been thinking about this for a while. the answer, Beans and peas. ol' Thomas Jefferson thought they were quite important. can be grown in most any of the USA growing zones and one can get several crops a year in most.

http://www.great-workout.com/nutrition/vegetables/bean-nutrition-facts.cfm

Well, in the tropics, sweet potatoes and taro seem to work. My wife and I have sold off our small big isle lots, and one of them went to a fellow who is doing a good job demonstrating sustainable growing of staple foods. http://sanityandsimplicity.blogspot.com Just accepted an offer on our last one yesterday; under 24k for 3 accessible acres near the highway. Amazing to me that any US citizen can go there and so few do.

Here on Oahu, at a lower altitude, we've planted breadfruit. It's mostly symbolic since NONE of the neighbors grows anything edible, but those trees can be incredibly prolific starch factories. When mature and over 80 feet tall, I think one tree could probably support a family of three 'year-round. I can think of a lot worse idea than giving a tax break for planting Ulu trees in the middle of all the manicured suburban lawns here.

And as far as staples go, we have pickable avocados 10 months of the year with more trees coming into fruit each year... and a constant stream of coconuts, which I hear are edible though few here eat them.

I like trees because you can plant them when young and eat from them when old, which appeals to me more and more.

Actually, growing wheat is incredibly easy. You are right that most people don't have the space for it though. At reasonable yields, you should be able to grow a minimum of 200 lbs of wheat on 1/2 acre. this will be as much as you will be able to use if you are employing small scale processing equipment. Threshing by hand is time consuming & dirty work, but grinding flour with a hand mill attached to an exercise bike is a nice thing to do while you catch up on your reading. None of the basic techniques for producing food are difficult, we have just gotten hobbies that we like better. Remember that the difference between drudgery and fun is in your mind. For details, see if you can find a copy of Gene Logsdon's "Small scale Grain Raising" Rodale Press around 1977.

Many of the old timers and their families in my area have small plots for potatos, peas and other crops such as tomatoes which they rotate every year. They use little or no fertilizer. They can grow enough potatoes and peas/beans for the family, for a whole year. They dry the peas, can the tomatoes and beans, and store the potatoes in a root cellar or basement. They grow enough varieties to have fresh food throughout the growing season and enough to store for winter. These plots are quite small and apart from their main gardens. They let the chickens forage in the plots during the winter to help turn the soil and provide fertilizer. Most never use mechanical means to till once the plot is established. Suburbanites could do this in a small yard with a little knowlege. Potatoes can also be grown in containers:

http://www.country-couples.co.uk/blog/grow-your-own-potatoes-in-containers/

Hi Gail,

Good post. First, the paleo-diet people suggest that we shouldn't be eating any grain. But I can't go with that so I've been thinking of growing some of my own grain. Sweet potatoes are easy enough and so is corn. There are books (Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers by Gene Logsdon) on growing grain.

I have my own Diamont grain mill and already buy grain in 50 lb sacks to make my own flour and bread. In a total self-sufficiency state, I would grow my own using primitive methods.

Having taken on beekeeping, dairy goats, gardening, chickens and cattle over the last 10 years, with no prior experience, I will say that the concept of doing any of these things is much more challenging than the experience of actually doing it. I've been looking into donkeys & mules and even into using them to help with farm work. My husband won't go along with this so I've left it alone. But my other experience tells me that I would, in the right circumstances, be able to train and use a donkey or mule for help. It would be nice to have an Amish neighbor show me how, but I think necessity could get the job done.

If I had no distractions of the modern age (internet, iPhone, TV, etc.) and my food for the next few months depended on me planting and harvesting food, I have confidence I could do it. Hopefully, the only real PTB such as the rain and sun would help me along.

Gail

There is another option , Steam. In my area we have enthusiasts who have traction engines.

A modern steam tractore could burn wood, plant residues such as straw, and be used for ploughing, harvesting and threshing as well as hauledge, and electricity generation.

I suspect the farm of the future will use a combination of technologies. Local biodiesl or alchohol for instance. Internal or stirling engines.

On another note, for the small scale grain harvest we need a small scale, preferably human powered or electric or equivalent threshing machine. It is easy to grow grain, but the threshing and cleaning the chaff out is a problem. Beating the grain then winnowing using the wind takes a fair bit of time.

The real issue is how people will obtain enough food to survive or thrive. Pre-industrial history suggests in most temperate climates, one acre (more or less) was the rule of thumb for subsistence. With this a small family could work the land for basic food requirements (e.g., fresh greens, dryable or fermentable plants/vegetables, root crops, some grain, fruit for cider), even perhaps a goat for milk and a hive for honey. Any surpluses could be sold/traded for needed tools, fabrics, esthetic items (books, etc.). If you have the land for a draft animal, you can grow enough fodder to feed him year-round and farm an extra 2 or 3 acres. Even at an acre per family we have a surplus of families. Larger, machine-tended farms (one family for many acres) leave an even larger surplus of families and landless farmers.

We've been able to boost productivity and connect markets to consumers because we have invested huge inputs of energy, mostly from non-replaceable fossile fuels, into fertilizers and fuel. The existing infrastructure (highways and and property ownership) suggest that we will see elements of options 1 and 2, even if fuel prices rise and/or agricultural labor costs make food more expensive. Which means that more individuals will need to practice elements of option 4 and participate in a market for grains. Which puts the demand for arable "subsistence" land at such a high price that we will be up against that surplus of families. It will be worst probably in the countries that have benefitted most from the "green revolution," but is likely to touch us all.

Grains in general are a recent addition to the human diet, historically speaking. We don't even digest them all that well as our bodies have not evolved for them yet. Convenient? Yes. Necessary? No. On the other hand, our bodies did evolve eating nuts. Some peoples allergies aside, (I happen to have an intolerance to wheat), many nuts have nutritional values very similar to the grain crops, and they keep extremely well. If you've never tried an Acorn Meal cookie, then you are really missing something. Given that nuts grow on trees, they can be grown almost anywhere if you pick species for your climate. Even in suburban back yards with dwarf varieties. Nuts are harvestable by hand, mature trees can have high yields and have the minimal maintenance of a perennial. Perhaps we should take nuts more seriously.

Option 2c (Farms with draft animals) might work, but it would require a lot of planning. Someone would need to raise and train draft animals. Farmers would need to buy up large tracts of land that they could farm with animal powered equipment.

I think that if things get to this point there will be the need for sharing and cooperation rather than the concept of large scale private ownership. When things are such that folks are farming with animals vs. powered equipment, a lot of people will starve unless they embrace some form of communal farming (at least in the early years). Those who are totally invested in the suburban lifestyle and have made no preparations will be in deep trouble.

Yes, I would agree with other responders here: beans and peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, leeks, rutabagas, turnips, corn, can all be grown without too much trouble in small plots, and many store well also without too much trouble.

Grains: yes, they can be grown on a small scale, but this is where it may be to people's advantage to cooperate to devote larger areas locally to their production. But ... I'm not sure how, if you worked out the cost accounting ,it would work out to do it on a large scale, with relatively few fossil-fuel inputs, say, or without some of the technology currently used for grain production. The common wisdom nowadays says that growing grains on a large scale is more efficient than doing it in small plots, but that depends on how the cost accounting is done, doesn't it?

This reminds me of my disappointment 35 years ago when I thought I would grow sesame seeds. It was a small - though not tiny - planting, but it gave me less than a quart of seeds. The low yield was partly a result of not harvesting them at exactly the right time, so that I lost many to scattering on the ground as I tried to capture the overly-dry, opened seed pods. Although more attention to detail would have probably resulted in saving more, I didn't try it again. You had to be too fussy, I decided.

I tried to post but do not see it hope I'm not posting again. Anyway, I am gluten intolerant and my oldest daughter is corn allergic. We were are looking to grow alternatives. Here is a link to garden scale rice growing.

http://www.9starki.com/realrice.html

Hi all first time post here,

Options 3 and 4 stand out, with under an acre being sufficient size if worked intensively, mind you I'm a beginner.

For those with little experience or bravery, potatoes are an easy option. A one year supply can easily be grown organically with minimal petroleum use: less than a gallon, on 1/16th of an acre or less. If you're interested, a primer on the subject- http://www.sufficientself.com/potatoes-for-dummies

Apple trees can produce a heck of a lot of food in a very small space. Let me share this years experience for me: I'm in Minnesota. I have several trees, 15 years old, 15-20 foot diameter and 15-20 feet tall. So, for one tree (400 square feet) I got 17 5-gallon buckets of apples. Of this, I used 13 buckets to make 102 quarts of sauce.

I saved many more buckets in my (unheated, insulated, 40 degree) garage and am still eating juicy, crisp apples from those buckets. It really makes a huge difference which variety you save: my State Fair apples were mush by October, the Haralsons lasted till Christmas and the McIntoshes are still good now.

I have not sprayed the trees, but the insects are not too much of a problem because I scrupulously pick up and dispose of fallen apples, and put out bottles of stale beer as a trap during the growing season. Then there's pruning once a year and a bucket of chicken manure in the spring whether they need it or not. Easiest food to grow I've tried, and so easy to grow way more than you can eat or even give away.

My son left me a note saying "apples = 65 million kcal/acre". Don't know how accurate this is.

Option 1, with biodiesel. 10% of the land is enough to grow enough oilseeds to run the machinery. It would take twice as much land to feed the draft animals. There are a lot of 60 year old Farmall H and M tractors still around, so they don't wear out all that fast. (The gas powered older tractors were and are popular in the upper midwest because you can actually start them in winter.)

This does bring up a wheat question, did the breeders ever come up with wheat that would grow well in the damper climates? Dad said (many years ago) that wheat planted in central Wisconsin would fail every time due to some blight or another.

Potatoes in temperate climate are huge calorie producers in a small space. The only crop I know that has a higher yield is bananas or plantains, but those are more tropical.
Taro is a large producer, and as mentioned, breadfruit (which I have some experience with-it makes great chips!)

On my suburban block in Sydney I have a chestnut tree, a pecan tree, two macadamias and two almonds. The trees are only 10 years old but already the yields are ridiculously abundant - way more than I have time to collect and eat. Perennial tree nuts are high in calories and for a suburban/small plot are a much better choice than annual grains.

Also, if grown using permaculture techniques e.g. surrounded by nitrogen fixing "chop and drop" trees, passively irrigated by swales/roof runoff and fertilised using composted humanure then the system needs almost no external inputs.

First Post. Here in southern New England on a 2500 ft2 garden in the back yard I consistantly have harvested 100 lbs of spuds, similar for storage carrots and lots to tomatoes, hot peppers, pickles - yes plenty of fun foods too - and some apples but loads of berries - pruple raspberries and blackberries, known together as brambles. I hope to add a hoop house and with a better summer - sans late blight perhaps, I can get toward 1/4 to 1/3 of our caloric needs in the off season and 1/2 or more in season. I also work a 40 hr a week job "off-garden" and volunteer as a "Master Gardener." I would/will focus on corn this year as I've had success with popcorn in the past: Tom Thumb. We also get/buy fish. I don't know if I can be totally self sufficient, but if 75% of eaten food is from the back yeard or within 50 miles, that would work. Perennials like fruit trees, net trees, brambles and even asparagus will augment the corn.

I think prairie or broadacre cereal cropping will become too expensive in line with rising prices for diesel, synthetic nitrogen and phosphorous. That means we will have to fill our guts on starch grown close to home, most likely root crops. The FAO suggest potatoes. Instead of bread for a sandwich keep a salad bowl of boiled potatoes in the fridge.

I've grown canola for biodiesel but I've been unable to control diamondback moth infestation at reasonable cost and effort. Since people give you waste vegetable oil for free it's a no brainer. It's easy to grow quinoa as a food grain but I'd rather eat shredded soap. I've been growing borlotti beans and climbing beans as a source of protein now I need to scale up big time.

Instead of celebrity chefs lording about with black caviar and truffles I'd like to see a TV cooking show about 'cuisine pauvre'. 90% of the ingredients would have to be stuff you can grow at home or buy cheaply. Maybe also cook on a wood stove. Basic ingredients would be potatoes, corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, beans and so forth.

People often overlook food sources that are in their backyards. Blackberries are considered an invasive species in many parts of the US, yet are a prolific and productive food source. Many parts of the country have Walnut trees that are considered problematic, as they are "territorial". Both of these are great sources of high quality nutrients and vitamins.

Food preservation will become an issue without refrigeration and other preservation methods. Solar dehydration is an easy and effective way to preserve fruits, berries and many vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peppers, herbs). Dried fruits and berries added to staples can boost their nutritional value significantly. Blackberries, raspberries and blueberries are easy to grow and are great sources of vitamin C and other neccesary vitamins.

Some info on food preservation methods:
http://www.ssrsi.org/sr1/Cook/drying.htm

I have no idea what the answer is, or indeed how big the problem will be. But this book
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10599.php Dirt by David Montgomery
is a must-read for students of the collapse of civilization as it relates to declining fertility, lost irrigation, and lost topsoil.

Possibly its been widely talked about here before, if so, my apologies.

I think the notion that a typical back yard gardener could grow enough grain to provide the caloric intake for a family is not really practical. Most homes are not on an acre - even the McMansions ar built on 1/3 rd of an acre.

I have an acre - subtract the spce taken up by the house, the sheds, the greenhouse, the driveway. Then - I think one needs hardwoods if for nothing else to fuel the wood burning stove. Add space for fruit and nut trees as well as some berries. Now the space for veggies and herbs. How much is left over to grow wheat? Certainly not enough to supply a family of four with the caloric intake for a year.

Consider too that grain crops are very suceptible to damage from rain and of course drought will finish your crop off - no small consideration in an AGW world.

Potatoes and peas, beans make the most sense to me. One can actually live off a diet of potatoes alone. Plant several varieties as insurance against blight and bugs. For the space they take up - potatoes give you the most calories. Supplement with peas and other beans and you can produce on even a smaller plot enough to give you adequate calories.

Fruit and nut trees are so essential - but keep in mind that trees take awhile to get to the age of productive crops. This is especially true of nuts - some trees need at least 8 years before you even get nuts. I discovered this myself - have plenty of fruit trees but only realized we needed nut trees two years ago - still waiting for some nuts! Hope things don't get really bad before those trees start bearing!

NUTS NUTS NUTS NUTS NUTS

Nuts have proven staples to many stable societies over human history. For my temperate climate area, I'm betting on Hazelnuts (high oil content), Chestnuts (starchy), Oaks, and probably a couple of other species for mast. The EROEI on these is much better than with annuals, plus on the slopes I'm working with there's no way I'd ever plow.

In conclusion: Nuts!

In my experience , a minimum of 2.5 acres per adult of cropland is needed to get a complete diet. If animal products are eaten , it takes more.

The figures talked about on the internet are theoretical.

Oldfarmer Jmy , School of Agriculture - Class of 67 - CSUF

Corn grown commercially is a very productive source of starch.
4 pound of corn could provide about 2000 calories of daily starch.
An acre of corn produces enough starch to feed 6 people for a year; at 75 million acres , US corn that could provide enough starch for 450 million people.

Only potatoes and peas do well in my area, USDA 6 or 7, for staples. I need to learn how to process acorns. Last time I tried I didn't leach them well enough and they weren't really edible. But the natives lived on them before we came. Actually, there are a couple of varieties of dry beans that do OK here too. There were real farms here in the old days, at el. 3,500, but I haven't heard about any of the old Italians growing wheat or oats.

My thoughts on carbohydrates, proteins, and oils.

The Three Sisters. Grow corn, beans, and squash together like the American Indians. Or just grow a large patch of squash, It's the most nutrition for the least amount of work. Grow a variety with large seeds and roast them. Seminole pumpkin, a wild squash from the Everglades is delicious, easy to grow and will produce over 100 lbs. of fruit per plant; available from Baker Creek.

Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes are nutritious and easy to grow. Around here and in most of the US Sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes) grow wild in abundance and are very nutritious. Their starch is inulin which is digestible by diabetics. You must adapt to them though, at first they are worse than beans for gas. There are probably several hundred lbs. along my little dirt road. They can be dug year round.

My primary grain crop is Golden Giant Amaranth.(not a true grain.) 15 lbs. of seed/100 sq. ft. The seeds can be prepared in many ways including sprouting and boiling as a porridge. The amino acid profile is similar to eggs! Very nutritious.

My impression is that Option 2a (Organic local farming using oil for equipment, transport) is a popular option with some sustainability groups. It certainly has some advantages, in terms of helping maintain soil fertility, better quality food, and reduction in fertilizer need.

This statement is packed full absurdities. I don't blame it on Gail but on the "organic" marketers who promulgate the magic of organic farming.

1. How can ANY farming method "using oil for equipment, transport" (not to mention the square miles of plastics) be called "organic?" Well, maybe in the sense that all those hydrocarbon-based materials contain carbon atoms....

2. "Sustainability groups": They're fooling themselves. They want to have their cake and eat it too, meaning, they want to believe they can practice a kinder, gentler version of standard human rapacity. ALL farming is by definition UNSUSTAINABLE, because it practices takeover (of acreage) and drawdown (of depletable resources). It's unsustainable because farmers actually grow HUMANS, not just plants and animals.

3. "Helping maintain soil fertility." I'm assuming you mean the return of plant matter and animal manures to the soil. Yes, I'm all for it, I practice it here with my series of compost bins and piles of cow manure from our tiny milking herd. But let me tell you something about "organic" farmers: most of them practice what is CERTIFIED: If they have more than a few acres, instead of going through the immense trouble of stockpiling the ENORMOUS amounts of materials necessary to build compost, they IMPORT materials: rock phosphate, greensand, blood meal, seed meal, lime, etc. This stuff comes in tidy little bags and can be stacked until needed. And it's all CERTIFIED ORGANIC.

4. "Better quality food." The chief shibboleth of the "organic" movement. Everyone "knows" this is true. But the scientific studies to back this belief--and it is just that, a belief--are, to put it mildly, few and far between. Some studies even find there's no difference.(source.) The correct answer is, "Beats me."

5. "Reduction in fertilizer need." See 3 above. "Organic" farmers need fertilizers. They just have their own raft of "organically-certified" imports.

What it comes down to is this: Composting and mulching are good. The more physical labor you put into growing things, the less fuel you have to use. Keep it local and FRESH for high quality. But don't fool yourself that you are more virtuous because you practice these old-fashioned methods. Commercial farmers feed a hell of a lot more people than you ever will. And that's our central tragedy: more food = more people that need food.

Some people continue to call such methods "organic." I just call it "farming."

Gail --

Thanks for the thought-provoking topic. A few tidbits to share...

The current issue of Mother Earth News has a piece on growing wheat at home. Their description noted that it is somewhat labor intensive, but it certainly sounded possible with no power tools. I was even tempted to have a go at it myself.

I don't have any experience storing potatoes for a really long period of time, but my grandfather stores his from harvest until they are eaten in large bins in a shed. The spuds are put out in a single layer and sprinkled with lime, and seem to keep fine even during summer in Tennessee where it seems that every summer day is well over 90 and the humidity is shocking. Presumably the lime keeps them from getting too moist and seems to deter pests -- these bins are just built into the back of a shed that is otherwise open. He plants two crops -- spring and fall -- and generally has potatoes year round.

As for your options, I see some of "all of the above" happening. Business as usual will be preserved for as long as possible, but as costs increase (fuel becomes ever more expensive) we will move from you option 1 into option 2. If that becomes cost-prohibitive or unreliable, the industrious will take matters into their own hands.

I did not note comments on optimal farm size, but have given this some thought. In the Southeast where moisture is not usually a big problem and hardwood trees normally grow, I'd like to have at least 20 acres at my disposal. This would provide wood for heat and lumber (10 acres), garden space, and hay/pasture for livestock & draft animals. One could probably get by pretty well on half that, but with more room your management schemes do not have to be as finely honed.

It is generally accepted that soydiesel has an EROEI in the low 2s. Some other crops (say cotton seed, where seeds are a byproduct of cotton and have almost no energy invested in them except pressing out the oil), have higher EROEI.

Adapting Chevy volt batteries to farm equipment should give equipment for most chores (spraying for example) that run on electricity and do not weigh too much. With no till agriculture, I believe that electric planters are viable. Past efforts with electric farm equipment were backyard tinkerers working with lead acid batteries. If Ford (which makes farm equipment) applied car EV technology to farm equipment, with Li batteries, a LOT could be done !

Agro-diesel will be needed for planting for some crops and for harvesting most crops. The specific energy requirements exceed current technology# and The world is centuries away from not having enough FF oil to harvest crops, but in the distant future, enough agro-diesel (without further technological advances) can be EASILY grown for harvesting. Hay (required for beef) may be the most energy intensive "crop" when the final edible calories are counted.

Add some GMO to increase the oil yield for, say, cotton seeds, and the EROEI improves.

#(harvesting could be done with electric, but slower, and with harvesting "time is of the essence".

Best Hopes for Understanding the technology available,

Alan

It's probably already been said but the simple answer is we need far far less grain than we currently grow since a majority goes to feed animals and making sweetener and now fuel. There is a reason "A chicken in every pot" was such a grand promise and one we can't relate to in the least today.

All the questions and predictions put forth about food revolve around the broader economy more than fuel I think. If, for example, the hundreds of thousands of former construction workers now unemployed never again find employment in construction and the next generation of auto workers (or whatever the poster child of factory workers) is paid like a walmart greeter and perhaps the half(?) of employment provided by governments gets smaller, then you can bet the demand for bacon eggs milk and steaks in going to plummet.

As long as there is shipping, grains (though certainly not in todays mix) will continue to be grown on large acreages without irrigation and shipped fairly long distances, simply because of the economy of scale. As you go down the scale of scale to subsistence farm level you are going way way back in tech history to a point where I certainly hope we never return.

Thanks for this campfire topic. The advice and links above are very helpful. As a newbie gardener in San Francisco, I've been wondering how I'm going to store potatoes and other root vegetables without a root cellar. Glad to hear bins/boxes in my garage will work. My next project is to figure out which fruit and nut trees I might be able to grow. I've already got a Mission black fig, and I know Meyer lemons do well here, but apples? I'm hoping there are a few cultivars that will work in our quirky microclimate. (I live on the sunny side of the city.) I've got some raspberries planted, a thornless blackberry, some asparagus and artichokes. (I don't expect to get much from any of these this first year.) It is spring here, the daffodils are up and plum trees are flowering. I'm a happy camper just puttering in the garden wondering if I can really manage to grow all the nice little seeds I've bought. Seed potatoes and strawberry plants will arrive in a few weeks.

Here in the Southern Appalachians, people traditionally grew corn (maize) - this was the staple for the Cherokee as well as for the settlers who followed them in. It is very feasible to grow corn with only hand tools, that is a big reason why that is what was grown.

People living in the towns didn't tend to grow much corn for themselves, but concentrated on vegetable gardens. There were plenty of people living in the countryside surrounding the towns who would grow a surplus of corn for sale in town. Of course, a fair amount of that surplus would also be fed to the hogs, or to the still. Both resulted in value-added products that yielded a better return for the farmer.

In the towns, people would be more likely to grow quite a few potatoes in their vegetable gardens, and to have a root cellar in which to store them. Root vegetables didn't tend to store and transport as well as grains back in the early days, so it made more sense to grow those if you were going to grow anything.

A great many of our yards have trees in them; all of them should have fruit trees, and if these are not planted yet people need to be doing this. That being the case, it will be a challenge for many people to have enough land on their property that gets enough full sun to produce much of a grain crop. Potatoes are quite a bit more forgiving. While you cannot produce a crop in deep shade, a patch of ground that is shaded a few hours each day can still produce a pretty good yield of potatoes. Furthermore, potatoes are even easier to grow than corn; all you really need is some sort of spade or shovel, and a bucket or anything else that will work for watering them. Thus, to my way of thinking it makes a lot more sense for town and city dwellers to concentrate on potatoes to the extent that they have land to do so, and then to rely on "imports" from the countryside for the grains.

great topic gail; thanks.
for drying lotsa produce here's a link to a solar dryer i am building.

http://www.geopathfinder.com/9473.html

Modern wheat varieties don't shatter readily. They have been bred to withstand the rigors of mechanical harvesting. Instead of growing wheat in residential gardens (and dislocating your arms trying to flail the grain from the chaff) befriend a wheat farmer in your area and offer him $20 for a bushel of wheat. I've been doing this for several years. I live in rural Kansas and walk across the road at harvest time with my bushel-sized laundry tub. The farmer scoops the grain directly from the combine. I have a hand-crank grain mill that can turn out three to five cups of bread flour an hour.

PLEASE FOLKS...

If you are seriously considering home production of food, start to do variety testing now. Don't just grow what the nursery, a catalog or your neighbor grows/offers. There ARE significant differences between varieties. In my case, we have tested well over 50 varieties of tomatoes alone and decided upon two. We've done this for all the crops we grow. And, I try new stuff for comparison every year. This year's big trial is straight neck summer squash where I'll be testing about 10 varieties to find a replacement for a hybrid we can no longer get. Some will be OP and some hybrid.

The same thing applies to tree, berry and bramble crops. While these can be hard to trial, you can at least visit someone who is growing (or tried to grow) what you are interested in.

Todd

Growing 400 corn plants.... How hard can that be ?

My grain for a year

It can be enjoyable/pleasurable.

Its all about photosynthesis and storage.

Seeds (Many kinds)are for storage and when they are germinated/sprouted the food value changes.

10 olive trees for oil.

Option 2b (Farms with electric equipment and electric transportation to market) doesn't seem like a real option today

Best I can tell its not and it won't be. It takes alot of watts to move the earth. Hard to do that on a standard 120 volt 15 amp circut.....

I've not tried it (was going to try last year) but potatoes in the 55 gal drum. One can create the spring microcliment via glass on the top of the barrel and painting the barrel black As the summer progresses, shade the barrel. Tader's will end up being many people's carbs.

What we all have to think about is that every yard is different. In fact most yards/farms have their own little climates and soil types, and they change with time. What grew in my yard 20 years ago does not do well in my yard today, or at least not where it did well back then.

We also don't live alone in the world, If we are going to survive we will still need the friendships of others, even when we are all back to farming for our food.

As someone said above, we are social creatures, we also can't do everything by ourselves, and we will still have towns and small cities even if the large places can't support the power needed to run the systems that support tall buildings.

One thing we are all forgetting in our posts is water. Where do you get your water? How sustainable is your source?

If you work all day trying to live off the land, you will use a lot more than 2,000 calories a day, figure at least 2,500 to 3,500 for active days.

We would do well in most places if we looked at the total number of edible plants that our areas grow, most of them will be considered weeds by people. Traditionally any plant growing where it is not supposed to is a weed. But many plants that others think are weeds are actually edible, purslane is one of them that grows in the planters around the streets of Little Rock. Winter sorrel in my neighbor's grassy lawn.

The more you learn about what you can grow that is edible, and the more you grow of as many different kinds of food crops the better off you will be in the long run.

But just because you can grow all your own food, don't depend on it, things change fast and fire, pests, weather and vandals are just around the corner waiting for you to be unawares. So build up your social networks as best as you can.

Charles.

Dried winter squash lasts for years if well stored. also, take a look at Home@Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative for some info about hazelnuts. I have about a hundred of these large bushes - got about 250 - 300 lb high protien/high fat nuts last fall. I don't think they are developed enough for a commercial crop but as a fallback position they are great for adding variety - which will be sorely missed, and maintain reasonable quality for several years in rodent proof common storage.

Of course you could invest in a truck load of MREs. I see them sold by the pallet lot on ebay a lot. It is something to think about adding to your shelf if you really think the world will end soon. Or you think the stores might be hard to get to when the snow piles up over your mailbox. Or a storm rips the roof off everyone's houses.

For anyone that has a Bug Out Bag, they do come in handy to have a few selected forms of ready made foods placed in them.

If nothing happens in 4.5 years you start to eat your stash and buy a new one with the money saved from buying at that store.

What ever you do as far as staple foods you should also look at foods that will give you the vitamins and minerals you need for good health.

On a side note, All those Asian carp that might get into the great lakes, should start being put on the menus of resturants of the region, it'll be the fastest way to kill them off, over fishing.

Charles.

I notice that there are a few comments and threads like these with very good info. I wonder if there is a site where information like this is made available in a more systematic and "centralized" way? Like a directory to all this precious information.

Up to now I've not been able to find nothing of this kind. Does anyone has suggestions? Or maybe even we can start something like this?

I think the position I took a year and a half ago is still correct. (google Is Industrial Agriculture really such a bad thing) If you take away half the trips to restaurants, and half the trucks that deliver to restaurants, etc, then the price of fuel will decline significantly. That's because there is no measurable return on energy investment for driving to a restaurant to eat. Aside from conducting business there is no reason to do it, but even then that's just a cultural thing. People used to invite business interests to their home for dinner, instead of meeting at a restaurant. We need to get back to that way of thinking, and we probably will eventually. But the important key point is that when we do have that cultural shift, it will reduce demand for fuel. This will be part of a generational shift to more efficient living. This type of change is relatively easy to make, compared to something like relocalization of agriculture. And the rewards will be much greater.

Having been a gardener for over 30 years, the idea of having to rely completely on home grown produce terrifies me. The pests, the diseases and fungus, the ground hogs and moles take a terrible toll on produce where I live in New Jersey (not to mention the deer, but I finally put up a 12' fence). I cannot let my chickens roam as I would like because the foxes eat them.

And all of that is going to be quite secondary as the impacts of climate change manifest, and weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable. I am quite surprised that people who recognize the dangers of peak oil seem in these comments to be practically oblivious to climate change. For instance, anyone near the ocean surely realizes that the oceans are going to rise significantly?

Yet another aspect of burning fossil and biofuels is the impact of emissions on vegetation. It's commonly accepted that ozone causes cancer, but actually vegetation is even more sensitive. Ozone is toxic to plants, interfering with the ability of foliage to photosynthesize and produce chlorophyll by damaging the stomata.

Where I live, in New Jersey, the ecosystem has passed the tipping point and is currently in freefall. Trees of every age and every species are dying at a rapidly accelerating rate. I stopped planting trees two years ago - there's no point. If we continue emitting tons of nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, and peroxyacetyl nitrates into the atmosphere, trees that produce apples, cherries, plums, pecans, and walnuts will be just a memory!

I have been posting photographs and links to scientific research at www.witsendnj.blogspot.com, in the hopes that people will wake up to the destruction around them and figure out a way to stop it.

Alternative one since small, large and very large commercial farms indeed are more efficient the tiny hobby farms. Its easier to retool a thousand large operators then for a hundred thousand hobbyists to learn the trade and get the needed tools.

And there will be more hobby gardening and local small operators, probably as a reaction to loosing the airfreighted year round or exotic vegetables and fruits due to high jet kerosene costs.

This is a link to a video I found while watching others on ChowHound which is a website all about food and eating it.

http://www.chow.com/stories/11911

The video talks about an urban farmer, in Oakland, California who has been raising her own food for a while. Including goats, chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs and rabbits for meat, eggs and milk.

Granted this thread is about staple food, but I would consider meat a staple food that we won't have to do away with later just because the world might crash.

Even though she might be classed as a totally sustainable farmer, it does have a positive influence.

Charles.

This is an excellent topic, and here is my experience. I live in Japan, and have for 10-odd years grown my own rice (I also have a large kitchen garden, but I'll just write about the rice here).

A matter of decades ago, people up here in the hills were still using horses for tilling, and human power for the rest. Now everyone uses machinery, of course.

In my case I have four small rice paddies totalling about 900 square meters. In the spring I till them with a 4-hp rotary tiller, flood them, and then muddy them with the same machine after changing the blades to rotors for the purpose. In total this preparation consumes about 5 liters of gasoline (the water is diverted from the river into a channel that everyone uses). Because rice planting machines plant the rows too close together, they necessitate pesticides to control disease and insect outbreaks. Therefore I plant by hand, spacing rows 30 cm apart, as they were in premodern Japan. My yields differ little from those who plant by machine and use pesticides (in fact I have surprised some of the old-timers with my yields). I do all the planting myself, so it take several days, although I have to spread it out over a week to 10 days because of work.

Minimal effort is required for weed control during the summer, and so there is little to do until harvest time except watch the water level. In the fall when the rice starts to ripen, the paddies are allowed to dry out. Then a neighbor cuts the rice for me, and I hang it on racks to dry. After it's dry, the same neighbor threshes it for me. I have in the past cut the whole crop by hand.

I've never weighed my crop, but it's enough to feed a family of four for a year, with some left over (I donate the excess to a hospice).

As you can see, I use machines as a time-saving measure, except for planting. But eventually we shall have to return to the old ways, and the peak oil-conscious people have been discussing our course of action when that happens.

Well, you cannot over look squirrels and rice, along with roasted acorns.

Amaranth is probably the simplest grain for the home gardener to grow. It is a beautiful plant that doubles as an ornamental. The seeds easily separate from the flower heads and all that needs to be done to get clean grain is to winnow the harvest. Last year I grew an experimental crop to get an idea about what is involved. This year I'm going to plant a more substantial amount along the fence where the beautiful copper spires will brighten the neighborhood. I like it as a porridge for breakfast instead of oatmeal. When you cook it, you can see the protein ooze out into the cooking liquid. Add a few pieces of dried fruit and enjoy a very nutritious breakfast!

It's both a relief to know that there are so many knowledgeable and caring people concerned about the 100% sustainability of this planet, and worrying that the deadlines for its realization are so close - please see peakoiltaskforce.net for some high-level awarenesses!

We have absolutely got to realize the seriousness of the End of Oil, coupled with Global Climate Change! We have only 4% of the world’s oil, but consume 25% of the world’s supply, the US Defense Department is the world’s largest single consumer of oil, and Iraq has the largest remaining reserves! 2 + 2 = 4!

Can we consider anything less than 100% sustainability if we want our great great great great great great grandchildren to live lives that in any way approach the comforts that we enjoy? So, voila, I challenge the whole country to design something more sustainable than the blueprint that I have left at www.greenmillennium.eu, knowing that our great great great great great great grandchildren will either reap the benefits, or pay the price, for your work and ideas! Is there any higher motivation?

PS: It is only 20 times the generations, grandparents to grandchildren, that we will have met in our own families back to the year zero (20 x 20 years/generation x 5 generations = 2,000 years)! Where will the components of our genes, arguably eternal, be 2,000 years from now without technologies to replace oil? Please see my website for further details!

With much higher energy costs, grain will still be grown in the areas where it is the highest value crop. It will best be grown by experts with specialized equipment and knowledge. Grain stores well and is a concentrated food source. It can be transported by the lowest cost slow means. If the future baker pays 10x the current cost of wheat a loaf of bread is still an inexpensive item. The barber is better off cutting more hair rather than using part of his time as an amateur grain producer.

The economy doesn't go away. Answering the question of "where do we get are carbs" isn't an agricultural question, it's economic. I don't know how the poorest 1/3 of the world is going to be fed. But the average north american isn't going to need to learn to care for oxen. It's more likely she will be paying 35 cents more for a package of twinkies.

Run the numbers. Huge increases in commodity prices mean little to North Americans.