I'm just curious here..

Assuming a moderately low-capital and low-tech setup, how many acres can one person handle by himself? And how many acres to really make a living at it?

Let's assume Ohio for location.

I guess it would depend upon if his costs were more or less than his revenue.

Whether you have 1 or 20 people does not really matter, it is if you set up a system that allows you to bring in more than you spend. A lot of Amish farmers make the same profit as large mechanized farms, they spend (a lot) less so it does not matter that they make a lot less because they still make the profit that they need to live.

So if you want to make a go of it, do your research. Come up with a plan and begin to work it. What can one person farm and still make a profit? A garden seed business? Chickens? Bees?

There are no easy answers to this kind of question. You are going to have to do the math yourself and problem solve all along the way.

I have a related question:
how much work does it take (low tech, no tractors etc) to feed one family of 4 (and how much land).

The question is: is it enough for one person (for me , to do all the work of growing food (Ohio is fine for an example) to feed 4 people (or even just 2, assuming we could still buy enough to make up 50%).

I'm sure other people must have tried it, or there are people currently trying to life sustainably?

(In our case, we only have 10000sq feet = 1/4 acre (I think), so the issue might be if there is enough land for that... the land has excellent soil though!)

The best guesses I've seen would say that a resonably experienced person could do 2.5 acres by themself. that isn't including orchard or grain field which takes less effort.

The average person needs 1-1.5 acres to survive. hmmmm... same amount for a horse or cow... wonder... anyway. Theoretically you could farm 1.5 acres for yourself and use the other 1-1.5 to sell to your overlord or whomever for protection or barter away for things you need.

If you need to feed 4 people you would need a minimum of 4 acres, there is one hell of a lot of work involved here, and you would probably not be able to do all of it yourself (see above.) so you would need to add less demanding things to your "portfolio" for lack of a better word.

However, less intensive methods such as squarefoot or lasagne gardening claim you could get by on a lot less. it depends also on what you have for inputs. There are way you can get a hell of a lot out of a small parcel but that would include chickens and an active worm farm and probably at the very least mason bees.

Depends on how many women and children you had to work the farm.

Depends upon what you want to eat. One place to start: One Circle

1. [align=center]Determine how much of what crops you need to feed everyone.[/align]
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2. [align=center]With your skills, what kind of yield will you get? You learn this from practicing and experience. Also with more practice and experience you will become more efficient.[/align]
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[align=center]The answer to your question[/align]
Yes it can be done on 1/4 acre, if you are willing to eat what you can grow on 1/4 acre to meet your nutritional needs. But this is an art and you have to learn it for yourself. Can one person do it? I don't know what your schedule is like nor what kind of shape you are in or how efficient a gardener you are so no one can answer that except yourself, from experience.

You can probably have a profitable farm using nothing more than a hoe and a garden hose. As long as revenue>costs, it is profitable. But, on that scale, it would be hard to make enough money to live.

My great uncle had a 60 acre irrigated farm. With a single tractor, and part-time hired help and his sons and nephews, he made a pretty good living. He started farming that plot when he was 26, and retired at 89. That was 9 years ago. He raised his family, and his brothers family on that plot of land. Not a rich man, but he had everything he wanted, and did everything his simple heart desired.

And, there are several wealthy, very small-scale farmers in the US. Their crop is very expensive, and very illegal. If it was legal, it would not be as expensive. But, it is a profitable, small-scale farm nontheless.

And, near my house, there are a couple of hippies with a 4-acre organic farm. They don't own the land, but the guy who does pays the taxes. They farm it, and keep 50% of the proceeds. The landowner pays for the (nice) house they live in, utilities, and fuel. I would guess that they make about $20k a year. They seem to be really happy people living a very low stress life.

I would also add the success of the family that runs the Pasadena urban farmette, the Dervais family. Of course, there are 4 family members there, and they do have an enterprise to run.
I would say you should think about HOW you can stretch what you DO have to fit as many products you can sell that are *quality*. That is, if you can grow quality organic herbs for a nearby city, (even if that town or city is smallish) then you might be able to hook up with some chefs that want quality produce/herbs to stock in their larders. Heck, they might even sell things like honey off of your farms, if you kept bees. Maybe a favorite barbeque sauce with honey *from* those bees in the recipe.

You might even want to give classes on your farm. I have a girlfriend in Pennsylvania that is an herbalist, and sells products on her website, and gives classes to folks that live in not-so-far-away Philadelphia. They recently had a class in making incense and rose-beads. (she has an Apothecary rose bush from which she makes wonderful creams!) She sells her home-made soaps, creams, balms and herbal tonic "soups" in local mid-scale health food stores, where she once worked. Here's her link.

So, I think nowadays, it's not "just buying a farm" but HOW you can partner with a neighboring town/city to do Community-supported agriculture/apiculture/orcharding/vinyard. You can work teaching/classes in as another venture.

You can also teach about Agro-farming, as the do in Europe. If you have a particularly scenic piece of land, and have a nice old building, you may want to have a bed and breakfast in addition to the above. Or a boarding house, if it's big enough?

Get creative! If you study the history of the area, and land useage, it's something that is do-able, in almost any area.
Go with the community "cultures" within an area, as they are your partner(s) and potential sales market.

Good luck on making this happen, if that's what you're interested in! I've had lots of friends or family do things like this, I just didn't want to go on and on here.

Blu

The key to farming is diversity. I grow chayote squash IN my orange trees and passionfriut in others. Under these I grow coffee, various herbs, black beans,melons etc.
I have 60 or so differnet fruits and 1/2 acre of row crops and that gives way more than I need for 6 people and plenty left so barter. I don't sell, since money is ................
Fish and crawdads are doable in a small pond if you have plenty of water.
Rabbit meat brings decent money as does goats milk.
A batch of turkeys every year will give you some end year money for taxes, etc. I've farmed many different things over the last 25 or so years from orchids to flowering trees, koi fish,turnips, onions,oranges, apples, pears. avocados, etc.
Go with the flow. Obviously I have farmed in several different climate zones.

Thanks wisconsin_cur!

I see this as a backup in a worst case scenario. In this scenario I would be unemployed (and my husband probably too, so there would be 2 people to work in the garden).

We are both healthy, late 30-ies, but not in extremely good shape (that would change I'm sure . So we could devote most of our day to the garden in this case.

I think for us then lasagna/square foot gardening might work (raised beds etc) since the space is quite small.

In a more optimistic scenario, one of us would be working and then we could probably afford to buy some food (especially grains/bead etc) and we could only rely partially on the garden for the veggies (but still produce as much as possible just in case and also to trade with neighbors).

To date, I've successfully avoided acquiring either women or children.

You Tube: Survival Gardening

One could critisize some things in this series of videos but it makes the point that you need to start now practicing growing things... It is also a good idea to have a couple of years worth of "bridge" food to keep you from starving before you become an efficient and wise gardener.

I cannot answer your first question (how many acres) but I can somewhat answer the second (make a living). No I do not think so.

I/we are in the North and have what would be considered a 'farmette' and roadside market. Apples, apricots, peaches, plums, pears, grapes, grapes, and also grow the usual tomatoes, peppers, squash, cukes, melons and such.

It is not a one-man show by any means. (Disclaimer: I do not work 16 hours a day, seven day a week.)

IMO, for one person, you MUST retail as that is where the money is. XX,XXX $'s of wholesale = large quantites at lower prices, while the same XX,XXX $'s of retail = small quantites at higher prices. One person cannot produce the large quantities.

If the above is true, then you must wear two hats, one in the field/orchard and then another in the market. (I do wear the same hat in both places but the point is that YOU need to be in two places.)

IF you can pull the dual jobs off, work the field early AM then the market mid and later day and then finish field work, you are a better man than I am Gunga Din. Not to mention, if you alone can run the market, then you probably are not selling enough produce to begin to turn a profit.

The only possible way for one man to do it, IMO, would be if the land, buildings, home, equipment, supplies, and materials were already paid for; the business already established, and the knowledge already in the noggin.

That being said, go for it! I love the size of my new cubicle, it is ~7,000 times larger than my old one!

There are many ways to approach this problem, as others have pointed out. Locally, there are several people who run single man operations (though some have intermittent help from family during harvest, for example), from simple vegetables at roadside stands, to high end ag products sold to a niche market. Any such operation needs to examine the maximum yield for the least input, such as intensive gardening approaches, for example.

Are your goals to be self-sufficient? Produce more and sell the rest? Specialty or niche markets? Some mix of the above?

Assuming you want to be profitable and have at least some degree of self-sufficiency, one approach would be to learn how to prepare a business plan that allows you to "what if" any number of approaches and find out the range of profitability to be expected for given scenarios.

As mentioned above, some intensive techniques allow you to grow a complete year's worth of a vegetarian diet for one person on a 1/4 acre. Any yard you have that is not in permaculture could have chicken (or rabbit) tractors to keep it cut, providing other sources of nutrition.

What you would sell can run the gamut, from vegetables, grains, eggs, poultry, sheep/goats/cattle, fruits, nuts, etc; and by no means does this mean that any of the above needs to be exclusive of the others.

Instead of the typical landscaping, think fruit trees vs. ornamental, nut trees vs. simple shade trees, edible shrubs (blueberry, juneberry, lingonberry, black huckleberry, currants, etc) instead of simple shrubs. This way, your yard is part of your self sufficiency and even a source of profit, instead of that distant garden/pasture/field.

You could be a nursery that produces fruit/nut tree stock to sell, which I believe will be a very large market during the current economic morass and approaching (or current) PO decline.

How good is the soil of the land you might buy? What is the cost to provide water (drilling, pumping, irrigation, etc)? What suppliers are local? What market is nearby, and will it be stable throughout the decline?

This should get you started...

doable, workable, yes, obviously, by precedent.

but profitable in the conventional sense, that is taught in American business schools, no. unless you find some yuppies who are willing to pay $$ for seminars on "the new state of the art sustainable organic agriculture paradigm."