It's actually a quite complex question, with lots of possible answers depending on peoples long term goals.

Transcription

1 How Big Should a Farm Be? A quickie guide to self sufficient farming I've had several people ask: "How big should my farm be?" It's actually a quite complex question, with lots of possible answers depending on peoples long term goals. Here's the questions one needs to answer to get an idea of what is possible: 1-Are you insane? Do you know how much work you're lining up? I don't want to turn people off of farming, but farming is expensive. It's either going to take a lot of money for the high end equipment, or it's going to cost you a lot of sweat equity. The sad part is that farming is not a short-term investment. It's a short-tem gamble, but a long-term investment. There is only one guarantee: You will experience and learn something new every growing season. Experience and education are the long term payoff. To blast through the falsehood that the main-stream-media perpetuate: FARMING IS NOT SEASONAL! Yes, there are different seasons in which produce is harvested, but farming is a year around process. There will always be work to be done. 1 / 6

2 There are some times at which there is no outside work, but repairing/replacing equipment, deciding the best and most proper crop for a certain piece of land for a particular season under different conditions, study of seeds genomics, weather patterns, insect control, soil & water conservation, listening to the plans of others and hundreds of other little things. If animals are involved, there's a BUNCH more to be done! Farmers ALWAYS have something which needs to be done, so time is always at a premium. 2-Have you ever farmed before? New farmers have the best and the worst of both worlds. Their lack of experience means they have no bad habits to be broken, but it also means they don't have a grip on the terms, phrases and practices necessary to understand the farming process. Experienced farmers have the knowledge necessary, but are generally set in their ways, not willing to grow new/different crops and or to implement different/organic techniques. Note to New Farmers: Start off small! You can always get bigger and if you start out too big, you can end up working yourself to death! 3-How much land can be farmed? Do you own the land? Most potential farmers don't like these questions because they don't like the answers I give them. 2 / 6

3 Ownership of land (or having a long-term lease, 5 or more years) gives farmers a lot more latitude in production decisions. If you don't own the land or have a long term lease, don't spend more on livestock than two-monthly land payments. If something would happen and you lost use of the land, disposing of $2000 in livestock in much easier than getting rid of $20,000 worth. Now lets look at a small example: Bob purchases 40 acres of land. It has a one acre pond, 1800 square foot house, a well house (8'X8'), a small storage shed (10'X12') and a 30'X60' barn. How much land is available for food production? Lets start with the basics: An acre is square feet or a square which is about 209 feet on each side. (About 3/4 the size of a football field). I could go really in depth, but the best ballpark way to estimate potential farm able land is this: ((Total Land Owned-(6*Square footage of all structures)-(8*surface area of water)) * 0.80=Total Farmable land Total Land Purchased: 40*43560= Ft^2 Total Structures : 3784*6= Ft^2 3 / 6

4 Surface Area Of Water: 43560*8= Ft^ *0.8= Ft^2 which is approximately 25 acres of farmable land. Now this doesn't mean Bob needs to plant 25 acres of ANYTHING! All this means is that if Bob wanted to farm, he could farm 25 acres for one year for an average crop! Crop rotation is necessary if you plan on using organic techniques, eliminating factory fertilizers. If you assume a need to allow land to lay fallow for one out of four years, then multiply farmable land by acres *0.75 = acre to be farmed. I know this sounds like you've actually lost a lot of farmable land, but you haven't even touched the calorie producing potential of your land! Example: If acres were put into corn, you could expect to at least 100 bushels per acre (150 bushels per acre in some places). That's 1875 bushels, but what is the caloric value? 4 / 6

5 One bushel of corn has 139,000 nutritional calories! (18.75*100*139,000)/2500/365= That's enough calories to keep 285 people alive for a year! I know that no one wants to eat corn for every meal, but it's just an example. 4-Are you going to be farming it yourself? Are your kids or spouse going to help? Farming is very manpower and time intensive! As with any job, the full support of friends and family can make or break a venture. 5-Do you plan on raising livestock? What kind? Will you be selling livestock, or processing for self consumption? Raising livestock can be difficult, time consuming and heartbreaking. Bet too much and you can lose a lot. Bet too little on it and you may be kicking yourself for not doing more! Historically, self-sustaining farms use about a third of all nutritional calories produced on site as animal feeds. The kind of animals to raise is always a quandry. Smaller animals are generally easier to handle and raise, but are low on the caloric efficiency scale. Chickens are a necessity. While inefficient, I've never seen a cow lay an egg or eat 5 / 6

6 grasshoppers! The other positive aspect is that in the event of a catastrophic loss, replacing chickens is easier and production can be resumed in a comparitivly short time. Larger animals generally have a higher sales price per pound, but larger, more expensive equipment is necessary. From the meat production standpoint, hand butchering hogs, goats and chickens is much easier than cattle, though it's not unfeasible. 6-Do you have access to water? Without water, NOTHING is possible. Nuff said! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! If I don't have the answer, I'll definately find any information for ya! 6 / 6