clive Blazey is an excellent and easy to find (in Australia) book, and they claim you can get 540kg of vegetables from 42 square metres, of which 30 m2 are raised garden beds, and 12 m2 are paths. Assuming that you have a diet of, by weight, 1/2 cereals (rice, corn, wheat, bread, pasta, etc), 1/4 meat and dairy, and 1/4 fruit and vegetables, that 540 kg will support about 4 people entirely, or 2 people who trade their fruit and vegies for their neighbours' bread. With some variation in diet, it'd feed 3 people without any swapping around.

The work required is about 20-40 hours to set up the garden beds, and after that about four hours a week.

However, that amount of food from that small area means quite a bit of work and energy going into it. You have to add a lot of compost, grow seedlings, harvest as soon as things are grown, pickle a lot, have seedlings ready to occupy any empty space, etc. They also assume heirloom varieties rather than shop-bought seeds.

So, if you're slack-arsed and have only a rough idea what you're doing like me, you can get about 8-9kg/m2 of actual garden bed. If you're hard-working and have a deep pool of knowledge about it all, then you can get about 18kg/m2 from the area.

Also, I use 1lt/m2 (garden bed, not total area, don't need to water the paths!) of water a day on it in the cooler months, and 2lt/m2 per day if it climbs above 30 degrees; obviously I don't water on the one day in four or five that it rains. So your 30m2 of garden will use about 45lt of water a day. At current rates, that'd be about five cents a day, and in terms of water saving, don't flush the loo when you go for a piss, and it evens out.

There are a lot of ways you can do things, and it's not really the space, but how it's used.

[Paul Cereghino]

John Jeavons wrote a book called 'How to grow more food than you thought possible on less land than you could imagine'. He included estimates on yield per square foot for a wide range of crops using his french intensive biodynamic approach (compost, double dig, clean cultivation, frequent irrigation etc..). His system assumes unlimited nutrient, carbon, and water inputs. He figured 1/4 acre for vegetarian diet with grains and legumes as the core and yearround vege production in central california, (USA zone 9?). The vege's don't take up much space. You could get you vitamin needs off of weeds if you had to, but 1 year of protien and complex carbos (grain and dry beans, maybe potatos) is the hurdle.

So... in short... the footprint is inversely proportional to the amount of energy/nutrient/water subsidy you can gather from your neighborhood. Contemporary permaculture designs on small sites typically takes advantage of your neighbors waste (I currently import arborist wood chips, spoiled straw, and horse manure, and have mooched other peoples vegetable scraps and coffee grounds as well.)

But if everyone is scavenging nutrients and organic matter, then the game changes. I recently read that your urine contains enough nutrients to produce a grain crop to feed one human for a year.

Then there is energy, fiber, and construction materials...

Permculture designs should theoretically increase yield by diversifying yield... but I have not seen any rigorous accounting like that done by Jeavons.

A final thought... a household is not necessarily the appropriate scale for sustainable system design, or the most effective unit for self sufficiency.

Then there is the hidden subsidy of ecosystem services... whoops... running out of brain power...

Paul, Puget Sound, USA

[Richard on Maui]

By gads, Jim Bob and Paul, fantastic posts both of you!


You could get you vitamin needs off of weeds if you had to, but 1 year of protien and complex carbos (grain and dry beans, maybe potatos) is the hurdle.



This point is perhaps why I am not a vegetarian, and why I am a believer in incorporating animals into Permaculture systems. Not only do they provide the missing protein from the above equation, but they also satisfy other functions, cycling nutrients and controlling certain pests etc.

Bill Mollison is of course all about his potatos. Here in the subtropics as I have mentioned elsewhere recently, there are lots of alternatives to the grains if we can only learn how to not be addicted to wheat and its products - cassava, taro, dioscorea yams, breadfruit and all the other artocarpus seeds, and plenty of other tree crops.


A final thought... a household is not necessarily the appropriate scale for sustainable system design, or the most effective unit for self sufficiency

You've pounded the nail on the head there Paul. Especially if we are going to create perennial, tree oriented systems, it makes a lot sense to do that on a village scale.

[christopher]

I second Richards exclamation about good posts, Jim and Paul!

My own work is
slack-arsed, too, and while we could get away with using less land, we have so much of it, and we are so devoted to the trees and crops that Richard mentions:
cassava, taro, dioscorea yams, breadfruit and all the other artocarpus seeds,, that we use a rather large acreage for our needs, about 12 acres of managed land, some of it managed well, and some of it managed not so well. We could and should invest more energy into what we have, but we keep expanding at the periphery... and prolly need a 12 step program to stop us. We are hoping to start consolidating what we have with sub canaopy species like coffee and cacao, and reove some of the things that have been shaded and squeezed out, the bananas and pineapples in some places, the "jippy jappa" palms in others, etc.

While we are primarily vegetarians, like Richard we also raise chooks, ducks and turkeys for meat for our students and interns, and we raise birds for eggs, too, for all the reasons Richard mentions. They do a fantastic job of eating insects, keeping the grass down, nutirnet cycling all over the farm, etc, and take direct advantage of calories sources we don't use, insects, grass, old grains, leftovers, etc. We also feed them lots of that cassava, taro, dioscorea yams, breadfruit and all the other artocarpus seeds that we have too much of, and coconut, and wood lice nests, and leaf cutter ant nests (spent the last two days diggin up nests, getting biten by angry soldier ants, and watching the chooks eat them like popcorn). While we could, theoretically, eat those, a nice bowl of termites is not what I really want for brekkie.

We hope to raise goats soon. We have seeded an area to five types of grass, planted out glyricidia stakes for fences and forage, designed 5 paddocks (with place for 5 more), radiating out of a central paddock for our dairy goats. Goats can also accumulate protein from sources we are unable to digest. This adds to our acreage though. The whole set up is about 1 acres now, and there is room for another 3/4 acre later, or more.

My point, though, is that IMO it is easier to design a farm around permaculture in the tropics, especially with large acreage, than it is in a small temperate plot. Design constraints around size, species choice, orientation to equator, prevailing wind, drainage, etc, are significant in a small lot. There is no "well, let's put that over there" when over there is in the neighbors BBQ pit. We get all of our firewood from our farm, much of our building material, all of our mulches, etc, all things that have to be obtained elsewhere in an urban environment.

A lot of what we are doing is possible only because we have an additional 58 acres of land we are not using actively, too.

Regarding appropriate scale and community managed agroforestry, Richard, I saw something that made me think of you while I was looking at it. I was in Venezuela in early December and got to visit a community managed agroforestry system in a village called Cata, north west on the coast from Caracas. They grow cacao there, which is what I went there to see, and the village, some 200 people or so, were collectively managing a 400 acre cacao farm that had been abandoned 20 years ago. They had huge amounts of trees, lots of cacao, coffee (not sure if was arabica), plantains, breadnut, jackfruit, various tree legumes, some of them timber, some lemon grass, papaya, gadens, etc, etc, etc, and it was the centre of the village. It was really encouraging to see it, both the scale and the community effort, but the organization involved was impreeive too. The whole plot was divided into zones, and people worked their zones, but were available to work in each others zones, too. In all of the cacao cooperatives I have visited, I nhave ever seen a better community managed agroforestry system. Because of their size, working with other villages, Ocumare and Cuyagua, for example, they were able to access premium markets for their cacao. It was truly inspirational. You would have loved it.

[Jim Bob]

Thanks for the compliments, I just pass on what someone else told me, I don't know anything much myself. And if you saw my garden, you'd see that's not false modesty on my part ;)

I don't think it's bad to want or have wheat and other cereals. It's not really possible to be entirely self-sufficient as a family on land. You'll always be importing something. I notice for example that no-one has mentioned clothing. Why is it alright to buy in clothes, or cloth to make them, but it's not alright to buy in some flour for bread? It's all stuff someone had to grow, after all. What about furniture? You going to cut down trees, clean up the logs, turn them into the right kind of lumber, make all your own tables, chairs, and so on? No? So why is it okay to buy in wood someone grew, but not buy in wheat someone grew?

I don't think you're going to be growing cotton, or wool, or flax for linen, or timber for furniture, etc on that 1/4 acre.

It's not really possible for a single family, whatever the size of their property, to be self-sufficient. Even if you had the land and the perfect cimate, who's going to have the time to do the horticulture, mash up the flax and make cloth from it, sew the cloth into clothing, make cheese from the milk, cut the timber, etc? Plus of course it's twenty different skills instead of just three or four.

But you can be self-reliant. If you believe in some sort of balance in your little home, you can just say to yourself, "okay, I'll import some bread and clothing and so on, as long as I'm exporting some of what I produce." You trade things with your neighbours, swap, buy and sell, whatever. This small-scale trade builds community. If nothing else, you need community so that when your kids grow up they have someone to marry and start their own self-reliant homes with. :D

[han_ysic]

Hey Spartacus,
There is a great site by a family in Pasadena California that tried to see just that, they grow all their fruits and veges and trade for grains etc. Have livestock - goats, chickens, ducks and run a business supplying local restaurants with produce - esp salads and other veges that funds the ongoing sustainable renovation of their home. Won't go on too much, but their site is very interesting and has a journal of the family's life garden developments.

http://pathtofreedom.com/journal/

They seem to have found a balance between the growing and using of items, and are educating and inspiring others around the world. An inspiration to me as I would love to be doing the same.

Hannah


How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?
Also how much land does a family of 5-7 need to sustain themselves?
So yeah, I am looking at permaculture designs- everything and I have come across an important question: Just how much land does a family and a single person need?
I am not including industry such as timber and metals ect- just the home plot land.
:)

[Richard on Maui]

I think my problem with wheat, (and bear in mind that I wrestle daily with the hypocrisy of the fact that I am addicted to the stuff) is that it probably can't be grown sustainably.
You have to clear the land to grow it and you need a lot of land... Have a look at the quality of the environment left behind by the wheat growing civilisations in our history. Have a look at the forecast for soils in the Darling Downs or the south west of Australia or wherever else wheat is grown on the broadacre...
You can grow cassava, taro, climbing yams and high protein tree crops in food forests that build soils and protect watersheds...
While in principle I agree with you Jim Bob, that we should pay as much attention to the sources of our textiles and timber as we do all our other needs, and should strive to build cooperative local communities in sustainable bioregions that provide for those needs, I do think that food, which you eat every day, as opposed to clothes and furniture which last for years, is perhaps a little bit heavier of a load on our environment. (Unless you are like Prince Charles, or a bicycle courier I once knew, and never wear the same pair of sox twice.)
And of course, you can buy second hand clothes and second hand furniture. You can't really eat second hand food.

[Jim Bob]

On the other hand, wheat has been grown for millenia in Europe, and rice in Asia, and maize in the Americas, with no damage to the land overall. They difference between then and now was polyculture. The traditional European farm had cattle, the Asian one had water buffalos and pigs, the American one various smaller beasts, and the corn was grown with squash and beans anyway, not by itself.

When part of the land is for fruit and vegetables, part for pasture, part for cereals and part left fallow, and these parts are rotated one season after the other, things went well and the land thrived.

Where things went badly and the land turned to desert is when people got greedy, and left no land fallow, or removed cattle from it, etc.

And here in Australia, I think we can certainly say that the wrong cereals have been grown. A low rainfall place like southern NSW should not be growing rice (6,700 litres water per kg of rice grown), but instead sorghum (500 lt/kg) or something like that.

Current wheat crops achieve something like 10-15 tonnes/ha as monocultures with oodles of oil products on them. A subsistence farmer in Africa with no machinery but their hands and hoe, and no chemicals but a cow's manure, can achieve 2 tonnes/ha. 1t will feed 3 people for a year.

John Seymour wrote about this in his, The New Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency. He suggests that if you had 5 acres (2ha), you might divide it into half-acres (2,000 sw m, or 0.2 ha) and have,
1x half-acre acre for house and outbuildings[/*:m:mv8vnltj]
1x half-acre for fruit and vegetables[/*:m:mv8vnltj]
3x half-acre grass plots, with two cows for dairy, four sows, a boar, some sheep and fowl[/*:m:mv8vnltj]
5x half-acres with cereals, roots and beans, undersown with grass and clover. [/*:m:mv8vnltj]
These 8x half-acres would be rotated each year, and a grass plot would stay grass for three years before being ploughed.[/*:m:mv8vnltj]
Syemour is writing of high-rainfall Europe, of course, so here Down Under, anywhere south of Canberra we'd halve those animal numbers. I've visited this sort of mixed farm, but not stayed there, and it certainly looks as though it works well. It also closely resembles the approach used for millenia in Europe. It's when we've stepped away from that approach, going monoculture to maximise production of particular crops for surplus sales or taxation of nobles/government, that we've come unstuck, and had potato famines, wheat blights, soil erosion and so on.

It's just your basic old mixed farm.

Wheat alone, yes, that's a bad idea. But I think that cereals have a good part to play in a proper polyculture. Like good permaculturists, of course, we'd choose carefully which cereal to put down. It is probably a bad idea for 600mm annual rain inner NSW to grow rice, while 2,000 mm annual rain far north Qld grows wheat. Low water use cereals like sorghum would be much better for Australia. There are 1.5 billion Asians in monsoonal regions growing rice, after all, I'm sure they can spare some in exchange for, say, roo meat.

If I were to get this 5 acre farm, I probably would not bother with wheat, because the treshing, milling and so on is rather a lot of work, and other stronger and more patient men are wiling to do this. So I would grow other things, and swap them for bread. But still, it's viable environmentally. Or else the world would have perished in the last 7,000 years of cereal agriculture.

It's true that we eat every day, but don't wear new clothes every day. However, don't underestimate the amount of resources going to textiles. World cotton production is about 20.5 million tonnes, requiring 35 million hectares (source (http://www.fao.org/es/ESC/en/20953/22215/highlight_28507en.html)). Flax for linen is about 2.1 million tonnes, requiring 1.3 million hectares. Or if you prefer to think of milk, Australia alone has 2 million dairy cattle using 2 million hectares of pasture, and another 2 million hectares of grain supporting them, producing 10 billion litres (10 million tonnes) of milk in all, and we Aussies consume 8.7 million tonnes of it in one form or another (some goes in food to pigs, etc) (source (http://www.abareconomics.com/interactive/ausNZ_ag/htm/au_dairy.htm). I couldn't find figures for world pasture put to dairy, but optimistically their land and cows are as productive as ours, and I do know our production is 2% the world's production, so we can say that at least 200 million hectares are devoted to dairy.

By comparison, world wheat production of 800 million tonnes requires 320 million hectares.

[Incidentally, I could not find figures for world timber production and consumption, or rather, how much went to pulp and paper/cardboard/heating/cooking - so could easily be reduced - and how much went to furniture/housing - not so easy to reduce. Seems like a topic no-one's taken an interest in, really.]

So, certainly cereals are the most significant, both in nutrition and in land used, but other things are not insignificant.

So I conclude that it is no more sinful to grow other things, and trade them for bread, than it is to grow other things, and trade them for cotton, clothes, milk, etc.

I don't think any family by itself can be truly self-sufficient. But they can be self-reliant. By my travels, I just missed out on experiencing the Auckland blackouts of 1998, copped the Melbourne gas stoppage of 1999, and the Sydney water stoppage of 1999. So if I could have a home which had its own solar and wind power, its own biogas, and own rainwater tanks, I think that would be a fine thing.

I think the proper way to look at the power, gas and water provided by the state is the way we look at unemployment benefit and medicine - they're there for you when you're in trouble, but you shouldn't live your whole life on them. Rely first on yourself and your friends, relatives and neighbours, and only go to the state-supplied services when you're in trouble.

I think that one day we'll look at people with only grid electricity, etc, the way we now look at "dole bludgers." We'll call them "power bludgers," maybe. :D

Self-reliant, not self-sufficient.

This overly-long post brought to you by the letters J, B, and Insomnia.

[Jim Bob]

Further on wheat and farms, the Aussie/US approach is huge farms, the European one, smaller farms. An online friend talks about that in a non-permaculture context here (http://jhubert.livejournal.com/85834.html). Those who have googlemaps will find it pretty interesting, but his text is enough.

[...][To see the difference between the USA and Germany] Let's begin with the basics - agriculture.

To gain an understanding just how different things work from the United States, a direct comparison might be helpful. Let's examine rural areas with everyone's favorite toy - Google Maps. Here (http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&om=1&z=15&ll=49.593243,11.18082&spn=0.019055,0.043731&t=h) we have a typical agricultural area in the American Midwest. Here (http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&z=15&ll=40.774952,-88.841887&spn=0.022262,0.043731&t=h&om=1) we have a typical rural area in Northern Bavaria, near the place where I grew up (my home town is a few miles to the west).

Note that the two maps are on the same scale. The differences should be immediately apparent - the fields of the American Midwest are gigantic, while those in Bavaria are almost always tiny, tiny plots.

Where does this difference come from? Well, in the USA the plots were sold to settlers in large sizes, while the sizes and shapes of fields in Germany usually were formed during the Middle Ages and went through numerous generations of inheritance. For a long time it was the law that all sons should inherit equally from their fathers, leading to numerous splits in field sizes (and the fracturing of feudal domains, but that's another topic...). There has been some effort in the last century to consolidate those fields into larger unit, but still, the fields remain a patchwork.

This has its up- and downsides. For one thing, this landscape is very scenic [...]. Tourism is a major industry and business, especially in Bavaria, and much of that might be gone if the patchwork of fields would vanish - they are a large part of the scenery. Additionally, this kind of landscape has a high biodiversity - many more species (especially birds) make their home in this kind of environment than it would be the case if it was just one unbroken expanse of forest. The fields have become truly a part of nature, instead of being imposed on it.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that all those farms can't exist without large subsidies, which are a constant drain on the tax payer's money. They simply can't compete with the Midwestern giant farms - economics of scale see to that. So what is the "right approach"? Continue the subsidies to maintain this landscape? Or stop paying them and return the money to the tax payer so that they can invest it in something else?

I don't know. Though I would miss those fields if they were gone [...]
Jurgen fails to note that US farmers also receive large subsidies. US subsidies and price-supports account for 20% their income, while EU ones are 35% (source (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/13/1087065030635.html?from=storylhs)).

So the Europeans have smaller, and more sustainable farms. They use less fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, etc per area than the USA and Australia.

And they eat lots of wheat ;)

It's the good old small-scale mixed farm that works well. A polyculture!

[Richard on Maui]

The style of crop rotation you are referring to there Jim Bob is a relatively recent innovation. Middle ages...
To say that wheat has been intensively grown in Europe for millenia I think is just plain wrong...
To be honest I don't really get your distinction between self reliance and self sufficiency. If you are relying on someone else to be processing your wheat how is that self reliance?
Notice I haven't said that I think we shouldn't be designing for local, sustainable production of textiles, timber and fuel. I just think that food production is more of a fundamental priority. You won't need any of that other stuff if you haven't eaten.
By the way, trading roo meat for rice in asia is about as energy efficient as pushing a wheelbarrow with a flat tyre uphill! :lol: Besides, we need to get the people in Asia to stop paddy farming too!

[Jim Bob]

To be honest I don't really get your distinction between self reliance and self sufficiency.
"Self-sufficiency" would mean that you produce everything sufficient for yourself's needs. All food, water, power, wood, clothes, everything. Like the Swiss Family Robinson :D

"Self-reliance" means you basically take care of yourself, but trade things you can't easily make, and you rely on the community only in emergencies.

[gnoll110]

The style of crop rotation you are referring to there Jim Bob is a relatively recent innovation. Middle ages...
To say that wheat has been intensively grown in Europe for millenia I think is just plain wrong...

You may both be right. My understanding is that there was major improvement in crop rotation in the Middle Ages (1000AD to 1490s). The first major being that change from the traditional Wheat/Fellow rotation (one crop/2 years) to a Wheat/Rye/Fellow rotation (2 crops/2 years).

A lot of the stuff said here is generalization.


So the Europeans have smaller, and more sustainable farms. They use less fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, etc per area than the USA and Australia.

I thinks this statement is genarally wrong. Europeans use less fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, etc per tonne of product than the USA and Australia. Europeans use more fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide, etc per area than the USA and Australia. Remember the limiter in farming in Australia is water, in Europe it's energy (sunshine).

I know one Australian wheat farmer who does not use fertilisers or pesticide and only use herbicide infrequently. So much for that generalization.


Gnoll110

[Jez]

Needing to trade in itself is reliance on the community IMO JB.

You rely on someone being 'stronger and more patient'...and that them working harder than you or others in the community do won't place a premium trade value on their produce and a vastly lessened one upon yours.

We're not talking about a feudal system here where people are coerced to grow certain needed commodities in exchange for land tenancy...but largely individual private landowners...that changes everything compared to previous times - as does the absence of slavery/indentureship.

So if cereal crops are still a huge part of our diet, how likely is it that say one in three private landowning people will willingly work their arse off to produce grains for people who produce crops which require far less effort?

The mindset of grain being cheap is due to mechanisation and high inputs - neither of which is plausible in the near future. It may well be that people who don't produce grain can ill-afford to trade for what they would ideally require...they would be better off keeping what they would have to trade for grain.

On the other hand, if a group of people who share land plant a certain amount of grain, build a shared mill to greatly lessen the workload and then harvest in a group effort, they control the fact that it will actually be grown (as opposed to a society where nobody wants to do it and those who do charge a premium price), that it will be done properly and that there will be enough for their needs. Labour required for grain growing being shared rather than relied upon from others seems to me a more plausible and reliable situation than the alternatives.

A group pooling together without individualism factored into all inputs and outputs (and their differing multiple level costs) can share the difficult and labour intensive harvests, and also share the easier perennial pickings and annual harvests which would have less value in a world where once again human effort is the yardstick of 'value.'

One other thing I would introduce into this great discussion, is the likely reintroduction of hemp into the equation after society's 'readjustment phase.' Hemp has low water needs compared to other fibre crops, few difficulties being grown with low inputs, and has a vast wealth of other uses besides just fibre. Prohibition which makes very little sense now, will make no sense whatsoever in the future.

[Richard on Maui]

Along the lines of hemp being a useful textile plant Jez, its also worth mentioning bamboo... Generally speaking most bamboo's do need a lot more water than hemp, although some of the varieties that are supposed to be particularly good for fibre like Dendrocalmus strictus are very drought tolerant, and most importantly they can be grown in soils that can't grow food.
And they have multiple uses - you can eat it, it makes great windbreak, you can use the poles for a million and one things besides making fibre... Of course, bamboo is perennial too, whereas hemp is an annual crop, right?
I was given a shirt a little while ago that is a blend of organic cotton and bamboo and it breathes beautifully, and sort of feels like silk. I also have a couple of articles of hemp clothing that are pretty nice to wear, but wow, the bamboo is really nice. :D

[christopher]

Richard,

I didn't know that about bamboo. That is really super! Where do you get your bamboo fabric?

Also, I am in the "anti-annual" camp, in that most corn and soybeans goes to feed anmials at geaat environmental cost.

In the meantime, I feed our chooks mostly breadnit, and they lay. It takes me 10 minutes to fill a bucket in the morning, which feedsa all our chooks, our guinea pigs (who eat very little) and ourselves. I like tree crops, and the sooner more of us start eating nuts instead of grains, the better.

There was an interestingfarm in either Wisconsin or Minnesota that raised filberts, hazelnuts etc, and they ate that for much of their diet. The scale they were doing was large, and they figured out how to mechanicaly harvest the nuts... can't figure out what they were called.

C

[gnoll110]

Also, I am in the "anti-annual" camp, in that most corn and soybeans goes to feed anmials at geaat environmental cost.

I fall into the "anti-annual" camp too.

Very little soy is grown in Australia. Some maize is grown here, but wheat dwarfs it.

Wheat is used for stock feed here, but only when the grain the damaged (low protein) and not fit for milling. Milling grade wheat is to valuable to feed to stock.

What is the situation like in the US?

I think you will find the main competetion between food for human comsumption verses for stock comsumption, is in long term planning. When the farmer is deciding what to grow.

If the land is suitable for high value human comsumpton grain, then that is what will be grown! If these crops fail or are damaged, only then do they get feed to stock. Cattle love peanut hay. Gives their coat a real gloss. What should a farmer do with a failed crop.

Next is the stock feed crops, sorgum etc.

Land not suitable for cropping is used for pasture for grazing stock.

The poorest grazing land is often left in its native state or planted to trees for shelter, shade & to encourage rain.

This is a generalization, but unless there is a special situation, like the meat is a status statement like 'Wagyu', its a tick area, spear grass etc etc, the general rules of economic/ecology will apply.

After all our species are one of the great generalist/opertunist species.


Gnoll110

[Paul Cereghino]

To my understanding corn and soybean are the big stock feed in the US.

Biodynamics farmers (back to europe again..) integrate cow and grain systems elegantly. Sounds like that anti-wheat thing is primarily tropical in origin :) For temperate agriculture it seems like a reasonable plant. Winter wheat can avoid drought. ... An all nut diet has too much fat. I can't grow cassava, yam, breadfuit or the rest, (though running around half naked on a polynesian beach sure could help with the clothing issues, as well as the light deprivation induced mood swings). For laboring I want some nice clean complex carbohydrates. For famine I'd want something that stores well.

Much of the mechanization for processing grains occured pre-internal combustion engine. There is a great book called 'The Scythe Book' that has some nice history and some neat gadgets to rebuild -- automatic threshing and winnowing machines.

Can polyculture be temporal as well as spatial?

I'm guessing that the big challange with grain will be Phosphorus, which is mostly derived from rock phosphate, which as a non-renewable resource has increasing energy and geopolitical costs. Thus grain needs ranging phosphorus concentrators (read: animals) to be viable.

[Jez]

Cheers Richard, I didn't know that you could make a good textile out of bamboo.

I'm not sure what other products can be made from bamboo, but the list for hemp is enormous.

Most of the world's paper (both filtering and writing) was once made from recycled hemp ropes, clothes, rags and sails...hemp paper is much better quality than tree based paper (much longer fibre strands), can be whitened with hydrogen peroxide which is infinitely less damaging than chlorine bleaching and contains no dioxins...and the paper is perfectly usable untreated in any way.

You can make concrete which is lighter and far more durable from it...plus the first Model T Ford prototype was made from lightweight hemp fibreglass and Henry Ford was extremely disappointed that government and legal pressure at the time (beginning of serious prohibition) prevented him from making all his future cars from hemp fibreglass. There's some great old film footage of him hitting the prototype with a fully swung sledgehammer and it doesn't even leave a mark, let alone dent it. We should have been growing renewable, much better quality plastics and fibreglasses all these years using hemp cellulose. The loss to construction and manufacturing through prohibition is incalculable.

Hemp seed as a food is really high in essential minerals and protein and can be used for flour, used for oil (it is nearly all unsaturated and unlike nearly all other oils it has all the essential fatty acids in perfect balance for humans) or toasted as a crunchy snack. Hemp is also highly useful for liquid fuel, gas, methanol, machine lubrication and non-toxic paint manufacturing.

Hemp has great weed supressing ability, can be used to make charcoal, and its deep, soil conditioning roots combined with rapid, almost bullet proof growth are ideal for erosion control (incidentally, Bangladesh had virtually no trouble from flooding and erosion until the US stipulated that its vast hillsides of hemp [Bang - Hemp, La - Land, Desh - People) would need to be removed in order to get any formal trading relationship with the US...they sent in the army with flamethrowers and torched the whole country...then send a few million bucks every year in 'charity' when Bangladesh floods and becomes a giant toxic muddy river as entire unstabilised hillsides wash into the sea... :evil:). It's an ideal beneficial companion crop for a wide range of other different annuals and perennials.

One quite amusing fact is that every time 'incense' is mentioned in ancient texts (including the bible), it is actually hemp flowers. No wonder religion and hanging out at the temple was so much more popular in those days. ;-)

Then of course, there's the wide range of medicinal uses...I could go on forever really and have already left out quite a bit. There isn't a single facet of human production where hemp isn't a vital and better solution than what we currently use.

It was criminalised largely thanks to the racism and commercial interests of Hurst the US media magnate (targeting and marginalising non-white minority communites as 'evil marijuana users' through his media empire with a massive and almost entirely false propaganda bombardment), and Du Pont, who rightly saw that there was little use for his nylon patent when everything nylon could do, hemp could do much better, much cheaper - same goes for a huge chunk of the chemical industry. Apart from a minor hiccup when the US govt re-legalised hemp growing for a short period during WWII (the 'Hemp For Victory' campaign...they used flamethrowers on the crops straight after the war finished and recriminalised), the US has successfully pushed worldwide prohibition by refusing to trade or interact with countries who do not prohibit hemp growing - there has been some relatively recent minor change in this area with some countries reintroducing very small, industrial use only hemp strains for commercial production.

I agree completely that in the main, perennials are much more preferable to annuals...but hemp (which self sows beautifully) is in a category all on its own. It's the ultimate Permaculture/sustainability plant...and we are presently denied its legal use because of the lies, distortion and corruption of a handful of very evil men.

The US driven prohibition of hemp, IMO, outweighs every other crime against humanity ever committed. It's not just the denial of its use during most of the 20C and beyond...it's so much more...all the trillions of tons of chemical polluted water to replace hemp products with inferior, environmentally damaging products...the deforestation of the planet using trees for what hemp does so much better...the extra oil burned for our heavier than hemp fibreglass vehicles...the loss of so much hemp oriented knowledge...but perhaps worst of all, the denial of its contribution to scientific research during a period which may well be seen in hindsight as the last and arguably only 'golden age' of intensive technological research (afforded by our once-only fossil fuel inheritance).

On top of all that, it wouldn't be hard to make a strong case for our current major Climate change problems being directly linked back to hemp prohibition.

All the above uses of hemp pre-date the automobile...we will never know what else could have been achieved in the field of hemp oriented research if it hadn't been criminalised.

Sorry to post a long rant, but there's few things I feel more strongly about than this...and so few people know even part of the story. :(

[christopher]

Hi Jez,

All good points about hemp/marijuana/racism, etc. If marijuana and alcohol were compared, marijuana would be found to be less damaging than alcohol to the users and society. Ya ever see a stoned fist fight?

Just one note, the image you talk about is Ford knocking on a car body made from paper and soy resin (the paper may have been hemp derived, but I can't find that). Henry Ford was a big believer in soy...

http://media.ford.com/newsroom/feature_display.cfm?release=18754

Anyway, just wanted to mention the soy based composite plastic...

C

[Richard on Maui]

Jez, please, no apologies! Really interesting posts, as usual!
I hadn't heard about the hemp fibreglass cars. That is sort of tragically funny.
I think most of the applications on your list could be done with bamboo, and I bet you would get more material per area. After all, many bamboo's will grow 100 feet tall and will grow in quite poor soils...
The main point where hemp would beat bamboo I guess is in food value. You can eat bamboo shoots, but they aren't nearly as nutritious as hemp seed. Bamboo seed is pretty nutritious but most species only do it every 20 or more years.
So there's no doubt room for both!
Anyway, here's that article I mentioned before. He makes great points about forestry management as much as he does dis da hemp!
http://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/17Hemp&Trees.pdf

Christopher, I don't know where the bamboo shirt came from, actually. It was a gift from a neighbour who sells "yoga clothes". The shirt was a sample from one of his suppliers. Probably India or China I would guess...

[Spartacus]

Thanks for the compliments, I just pass on what someone else told me, I don't know anything much myself. And if you saw my garden, you'd see that's not false modesty on my part ;)

I don't think it's bad to want or have wheat and other cereals. It's not really possible to be entirely self-sufficient as a family on land. You'll always be importing something. I notice for example that no-one has mentioned clothing. Why is it alright to buy in clothes, or cloth to make them, but it's not alright to buy in some flour for bread? It's all stuff someone had to grow, after all. What about furniture? You going to cut down trees, clean up the logs, turn them into the right kind of lumber, make all your own tables, chairs, and so on? No? So why is it okay to buy in wood someone grew, but not buy in wheat someone grew?

I don't think you're going to be growing cotton, or wool, or flax for linen, or timber for furniture, etc on that 1/4 acre.

It's not really possible for a single family, whatever the size of their property, to be self-sufficient. Even if you had the land and the perfect cimate, who's going to have the time to do the horticulture, mash up the flax and make cloth from it, sew the cloth into clothing, make cheese from the milk, cut the timber, etc? Plus of course it's twenty different skills instead of just three or four.

But you can be self-reliant. If you believe in some sort of balance in your little home, you can just say to yourself, "okay, I'll import some bread and clothing and so on, as long as I'm exporting some of what I produce." You trade things with your neighbours, swap, buy and sell, whatever. This small-scale trade builds community. If nothing else, you need community so that when your kids grow up they have someone to marry and start their own self-reliant homes with. :D

Aha! This is exactly the kind of thing I have been designing in.
My plans change and evolve but so far the places to grow the fibrous plants for clothes/ paper and lumber are nearby the settlement- teh workshops and such are also close by. The majority of vegetable/ fruit/ nut based food for the family unit is grown on the family plot aswell as maybe some chickens for eggs maybe some geese or something (if/when the time is ready these can be taken to teh farm to be culled for meat. where there home is and all is at hand. (Plus neighbours can help eachother out IF desired in terms of physical labour) Next there is a farm unit on each road at the end within short walking distance which is where the aquaculture is set up (needs greater land mass) plus maybe a couple of cattle and pigs ect.

I also believe that there should be a large greenhouse area designed to grow tropical fruit.
I think that it is important NOT to import much if any food as tis screws up the natural population control. This has been shown to have an effect.

[Anastasia]

Ah, bamboo and hemp. Bamboo is SO SOFT, heaps softer than hemp. You can get cloth nappies made from bamboo and hemp, they are heaps better than the traditional cotton nappies, and good to bring up when people start saying the crud about cloth being worse for the environment because cotton is so bad for the environment (funny how people don't wear disposable clothes). I think most bamboo and hemp fabric comes from overseas at the moment but there is some Australian hemp fabric available I think.

I think bamboo might be harder to manufacture though. I did a little research into the process and realised it was beyond me!

This is a great topic I might come back when I have more time. Just had to add to the bamboo thing hehe.

[Richard on Maui]

(funny how people don't wear disposable clothes).

:lol:

You know, I really did know a bicycle courier that used to buy a new pair of socks every day. He'd wear them once and throw them away. He wasn't even that good of a courier, I don't know how he afforded it!

I bet your baby loved the bamboo nappies. We had ours in cotton and I don't think she liked them that much!
But still, even toxic cotton nappies have to have less impact than disposables? Some people are just idiots! Disposable nappies are so gross!

Yeh, I don't think I will be making any bamboo clothes in my backyard anytime soon, but I reckon it would be possible in the future on a bioregional sort of scale, you know. A factory in a town in a bamboo growing region. Once the people in the developing world are paid fair wages for the clothes they make, or it becomes too expensive to ship that stuff around the planet...
You know, bamboo in general is pretty labour intensive... but it is such awesome stuff - for me it is a labour of love!

[Jez]

Hi Jez,

All good points about hemp/marijuana/racism, etc. If marijuana and alcohol were compared, marijuana would be found to be less damaging than alcohol to the users and society. Ya ever see a stoned fist fight?


Not that I can recall without alcohol being involved Chris. I believe all 'drugs' are mostly amplifiers of personality and the feelings a person has at the moment when they take them (unless of course a person is allergic to the substance [chemicals in beer for example] which does produce uncharacteristic behaviour)...I've seen a lot of consistently happy drunks and a lot of consistently bad drunks...same for cannabis and other things.

For this reason I've always thought it was wise that substance use was much more widely limited to ceremonies and celebrations in most indigenous societies...reserved for happy and/or religious occasions.




Just one note, the image you talk about is Ford knocking on a car body made from paper and soy resin (the paper may have been hemp derived, but I can't find that). Henry Ford was a big believer in soy...


I have to wonder about that Chris, because I've read it in a lot of places...perhaps Ford is playing revisionist on this point and disowning its past?

The viability of hemp as a composite material was demonstrated over fifty years ago by Henry Ford. In 1941, after twelve years of research, his Ford Motor Co. unveiled an experimental car made of cellulosic fibres including hemp, flax, wheat straw and sisal plus 30% resin binders, molded under a hydraulic pressure of 1,500 p.s.i. (Popular Mechanics, 1941, pp1-3; Robinson, 1996, p138).

Ford's prototype car was reported to have ten times the impact resistance of steel, and weighed 1,000lbs less than a comparable steel car (Popular Mechanics, 1941, pp1-3).

Hemp Architecture - 1997 Catalyst Conference at the Univesity of Canberra (http://www.hemp.on.net/final_folder/about_us/what_weve_done/campaigns/industrial_env/hemparch.html)


The Ford motor company, after years of research produced an automobile with a plastic body. Its tough body used a mixture of 70% cellulose fibres from Hemp. The plastic withstood blows 10 times as great as steel could without denting! Its weight was also 2/3 that of a regular car, producing better economy.

Ecofibre Industries - Facts About Hemp (http://www.ecofibre.com.au/facts.html)


In 1941 Henry Ford built a hemp fueled and fabricated automobile that weighed only two/thirds the amount of a steel car and could resist blows 10 times as great without denting.

Permaculture TV News - Hemp for Houses Conference (http://www.ecoresources.com.au/ptv2/page8/files/category-7.html)

There's hundreds of other sources out there which claim the same thing...I think I first heard it on a BBC doco. I'm not saying you're wrong mate...it just doesn't gel with what so many sources I've read have stated. If you do a search for hemp on the Ford site you come up with zero references...yet the first quote above is directly taken from a best selling technical magazine from the time when Ford was doing it...so maybe now they just prefer not to acknowledge it these days?

But as you say, maybe the reference to 'paper' in the Ford link actually means 70% hemp cellulose used in the construction, as the Eco-Fibre industries link suggests?

[Jez]

Jez, please, no apologies!



Ok mate, sorry about that. :wink:

I do tend to rave on...




I think most of the applications on your list could be done with bamboo, and I bet you would get more material per area. After all, many bamboo's will grow 100 feet tall and will grow in quite poor soils...
The main point where hemp would beat bamboo I guess is in food value. You can eat bamboo shoots, but they aren't nearly as nutritious as hemp seed. Bamboo seed is pretty nutritious but most species only do it every 20 or more years.
So there's no doubt room for both!


Yep, no doubt.

I don't know as much as I'd like to about bamboo, but I have to wonder whether you would actually get more material per area. A good fibre hemp strain in a sub-tropical or tropical area with average soil can produce at least three if not closer to four 12-14' crops a year...can any of the bamboo strains put on nearly half their hundred foot growth in just a year? I realise height is just one factor as opposed to density...but still.

Another factor to consider would be ease of processing...from what I know, the few blokes around here who grow bamboo have a really hard time finding anywhere near the amount of labour they need at harvest times for the various uses.

One other point I would add on the annual vs perennial debate, is that while perennials hold many advantages, in a natural disaster scenario it is fast growing annuals which do the majority of the help towards rebuilding. If a person's house and most/all their perennials were smashed in a cyclone, leveled and twisted in an earthquake, burnt up in a bushfire or carried away in a flood...it would be annuals doing the feeding, clothing and rebuilding infrastructure until the perennials recover - some of which would take decades if an area was badly affected.




Anyway, here's that article I mentioned before. He makes great points about forestry management as much as he does dis da hemp!
http://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/17Hemp&Trees.pdf


Thanks mate, it's an interesting article with some good points (as we expect from David).

I think it's worth noting that he's arguing largely against broadscale hemp farming for fibre, not aguing against hemp integrated into sensibly planned and balanced systems. I found that a little disappointing because I think it was an opportunity to encourage 'hemp advocating Environmentalists' to think in a more Permaculture fashion (by writing of applying Permaculture principles to hemp as well as a managed Permaculture forest system), rather than with a broadscale 'green solution' mindset.

It seems to me that hemp is a perfect fit as a Zone III crop with less inputs and more benefit than all other Zone III crops, and for intercropping in Zone IV (my Forestry work in Tassie confirms that unlike most useful crops, hemp grows mighty well in the thick of an established dry sclerophyl eucalypt or acacia forest. :lol:).

David argues that because paper has such a short life, it would be unwise to grow annual crops to produce it. I would argue that hemp paper is vastly superior in terms of lifespan (the only reason we have many ancient documents still is that they were printed on hemp paper - contrasted to a cheap wood based paperback novel) and easy recycling potential. As I mentioned earlier, hemp paper was largely made from ropes, sails, clothes etc which had already had a long useful life elsewhere. We can't say the same for timber based paper - not to mention all the chemicals etc which go into producing wood based paper...with dead river systems as the end result (there are a number of them in Tassie).

He also argues that useable euc's, pines and wattles can be grown on poor, infertile and difficult to access land. I would add - poorly and at significantly greater cost. They don't grow anywhere near as well in poor soil (and I've seen that many times in many places with my own eyes) and difficult access means more expensive and difficult harvesting (hello cable logging!) and management (thinning, weed control etc), plus much greater all round land disturbance at harvest time. All of which pretty much makes agroforestry on poor soil with difficult access add up to the same equation as those conditions do for hemp - not a completely different one.

On the issue of thinning providing employment mentioned...thinning on a scale beyond small owner managed plots is a very expensive business. In the late 80's in Tassie, a four man contract paid around $180K with vehicles and some equipment supplied...and a fair chunk of that cash and manhours was eaten up in travelling long distances in petro-fueled vehicles. I'm sure the cost would be closer to $300K if not more these days...that means you've got to exploit a lot of timber to break even (which Forestry Tas never has I might add, at the expense of the taxpayer). If you have mass agroforestry on relatively poor soil in areas not conducive to growing anything but trees, then getting people (and timber) in an out is a major negative IMO...it's not sustainable at all.

We could argue that smaller, more accessible agroforestry grown on smaller diverse plots is much more preferable...but I think the same applies to hemp. Neither should be broadscale farmed nor grown as monocultures.

I'm sure a hemp/poultry edible legume intercropping rotated with free range poultry and similar concepts would be of great value to a Permaculture system.

[christopher]

Jez,

Well, my experience with ganja is that %99.99999 of the people who smoke it are melloooooow, and while I know there are happy drunks, most of the people I see drinking are Maya, and all native peoples in the Americas, from Alaska to Tierrra Del Fueago have problems with alcohol. We have house burnings, chopping (with machetes), shootings, brothers fighting brothers, etc, et, etc because of alcohol, and, further marijuana is not pharmacologically toxic: you smoke too much, you go to sleep, no worries of dieing. Alcohol can kill you (in extreme cases, etc). I would much prefer to have pothead neighbors!

Ford foresaw a time when ethanol would be an important source of fuel for cars, but he was also a soy bean fanatic. My friend from St. Lucia is also a soybean fanatic, and he has reams of information about Henry Fords soy car.

I don't thing Ford is doing revisionist history. For one thing they are experimenting with hemp right now and talk about it: http://www.fordcomsearch.ford.com/cs.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eford%2Ecom%2FNR%2Fr donlyres%2Fe3uravciyuif5mzw77ykio2ymiirjp3a2n3f5kj pzvyvq5zanjbq64tz62embgyhy2qbluxiq24thhcak43dob4q4 2e%2F05%5Fenviron%2Epdf&qt=&col=ford&col=fordveh&col=volvo&col=mazda&col=lincoln&col=mercury&col=jaguar&col=aston&col=rover&col=qc&col=credit&col=rental&col=race&col=mccol1I think some of the "ganja-will-save-the-world-man" crowd have inflated the amount of hemp he did use, overstated its imprtance as a single component, and wish to see hemp as the universal answer. I think, in reflex, that I understated its importance.

He did use hemp in prototype cars, but they were %70 FIBER, not %70 hemp, with hemp fibers mixed along with sisal and wheat. The resin used was soy based, and I got that info from an excellent National Geographic article on the soybean as well as one of my soy-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems friends....

Ford was very interested in ethanol from hemp, too.

Anyway, while I see a place for hemp in the world, despite what some claims say, hemp is a very heavy feeder, and it is not the panaceae that some feel it is (IMO).

Single species solutions are problems! All of my hemp-is-the-answer friends smoke entirely too much of it to think straight about the cost to the soil of a hemp monoculture, which is the model that will take off if hemp gets the universal acceptance people want it to... The cost of a hemp monoculture will be high, just as the cost of a soy monoculture is high (or corn, wheat, insert plant of choice here..)

Just my thoughts. Sorry, but I get fidgety when hemp is promoted as the answer, because, unless it is part of a diversified system, it is not... (again, IMO)

C

[Richard on Maui]

...can any of the bamboo strains put on nearly half their hundred foot growth in just a year? I realise height is just one factor as opposed to density...but still.


Jez, here is where I get to blow your mind!

Each bamboo shoot reaches its ultimate height in, wait for it, at most, about 3 or 4 months! Most clumps in most locations will shoot every year, sometimes more than once a year.

After reaching its full height the pole gradually puts out branches and leaves over the next year or two, and is basically absorbing energy from the rest of the plant and is still quite tender, full of sugars and starch. Some time around the 3-4 year mark it becomes more woody than watery and begins to return energy back into the newer generations of culms (poles).

So, in an established clump of bamboo, each year you will get new shoots, and each year there will be mature poles ready for harvest. The ideal age to harvest poles depends on your usage - if you want "timber" that may be different from if you want pulp.

Clump management regimes will probably be diffferent for different applications. A clump managed for shoots looks a lot different than a clump managed for timber for instance, although a timber clump will yield a few shoots for eating as a side product of maintenance...

So, take the largest clumping bamboo in the world, Dendrocalamus brandisii. In ideal conditions it can grow to 120 feet tall, and has an maximum culm diameter of 8 inches. Say, you manage your clump to have 10 new poles each year... that's a lot of material! :D

[Jez]

Jez,

Well, my experience with ganja is that %99.99999 of the people who smoke it are melloooooow, and while I know there are happy drunks, most of the people I see drinking are Maya, and all native peoples in the Americas, from Alaska to Tierrra Del Fueago have problems with alcohol. We have house burnings, chopping (with machetes), shootings, brothers fighting brothers, etc, et, etc because of alcohol, and, further marijuana is not pharmacologically toxic: you smoke too much, you go to sleep, no worries of dieing. Alcohol can kill you (in extreme cases, etc). I would much prefer to have pothead neighbors!


Point well taken Chris...I'd have to agree that European descended people's tolerance to alcohol is different to indigenous people in my experience also.





I don't thing Ford is doing revisionist history. For one thing they are experimenting with hemp right now and talk about it: http://www.fordcomsearch.ford.com/cs.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eford%2Ecom%2FNR%2Fr donlyres%2Fe3uravciyuif5mzw77ykio2ymiirjp3a2n3f5kj pzvyvq5zanjbq64tz62embgyhy2qbluxiq24thhcak43dob4q4 2e%2F05%5Fenviron%2Epdf&qt=&col=ford&col=fordveh&col=volvo&col=mazda&col=lincoln&col=mercury&col=jaguar&col=aston&col=rover&col=qc&col=credit&col=rental&col=race&col=mccol1I think some of the "ganja-will-save-the-world-man" crowd have inflated the amount of hemp he did use, overstated its imprtance as a single component, and wish to see hemp as the universal answer.

He did use hemp in prototype cars, but they were %70 FIBER, not %70 hemp, with hemp fibers mixed along with sisal and wheat. The resin used was soy based, and I got that info from an excellent National Geographic article on the soybean as well as one of my soy-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems friends....


Quite possibly as to the inflation of importance Chris, but at the same time, is it possible your 'soy-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems' friend *may* be doing the same as the 'hemp-is-the-answer-to-all-the-worlds-problems' people? I could understand 'hemp advocates' being a bit fast and loose with the truth...but Popular Mechanics, the BBC (Billion Dollar Crop) and other sources who have nothing to gain?

It's a shame Ford doesn't give a specific list of materials and amounts Henry used. For all we know, that 70% could be 68% hemp and 1% each of sisal and wheat. Or hemp could be a tiny addition in comparison to the sisal and wheat.

I searched their site and couldn't find any reference to 'hemp' - did you use an additional or different search term?





Single species solutions are problems! All of my hemp-is-the-answer friends smoke entirely too much of it to think straight about the cost to the soil of a hemp monoculture, which is the model that will take off if hemp gets the universal acceptance people want it to... The cost of a hemp monoculture will be high, just as the cost of a soy monoculture is high (or corn, wheat, insert plant of choice here..)

Just my thoughts. Sorry, but I get fidgety when hemp is promoted as the answer, because, unless it is part of a diversified system, it is not... (again, IMO)


I couldn't agree more Chris...I don't think it's the answer to all problems...just a better solution - properly managed with no bad practice inherent to monoculture broadscale farming - to many of the polluting and far less sustainable alternatives we've replaced it with.

We're on exactly the same wavelength I think - diversity and good management is the key to its reintroduction being of most value.

-------------------------

Wow Richard, that did blow my mind! :lol:

I had this link (http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/good_wood/bamboo.htm) and some others for basic info, plus this one (http://www.bambooworld.com.au/pages/priceEx.php) for making some purchases in the near future...but neither of them mentioned they reach their full height so soon!

Even if they're not useable for a few years, what you've told me is still such valuable information, as I'll be using them partly as wind/sun breaks during initial establishment along our prevailing wind boundary (which also happens to be the primary ground runoff point - though the slope is very gentle).

I had picked out Dendrocalamus latiflorus, Gigantochloa albociliata and Gigantochloa atter as the likely species for use in my design for the new place, but I may have a crack at either Dendrocalamus brandisii or Dendrocalamus giganteus...I had a lot more work to do in determining which would suit the conditions best before final ordering.

It's way beyond my area of anything resembling expertise...which has made the research a lot of fun! :lol:

Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated as always.

[christopher]

Jez,

Have you had a look at any of the guaduas? Guadua anugustifolia is widely used in Columbia as a building timber. Houses there have survived earthquakes that leveled concrete and rebar. Its sad, too, because they new standard is the concrete and rebar, thats what everyone wants...

We have some here, but it hasn't grown well....

C

[christopher]

BTW, Jez, my soybean friend has a big time bias, too, absolutely, which I was trying to point out! My reactionary-ism with the whole ganja-will-solve-all-the-worlds-problems-man,-lets-roll-another-spliff paradigm has more to do with my objection to the simple minded hemp as the universal solution... just me sick of stoned fuzzy thinking in favour of monoculture, and no reflection on you. I feel the same way about soy zealots, all of my tofu-will-solve-all-the-worlds-hunger-problems-man friends have an interesting lack of perspective created by their love of soy, and they refuse to see that soy is not the universal cure all for the world.

I think everyone has a tendency to see things through lenses tinted by their experience and interests. My experiences made me be a knee jerk reactionary... apologies!

Of course, we all know that cacao is the worlds answer to everything. It will solve all ills, from global warming and habitat loss to poor nutrition and constipation....






























:lol:

[Richard on Maui]

Just to clarify about the bamboo, each individiual culm will reach its individual ultimate height in its first year, but if you are taking a little propagule of a plant in a 2 gallon pot and putting it in the ground, it might take 5 years before it starts putting on shoots that are full size. Don't want to give you false expectations. Having said that, give a young bamboo lots of fertiliser and water and the right soil conditions, and they will establish pretty fast.

You are looking at some nice species there, Jez. I think generally speaking, the Gigantachloa's "look better" in more situations... They are probably easier to manage too, they are perhaps not quite as hairy as the Dendro's or some of the Bambusa's (the hairs don't bother me, some people are irritated by them). Brandisii is quite a handful. Even after maturity it will persistently put out low side branches which you have take off just in order to get the poles out of the clump... I haven't actually worked on fully mature brandisii yet, but from what I have seen...
Brandisii and Latiflorus both have fairly large leaves, so they may not be ideal choices for really arid and/or windy locations. They are canopy rainforest plants really. Although they will grow in exposed locations, they will just have a bit of a hard time... Unless I am imagining your new place incorrectly, you might be better going with some of the smaller leafed species.

You are moving to the gulf area somewhere right? So you'll be having a long dry and a big wet? That may well suit a lot of bamboo's, since the most important time for them to get lots of water is in their shooting season, but it might be worth researching that aspect too - which ones are the most drought tolerant too. I know that Dendrocalamus strictus (while not the most attractive plant in my opinion, is very widely used in places like northern India because of its ability to cope with drought.)
Different species have widely different characteristics of course. Some have very thick walls to the point of being almost solid (makes good timber usually) whereas others are very thin walled and have long internodes (better for splitting and weaving), some have very tasty edible shoots (one species from Papua New Guinea, Nastus Elatus can even be eaten raw, while some others are poisonous or too bitter to be eaten), others have the right fibre properties to be good for the textile/fibre applications that brought bamboo into this thread! - I think that having a variety of different species well suited to the local environment that together possess a range of the characteristics that are most likely to be useful to you is the way to go.
One point about bamboo worth remembering is that some species flower gregariously, so when they flower, all plants of that species everywhere in the world will go to flower (and hopefully produce seed). Often the existing plants will all completely die off. So, it probably isn't prudent to have all your eggs in one species of bamboo basket, if you are counting on an uninterrupted supply of bamboo! (this is relatively rare, most species that do this do it once in a human lifetime sort of thing)

Some other good bamboo sites that I refer to sometimes:

http://bamboonursery.com
http://www.bamboo.org.au
http://www.inbar.int

Christopher, sorry to hear that your Guadua isn't doing so well. You only got it last year right? They take a while sometimes to really get going. Microclimate can obviously make a huge difference too. I have seen plants here in Huelo of similar ages looking almost like different species. Up on a ridge as a windbreak they are kind of olive green, with 2" poles, whereas down in the fertile gulch bottoms surrounded by trees they are deep, dark green with 4 or 5" poles and that amazing natural spacing that Guadua can get.
Even here at our place, with plants I put in under two years ago I am seeing the difference a little microclimate can make. I have a few clumps planted in the lee of a couple of Java Plums and an Acacia formosa, with some Scheflera here and there, and those plants, though I have hardly given them any attention at all are twice the size of the ones that I religiously weed and mulch and fret over but which are more exposed (where I need them to get up and be windbreakers!).

[Jez]

Chris, I assume you misspelt with Guadua anugustifolia above - the links I have list it as Guadua angustifolia, but a google search brings up some hits for Guadua augustifolia...any idea which is actually correct? I ask more for anyone following this discussion than for myself...I already had a resource to back check with...someone C&Ping and googling it might think there was no info available.

I think I just did my head in writing the above paragraph complete with manually adding the formatting! :lol:

Thanks for the tip, I will put it on the evaluation list. The thing which put me off it a bit was that the culms are bare for the first 3-5 metres...which made me question its ability to be an effective screen and windbreak in the lower part - two of my biggest priorities. We already have an all steel structure for a house (basically a large extended shed made really comfortable) on the property, so construction quality culms are not a huge priority - though I'm sure I'll find a use for them! 8)

No need to apologise or feel in any way bad for your comments regarding monocultures and 'solve all' plants...as I said, I couldn't agree more and I'm sure we're on the same wavelength regarding diversity in plantings being the right way to go. I guess it's hard to do a PDC and not come away with that overriding outlook huh? :D


Richard, thanks for that clarification re. height.

Yes, our new location and the place I intend to devote to bamboo will be both exposed to fairly strong winds and quite arid for a good portion of the year, with a fair amount of heavy rain over the wet season. The soil tends towards sandy loam, so that will be a factor as well.

I hope to use it along the south eastern boundary, to protect the budding Zone II and III areas from prevailing winds (though I'll also be interplanting leguminous nurse species), with the orchard swales partially diverting any excess runoff to the bamboo in wet season. There's also a triple bay roofed carport/workshop which I'll be collecting water off and converting into an Aquaponics area...so hopefully this collection point can serve for both topping up the Aquaponics system and provide some water storage to help the bamboo along in the drier times. Ideally I'd also find one sort of bamboo which could serve as part of the aerial irrigation process of the Aquaponics - being replaced when needed.

Another big factor is man-eating termites...:D...though I'm led to believe by my preliminary research that properly tended clumps should be quite resistant.

I'm sure I can find the right blend of species to suit...I guess I've just been doing some preliminary research thus far so I can get cracking soon after the move (hopefully before the end of wet season!).

Thanks for the references and advice - much appreciated.

[christopher]

Jez,

Guadua angyiiulfolia! Thats the name!

My botanist wife, who pays closer attentioin to this sort of thing assures me it is augustifolia, which iw ahat I was trying to type, but... my typing is so bad...

C

[Richard on Maui]

au·gust
adj.
1. Inspiring awe or admiration; majestic

a descriptor for that particular bamboo, it works for me! :D

[ho-hum]

chris,

You may have fun with this site http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/

Richard & jez,

This site has some interesting info on bamboo. http://bamboocentral.org/

and I wish to put in a free plug for oldhamii as being a useful sorta bamboo variety.

floot

[Richard on Maui]

Yeah that's a cool site, Mike? I love the animated instructions for the different jointing techniques. I would like to set up a treatment facility along those lines on this place eventually if things pan out in that direction.

[christopher]

Thanks for that Mike! See why I think soy is NOT the answer?

Also, those bamboo houses are great!

[ho-hum]

I often find that converts to anything can be a pain and generally their solution is the only one they have bothered to study. Whether their solutions are wheatgrass, Jesus or even bio-diesel sadly, once convinced, they rarely research beyond their particular solution.

Wheatgrass, carrot juice, appleseeds and even soy are all fine in moderation. Same thing, I suppose with religion although most of God's Fan Clubs are pissing me off at present and bio-diesel will be a great solution as long as we are not clearing rainforest to mono-crop oil palms.

floot

[christopher]

Agreed, agreed and agreed! Good points, all/

[Jez]

Yeah Chris, I assumed Augustifolia, having seen it with a number of other botanical names (that's what I googled), but that bamboo price list I linked to has it as angustifolia...maybe a typo huh?

Cheers Floot, another great bamboo site...and a chuckle to finish with. :D

[Richard on Maui]

Actually Jez, you do see the two spellings. Not sure on the latin meaning, but pretty sure that when they are applied to the Guadua they are talking about the same plant.

[rickyb]

In answer to the original question "How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?", I believe this experiment has already been done. Throughout the middle ages, and prior to the industrial revolution, the population of the British Isles was limited to around 5 million people. With a land area of around 60 million acres, this equates to roughly 12 acres of land for every human being. This would be just enough to keep each human warm, dry, clothed and fed in a British climate.

[hedwig]

The climate in GB is different, so I think in Australia it would be less.

All the discussion of self sufficiency - I think it would be yet great if many (not all) of the people would grow something (perhaps 30%) of their fruit and veggies, all these unused gardens + lawns. If you go a bit out f Brisbane there are quite a lot of people ownig huge lots with only lawns and a horse on it. Everyone of us should try to chaneg this in giving away seedlings, giving plants as presents..

With the amount you can have from one sqm I would be less optimistic. Fisrt all garden writers are lots more experienced than the average gardener. They perhaps live in areas with good soil and their garden is normally huge ( so they can choose the ideal spot for their veggie patch). They are perhaps retired or the children are grewn up and they spent much time in the garden.
I am pretty shure that I have much less from a sqm.

[digging]

This question is one of the most important questions we can ask, I have noticed we really do not yet know the answer either. However the Ecology Action group at www.growbiointensive.org has worked out just to get our basic food needs and to maintain soil health needs about 4000sq ft per person. I personal am very interested to see what our clothing needs, energy needs, meds, soap etc would also required.

Digging

[Grahame]

I personal am very interested to see what our clothing needs, energy needs, meds, soap etc would also required.

My personal view is that you would require a diverse and robust community regardless of how much land is required. I don't even know if it is possible for one person to do it alone.

[adrians]

for everyone else not stuck in feet, that's 400 square metres or a 20 x 20m plot.
Our current vegie garden is about half that.. we haven't bought vegies for over a month, but have bought meat, cerials, and fruit etc, and we've only been in our current place for 12 months, so haven't had much startup time. That said, we expect to have to buy vegies if we don't hurry up and replace our winter vegies with summer ones

[pebble]

I think these are important questions too. And I agree with Grahame - I don't think the goal is produce everything ourselves. I can't think of an example historically where humans have met all their needs from a piece of land with defined boundaries. It just doesn't make sense.

[digging]

I agree that we need each other working together as a group, in fact here in the north of canada there were native groups living in villages and the stable longer term ones always had about 200 person per villiage. It is now believed that is about the minimue size for a settlement needed for the group to cover all the need for the people. Before the white man came here each person of the tribe was taught all the basic life skills, hunting, fishing, trapping, tool making, tanning, foraging, herbal food usage etc. Even though they all worked together doing the various work they all understood what needed to be done and how to do it. We are so very far removed from that way of living now in just 100 years.

As for the comment about humans getting all their needs met in the past not defined by certain boundaries....the natives of north america did not have horses before Spain came here. So I would say they very much learned how to get thier daily needed met by the nature boundary of how far they could walk back and forth in one day. It's a boundary just a different type.

Now we know that they did migrate around and often had summer camps and winter camp for fishing etc, and the men would always go out on long walking trips for hunting, or they followed game. I think it's important for us to really start thinking about this because the systems we are totally dependant on are so unstable now, we have this time to learn anew about our needs



Digging

[sun burn]

I still haven't read the whole thread but its one i want to subscribe to. I like the earlier posts i've read so far. There are some sensible people writing.

[pebble]

200 people per village, that's interesting. I would guess that would vary a bit depending on climate, resources etc.

I think there is a difference between a shifting boundary and a static one though. People without horses still vary the boundary they live within all the time. And the boundary changes from season to season, year to year. The modern idea of fences as property boundary is quite weird, although useful at times too.

[digging]

Yes you are very right they varied thier boundaries! It would seem the less agriculture they did the more the seasonally moving, because they were heavy meat eaters and used animals for so many things, clothing tools etc. It was a way of keeping thier foot print lighter. Yes the 200 number is interesting they have the same thing in other parts of the world that seem to be the minimum taking into consideration young and old people and all the basic skills and jobs that needed to be done. It seems to me as people alive now we have the opportunity to learn form all these past systems and try to create a hybrid way of living and just see if we can give back more than we take while we get all our basic needs met.

Digging