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Make a calorie and land plan

Work out how much land your household would need to grow a share of its calories. The numbers show why most estates grow vegetables first and add staples slowly.

How

  1. Pick a daily energy figure per person and the share of calories you want from the garden. Start with a small share, such as 10 to 20%.
  2. Choose a staple and look up its energy. USDA FoodData Central gives raw potato 77 kcal per 100 g, raw sweet potato 86 kcal and dry kidney beans 330 kcal.
  3. Look up a yield. LSU AgCenter gives about 91 kg (200 lb) of potatoes or sweet potatoes per 30.5 m (100 ft) row, with rows 0.9 to 1.07 m apart. That is about 2.8 to 3.3 kg per square metre.
  4. Run the Calorie and land planner. Worked example: 2,100 kcal a day for a year is 766,500 kcal, or about 995 kg of potatoes. At 3 kg per square metre that is about 330 m2 of beds for one person.
  5. Treat that as an illustration, not a diet. No one should eat only potatoes, and your yields will differ from Louisiana averages.
  6. Compare with whole-diet land figures. Peters and colleagues (2016) estimated 0.13 to 0.14 ha per person per year for vegetarian diets. The current US diet needed 1.08 ha. Both use US farm yields and include pasture.
  7. Grow Biointensive claims about 232 m2 (2,500 sq ft) per person for a designed vegan diet, including paths and compost crops. This is a practitioner claim, not a peer-reviewed figure.
  8. Weigh your real harvest (food-21) and rerun the planner each year with your own yields.

Do these first

Sources

  1. Potatoes, flesh and skin, raw (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy 170026), read via a data mirror. USDA FoodData Central (via getfoodfacts.com), accessed 2026-11
  2. Sweet potato, raw, unprepared (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy 168482), read via a data mirror. USDA FoodData Central (via getfoodfacts.com), accessed 2026-11
  3. Beans, kidney, california red, mature seeds, raw (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy 173742), read via a data mirror. USDA FoodData Central (via getfoodfacts.com), accessed 2026-11
  4. Expected vegetable garden yields. LSU AgCenter, accessed 2026-11
  5. Which diet makes best use of farmland? (summary of Peters et al. 2016, Elementa, doi 10.12952/journal.elementa.000116). Ensia, accessed 2026-11
  6. Calories FAQ (practitioner claim, not peer reviewed). Ecology Action / Grow Biointensive, accessed 2026-11
  7. Growing potatoes in home gardens. University of Minnesota Extension, accessed 2026-11

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