Successful Organic Cultivation Needs Little Land
In the 1940s and 1950s, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who helped introduce biodynamic farming and gardening in the U.S. and Europe, wrote a small book, Grow a Garden and be Self-sufficient. (See http://www.biodynamics.com). In his book, reprinted as a paperback in 1981 (Grow a Garden and be Self-sufficient, by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and Erika Reese), Pfeiffer showed readers how, on a plot 10 feet by 10 feet, a gardener could raise an abundance of food organically--enough to feed one person.
A Recent Urban Homestead "Marvel"
More recently, a family of four, in Pasadena, California, 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, has demonstrated over a decade or more how they have produced 6,000 pounds of food (3 tons!) annually on 1/10 of an acre (1 acre = 43,560 square feet or 4,047 square meters).
From their 1/10 acre, the four people get 90% of their daily food needs and can sell their surplus at their Front Porch Farmstand, netting them $20,000 a year.
A Proven Concept
The family's activities (http://www.urban homestead.org) have created such a highly productive Urban Homestead model for sustainable agriculture and eco living in urban areas that national and international news media have featured them.
Without using synthetic chemicals associated with industrial mono-cropping, and while simultaneously improving soil fertility and the overall condition of the land, if the same efforts were put into cultivating an entire acre, the monetary results would equal an annual income of $200.000 per year!
Who says organic cultivation costs too much?
Why not try it!
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