Intro:

This forum post is written to all audiences with a voice intended for those of you out there striving to become self-sufficient, or homesteaders, or striving to become "off grid", or reducing your dependence on the grocery store by growing your own food. This forum post does not take into account store bought stockpiles of food. In my opinion, we shouldn't rely on stockpiles. Rather, we should be trying to reach self-sustainability through gardening. Most of these facts and figures are relying on information provided by quick google searches and my own experiences. I am not an expert dietician, and I am not trying to pretend to be one.

Let's get into it.

One of the most common concepts homesteaders and gardeners struggle with, apart from keeping plants alive of course, is knowing how many planted crops will be enough. How big does a harvest need to be to feed my family every meal? To truly become self-sufficient, that means relying solely on your own harvests for meals. Whether that be plants or animals. But in order to survive this way, there are a few concepts to be considered.

1.     Calorie values in the foods harvested vs caloric demands of the human body

2.     Diversification of plants to meet the body’s nutritional needs

3.     Diversification of plants for year-round food

Calorie content in food vs daily calories the body needs for energy

Most Americans are trying to reduce their total daily calories. Excess calories in the absence of calorie burn (exercise or manual labor) leads to weight gain. Calories tend to be higher in American diets because of additives, cooking methods, and processed foods. When becoming reliant exclusively on the garden as the only source of food, we quickly realize it may be difficult to get enough calories. Not getting enough calories means weight loss. Most of us would be excited to shed a few pounds. But continous weight loss due to the fact that there is not enough food is simply not sustainable.

Not ingesting the minimum amount of daily calories also means a reduction in energy for work. Since we all know gardening and homesteading is work and demands energy, we realize just how important it is that we are ingesting enough calories to support it. Stay with me here.

My own personal philosophy about becoming self-sufficient at the dinner table is an off shoot of a common military phrase - "two is one and one is none". This implies that you should always have a backup, a "plan B", an extra, more than one way, etc. When it comes to planning for our own Foodscape here in The Serene Forest, I intend to grow an over abundance of plants to produce harvests that should meet the realistic daily caloric intake for my family in the absence of meat. None of us are vegans. Nor vegetarians. So then... why? We don't have an everyday source of meat. Meat must be shot, caught, or purchased in our current situation. Therefore, I intend to push for our dirt to meet our minimum requirements which then allows for meat to be a bonus.

Now some of you reading this may have a solid source of meat. Whether it be rabbits, fowl, goats, pigs, etc. You should include the expected calories of harvested meat these animals provide into your overall homestead's output. But I do want you to ask yourself.... Is your current situation sustainable? Or will your caloric demands require harvests that exceed sustainability. Basically, will you have to harvest (cull) more frequently than the animals can reproduce? If you think it's sustainable, keep reading and see if you still agree it will.

What I think the most underappreciated realization of growing food for yourself is just how many plants are required to provide everyday meals. Let’s look at examples of calorie content in some commonly grown staple crops.

I can grow sweet potatoes well. One vine can yield 2 lbs on average or about 6 good sized tubers with numerous smaller sized tubers. One larger sized sweet potato yields around 100 calories. Let me say it again. 100 calories. I expected it to be higher. What about the edible sweet potato leaves? Around 26 calories per cup of chopped leaves.

Let’s switch over to another typical staple – legumes. Pigeon peas are one of our favorites to grow as they become short-live perennials and are easy to propagate. Depending on the source of information, 1 cup of pigeon peas has anywhere from 200-700 calories. One cup is a substantial amount of pigeon peas compared to what a young tree’s total harvest could yield.

Now, let’s look at leafy greens. Information on some of our perennial favorites such as Okinawa Spinach, is difficult to find. Instead, I will use Moringa Tree leaves. Since Moringa has been rising in popularity for its nutritional value, dietary information is easier to find. One cup of moringa leaves can be anywhere from 13-25 calories. One cup of moringa leaves is a lot of leaves!

Lastly, let's look at a fruit like banana. A medium size or 7" long banana is 105 calories.

Now that we have some examples of caloric content, let’s look at the human body’s caloric demands.   

The minimum number of calories required to maintain body weight varies for each individual and is influenced by factors such as age, gender, weight, height, activity level, and metabolism. To estimate the baseline number of calories needed, you can use the Harris-Benedict equation, which takes into account your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and activity level.

For men:

BMR=88.362 + (13.397×weight in kg) + (4.799×height in cm) − (5.677×age in years)

For women:

BMR=447.593 + (9.247×weight in kg) + (3.098×height in cm) − (4.330×age in years)

Once you have your BMR, you can multiply it by your activity factor to estimate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). The activity factors are usually:

·       Sedentary (little or no exercise): BMR × 1.2

·       Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week): BMR × 1.375

·       Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week): BMR × 1.55

·       Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week): BMR × 1.725

·       Extremely active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training): BMR × 1.9

Keep in mind that this is a rough estimate, and individual variations may apply. For more personalized information, you should consult an expert.

Let’s use me as an example. I am a 220 lb (100kg), 6’0 (183 cm) tall, 33 year old man. I would say that I live a Moderately active lifestyle which includes some exercise when not doing manual labor working in the landscape.

Applying this information into the formula above:

88.362+(13.397*100)+(4.799*183)-(5.677*33) = 88.362+1,339.7+878.217-187.341

=2,118.938

Now I take this number and multiply by the Moderately Active factor of 1.55

2,118.938*1.55= 3,284.3539

So, generally speaking, in order to maintain body weight at my activity level:

I would need to consume approximately 3,284.3539 calories per day.

If I were to reduce my activity level down to sedentary:

I would need to consume approximately 2,542.7256 calories per day

Thinking back to the caloric content in the foods we previously discussed, my moder activity level would require 33 sweet potatoes, or 6.5 cups of pigeon peas (using 500 calories as an average per cup), or 164 cups of moringa leaves (using 20 calories as an average per cup), or 31 bananas per day.

Obviously, I never intended on having a diet of just sweet potatoes. Or filling a dinner plate with just one food at all. The intent here was just to show the significance of the body’s demands in relation to the caloric content of the food we grow.

Disclaimer At 220lbs I am considered overweight for my height. The range is 160-190lbs. If I were to lose weight down to 196 lbs, the caloric demands would reduce by around 200 calories. Even a 200 calorie per day reduction could be a huge difference in the required output of a garden over time.

Diversifying to meet our caloric demands but also our nutritional needs.

We all want a dinner plate that has mixed food groups. Diversity allows for consumption of various nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. But it also helps prevent us from becoming bored of certain foods.

Ideally, our harvests would allow us to mix leafy greens, starches, grains, vegetables, and fruits into each meal. This way, we have a variety of inputs for calories, while also providing essential nutrients to sustain the demands of our normal bodily functions.

While I am not a huge fan of the FDA… here is their breakdown of the daily needs for different nutrients.

No matter what chart you believe is the most accurate, the overall point remains the same. The body needs several different nutrients to remain healthy. We must plan a diet that is well diversified with several food groups to achieve this. Therefore, our planning for the garden must be as diverse as possible. I could grow buckets full of pigeon peas but would never get Vitamin C on pigeon peas alone.

I won’t spend the time going into more detail about foods and their nutritional values. That could become its own post with the amount of content required. I encourage you to dig into that on your own based on plants you can grow reliably in your zone.

What I do want to emphasize before moving on is this – Once we realize the amount of diversification needed, we then have to circle back to the overall theme of “How much is enough”. In doing so, we have to plan not only for the diversification in itself, but the number of each plant needed to sustain the daily intake requirements.

Diversifying plants to produce harvests through multiple seasons.

From seed to harvest can take weeks to months. Even years for trees. Annuals typically give us one harvest per year. Most fruiting perennials only have one harvest per year. So, what do we do between harvests? How do we continue to supply our daily caloric and nutritional needs? This can be a very challenging aspect of true self-sufficiency.

The first solution is probably what many of you are already thinking. Preservation. Whether it be through canning, freezing, dehydrating, or cellars – preserving large harvests allows for surplus to become food between harvests. This requires skill and equipment. But it also heavily relies on successful large-scale planting AND bountiful harvests that provide a surplus. One bad year could have severe consequences.

The next solution many of you are probably thinking is stockpiles. This is probably more up the prepper's alley. But most Americans do this without even thinking just by buying more than they need at the grocery store each week. Either way, I want stockpiling to be considered its own system. I do not believe that stockpiling alone is self sufficient. What happens when you run out? What happens if it goes bad? So for the purposes of this discussion, we are not going to entertain stockpiling as a method.

Back to growing.

For people who have harsh winters and cannot grow utilizing a green house, preservation of warm month harvests may be your only option. For those of us in places like Florida, we can utilize year-round growing seasons to our advantage. This requires careful selection of plants based on their harvest season and planting enough of each type to carry over till the next is ready to harvest.

For example

In Central Florida, most berries are harvested in the spring. Blueberries, blackberries, mulberries, etc. Ideally, we want to have large enough harvests that carry us into the end of the year when citrus is ready to harvest.

Another example

In Central Florida the best time to grow common gourds like zucchini and squash is starting in late winter for an early spring harvest. Ideally that harvest would be large enough to carry later in the year when pumpkin and other “non-standard” gourds such as luffa and chayote are harvested.

I like to look for plants that have multiple harvests per year. These plants help fill gaps between harvests of other plants. When thinking of yield per square foot, plants with multiple harvests are generally more valuable in terms of production per square foot. This is because not only does that square foot produce multiple times in one year, but it requires less energy input from us in terms of work since we are not replanting something new for those additional harvests. So more calories given by the plant with less calories required to produce it.

Examples are:

Perennial leafy greens such as Okinawa Spinach, Katuk, Longevity Spinach, Chaya, Moringa, and Kale

Fruit trees like Starfruit, Papaya, Everbearing mulberry, and bananas (with several pups maturing within the same year)

Other plants such as Peppers, Eggplant, bunching onions, many herbs, some native weeds, etc.

I hope by now you are realizing how hard it can be to live this way. The amount of food required to sustain the body at a very minimal level is quite a lot. It seems even more daunting when we realize how small the small number of calories our favorite plants produce. Presumably even more daunting when we consider how many more plants we need to have to make up for it. I hope this helps you in your journey towards self-sufficiency. It is better to begin planning and executing now, rather than if you are forced to become self-sufficient.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any experiences becoming self sufficient? Comment below to keep the conversation going or start a new conversation in the forum!