[Community_garden] How much of a person's food from one garden plot?

[Moonshae]

Sharon,

Here is my shot at this.  The estimated yield of an "organic" (I  
prefer the term "ecologically sustainable") plot would be around 4.6  
kg/m2 in a 4-6 month growing season over the summer (North America).   
Depending on the methods used like vertical planting (to maximize  
growing surface area), trellises, constant harvesting (for tomatoes)  
etc, that yield could be higher (in Cuba, the potential yield was  
estimated to be 20 kg/m2 [Altieri 1999]).  One would also have to  
consider weather, soil and other conditions of course.  So a 6x8 m  
plot has 48 m2 of area that could produce up to 220 kg of fresh  
vegetables.

Five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables is roughly 98 kg (Lam  
2007), FAO recommends something like 109.5 kg per year of fresh  
fruits and vegetables in general.  The average backyard plot size  
appears to be 9 m2 or 10 x 10 ft (Bellows et al. 2005, Lam 2007).

Reference
Altieri MA, Companioni N, Canizares K, Murphy C, Rosset P, Bourque M  
& Nicholls CI. 1999. The greening of the “barrios”: urban agriculture  
for food security in Cuba. Agriculture and Human Values 16 (2): 131-140.

Bellows AC, Brown K and J Smit.  2006.  Health Benefits of Urban  
Agriculture.  12 Mar.  Community Food Security Coalition.  14 Mar  
2006 <http://www.foodsecurity.org/UAHealthArticle.pdf>

Lam S.  2007. Urban Agriculture in Kingston:  Present and Future  
Potential for Re-localization and
Sustainability.  MES Thesis to fulfill the requirements for the  
Masters of Environmental Studies Degree.  School of Environmental  
Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
(almost finished; a summary is available)


Fair winds and light laughter,
Sunny Lam

BSCH Environmental Studies (Biology)
Masters of Environmental Studies
Urban agriculture, food systems
Phone:  +1 416 699 0347
Email:  sunny.lam at gmail.com

Original Message:
    1. How much of a person's food from one garden plot? (Sharon Gordon)

From: "Sharon Gordon" <gordonse at one.net>
Date: August 20, 2007 11:17:43 AM EDT (CA)
To: "Community GardenNational"  
<community_garden at list.communitygarden.org>
Subject: [Community_garden] How much of a person's food from one  
garden plot?


There are discussions underway on several different gardening, self
sufficiency, and economic localization lists to figure out the amount of
land needed to grow all of your own food.  So I thought I'd check in  
and see
what people in different gardening areas are figuring out.  How long the
growing season is and what the gardener likes to eat will have an  
impact on
the amount of land needed.

Anyone have some estimates or some ideas from some experimental beds?

(We've got the estimates from the Duhon PNW-oriented plans in the  
book One
Circle, the Mexican and Kenyan plans from the Bountiful Garden  
booklets, and
the summary from Albie Miles experiment.)

Does anyone have ideas about providing all of one person's food on a
standard size UK allotment plot?  This would be a 30 foot by 91 foot  
plot.

In the US or Canada or European areas with smaller plots, how much of  
one
person's food could you grow on a 20 by 25 foot (~6x8 meter) community
garden plot?

Sharon
gordonse at one.net