How much land do you need to live for a year?

Have you ever wondered how much land you’d need to grow everything you’d need? You might be surprised at how much you can grown and supply in such a little space.

More and more people are turning away from grocery stores and utility companies in favor or their own back yard! The idea of becoming self-sufficient is an alluring one, but exactly how much land would you need? Assuming a family of four, here are the land requirements to sustain yourself for one year.

Check out this infographic below to see how much land you’d need to run your home on solar power, grow food, raise chickens, cows and more.

How big a backyard do you need to live off the land?

5 Responses to “How much land do you need to live for a year?”

  1. Rebecca wrote:

    This would be my dream. Right now we have a large garden and 12 fruit trees. But we get our raw milk from a local dairy (5 miles away) for $2/gallon, we are so lucky. I can make cheese and butter, and kefir. We buy a whole cow in the fall, and split it with siblings. We may start doing that in the spring as well. We have learned to can and freeze our harvest, so while I am not there yet, one day I sure hope to be. I am learning all the skills I can so that I can be self sufficient.

     September 7th, 2012 at 8:57 am
  2. Thomas Walters wrote:

    This is a eye opener who has that much land for all of that these datable the money.

     September 13th, 2012 at 7:49 pm
  3. jeannieC wrote:

    I would love to be able to afford to buy the land – after that I couldn’t afford to do all that needs to be done in this lifetime. BUT – I CAN buy my meat and eggs from local small farms and am planning a small orchard and veggie garden. I know that veggies can be regrown after harvesting, so usually I can (now) get 2 crops per season. Getting better all the time :-)

    September 15th, 2012 at 12:43 am
  4. Blue Duck wrote:

    Some growing using hydroponics and going vertical can cut down considerably on the amount of space needed, simple to build from scratch, and even nutrients are easy to find to mix up on your own way less expensively than purchasing the commercially available versions [though somewhat more convenient as you start out]

    Intensive space gardening and successive crop planting through out the season will also cut back the needed room for plant production, as will growing your spuds in a garbage can/cage and mulching it so they grow deep [can get upwards of 50 pounds per can/cage]

    chickens penned under rabbit cages, or wormbeds under rabbits is another way to increase production and reduce the area needed and also reduce the odoriferous ammonia the rabbits produce.

    Great visual aide, though the amount of square footage for electricity production differes north to south, and the 375sqft of roof is not quite enough for North Central Idaho [though close]

    William

     February 7th, 2013 at 5:32 pm
  5. Jackie wrote:

    Even using the Print Friendly Version you lose everything on the far right side of the page.

     April 1st, 2013 at 10:12 pm

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