Urban Agroecoloy: 6,000 lbs of food on 1/10th acre - Urban Homestead - Urban Permaculture
FoodAbundanceCited 4× on HN, 2015-2020
3.3M views · 14 years ago · documentary · evergreen
A short film about the Dervaes family, who grow over 6,000 pounds of food a year on a tenth of an acre near downtown Los Angeles. They grow more than 400 plant species, keep chickens and ducks, and get most of their food from the plot.
HN cites it as proof of how much food a very small urban plot can produce.
58:53Gabe Brown: Keys To Building a Healthy Soil
Transcend Productions
407K views • 11 years ago
18:17Nebraska retiree uses earths's heat to grow oranges in snow
Kirsten Dirksen
3.4M views • 8 years ago
3:47Why Grocery Shopping is Better in Amsterdam
Not Just Bikes
1.3M views • 7 years ago
2:31:00Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health
Living Web Farms
2.3M views • 9 years ago
33:45Sepp Holzer's Mountain Permaculture Farm
The Permaculture Zone
192K views • 11 years ago
15:29Life in Syntropy
Agenda Gotsch
931K views • 10 years ago
13:37Internet of food: Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland
Kirsten Dirksen
995K views • 14 years ago
42:11An Arizona Farmer on How to Grow Alfalfa in the Middle of the Desert | Odd Lots
Bloomberg Podcasts
989 views • 3 years ago
17:24Chinampas of Mexico: Most Productive Agriculture EVER?
Andrew Millison
1.5M views • 4 years ago
23:11Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why
Joseph Everett - WIL
5.8M views • 5 years ago
1:36:14The Roots of Your Profits - Dr Elaine Ingham, Soil Microbiologist, Founder of Soil Foodweb Inc
Oxford Real Farming Conference
327K views • 11 years ago
3:44How to Make a $1500 Sandwich in Only 6 Months
How To Make Everything
6.4M views • 11 years ago
9:02India's Water Revolution #1: Solving the Crisis in 45 days with the Paani Foundation
Andrew Millison
1.5M views • 6 years ago
32:21Turning Photons Into Food
Apogee Instruments Inc.
97K views • 7 years ago
15:10Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep
TEDx Talks
16.1M views • 15 years ago
4:04How to grow fresh air | Kamal Meattle
TED
511K views • 17 years ago
47:29Running out of Time | Documentary on Holistic Management
Savory Institute
2.3M views • 8 years ago
14:11Inside Africa's Food Forest Mega-Project
Andrew Millison
9.8M views • 1 year ago
15:37Everything About Grain Bins (Farmers are Geniuses) - Smarter Every Day 218
SmarterEveryDay
7.8M views • 7 years ago
15:30If You Eat Meat You Should Know This
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
6.3M views • 1 year ago
4 comments from Hacker News
To add to this, folks like this family claim (or were when that video[1] was done) to harvest 6,000 lbs of food a year from a 1/10th of an acre and still have enough left over to sell to local chefs to the tune of about $20,000. The more I read about this the more I started doubting all the doom about sustainability. Granted, I think they were vegetarian (still had live birds for eggs) but.. I think the combination of pooling together ancient techniques with modern technology could provide better results than the "if GMO & Roundup are eliminated the WORLD WILL STARVE" type of propaganda that, the more I read up about things like Agent Orange and, well, propaganda, the more I want to hear from people like the Dervais kids (RIP Jules) and less from people who have never farmed before or maybe grew some herbs one year. 1: ▶ this video
This family of 3 produces 6000 pounds of food a year on 1/10 of an acre that is organic, non-GMO and vegetarian: ▶ this video They have enough surplus to sell to local restaurants to the tune of about 20,000$/year to supplement their income. They use a lot of techniques handed down from antiquity, apparently. Shh, don't tell the eugenicists masquerading as environmentalists and conservationists!
You can grow a surprising amount on even 0.1 acres. Here's a video where a family grows 6000 pounds on about 4000 square feet. ▶ this video Granted, they have the whole family pitching in with the labor and it's a full-time job for them.
Agreed, but industrial agribusiness is predicated on huge automation and the idea that one farmer can farm hundred or thousands of acres. That's an efficient use of labor, but not of acres. We might be getting to the point that land is more valuable than labor and thus it makes sense to spend more human effort per acre than in the past. Here are people in LA that grow a huge amount of food in their backyard, 1/10 of an acre: ▶ this video Here's a guy in Canada that makes a legit living urban farming 1/3 of an acre: link There are tons of additional examples on youtube of other people doing very similar things. The point, though, is that it's very intensive on a labor per acre basis. You can't do this kind of farming with big tractors over thousands of acres with just a few people, you need several people per acre for it to work. But it does work! Yes there is a limit eventually, but the point isn't as low as you think.