Man grows ALL of his food on 750m2
I get excited about strange things. Other people get excited about travel, but I get excited about feeding my chooks from a compost heap1. Other people get excited about music and TV shows, but I get excited about local, non-industrial food. So when YouTube suggested I watch “Man grows ALL of his food on 750m2” several times, I eventually did. I was expecting it to be a disappointing, time wasting piece of clickbait. However I’ve learnt a lot from it and I’ve changed what I want to grow and what I want to eat, and - yes - it’s exciting!
The video is below. In case you don’t have time to watch it, here are the key points:
Most cultures have developed a diet where they get most of their calories from 1. a grain, e.g. wheat or rice, 2. a bean e.g. fava (broad) or soy and 3. an oil, e.g. olive oil or corn oil. If you grow these three things, a grain, a bean and something for oil, you can supply most of your calories from 750m2.
The “Man” Alik lives in Israel and grows wheat, fava beans and olives to provide these three basic ingredients for his diet. He also has a vegetable plot that is the same size as the wheat plot but this only provides 15% of his calories.
One of the things that is hard to believe is that he spends an average of 8 hours per month on growing and harvesting food. He explains how in the sequel.
Some key points about the olives, wheat and fava from the sequel.
Growing his food used to take longer, but after more than 10 years he has found ways to simplify things.
He tills the wheat and fava plot with a tractor and the vegetable plots with a rotary tiller to uproot weeds before sowing.
The wheat is sown using a tractor and is covered by the tractor afterwards.
Wheat and fava are harvested by hand but threshed by a diesel powered machine.
The olive trees are composted once a year before the rains come. The fruit is harvested with an electric tool, then taken to the local olive press. The trees are pruned every other year after harvesting.
What have I changed?
Here in Canterbury, New Zealand, the climate is temperate with often warm dry summers, so it is suitable for growing the three staples that Alik grows. I have a hill site, so growing wheat is not easy, but I plan to grow fava beans. I’ve been making fava bean hummus so I know I can make something delicious from the dried beans. Hummus on toast with olive oil is a lovely breakfast. I will research olive trees and look forward to growing not just vegetables, but food that can really feed you.
I haven’t succeeded in feeding a flock from compost yet. (Geoff Lawton shows how in his video “How to Make a Chicken Tractor on Steroids”.) I’m excited about trying again, but this time I won’t try and provide all their food, just enough to keep them going for short periods such as days when I’m out.