-2

Yo. I have a city. Pop. 100,000. They need to eat. Due to pantheism as their government-enforced religion, they do not eat meat. I need to know how much space in square kilometers would be needed in order to grow enough crops to feed everyone.

Bonus question: Using normal planting/harvesting machinery and adding some futuristic improvements, any ideas on how many people would be needed to operate and tend said allotment of land for food?

Cyn
  • 20,358
  • 3
  • 44
  • 89
Gandalf the Bronze
  • 25
  • 3

1 Answers1

1

Depends on the level of technology. A very rough estimate is one acre per person: Google search.

100,000 acres is 405 sq.km. If they are good, they can get by with only 200. If bad, 600.

As for the workforce: in the modern US, there are 3.2 million farmers. Assuming the US food trade balance is roughly 0, they feed 327 million people, or 100 as many. So 100k people would need around 1k farmers. Scale by your technology: futuristic = 100 or fewer farmers, medieval = 90k+ farmers.

See also: How many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland?

Andris Birkmanis
  • 269
  • 1
  • 4
  • 1
    The U.S.A. is one the greatest exporter of agricultural products in the world. Those 1% of the American population who are working in farming feed not only the U.S.A. but a respectable part of China too. – AlexP May 25 '19 at 21:45