How much land for subsistence?

There is no straight answer to this. It depends where it is (climate, aspect, soil conditions, height), what you do with it and what you like to eat. It has been estimated that a garden of half to two thirds of an acre of good quality soil can support four people all the year round on a vegan diet, i.e. including grains, fruit, and vegetables. Of course, the fertility necessary for such intensive cropping could be maintained only with very considerable amounts of compost and manure, i.e. several tons a year, much of which would probably have to be 'imported'. It would certainly require a very considerable amount of skill to keep up such an intensive level of cultivation and it would be a major job to attempt this on land not previously used for vegetable growing. Any piece of land not recently used for vegetable cultivation will be found to be inhabited by a great variety of perennial weeds which will make life hard for you in the first couple of years.

Four people on a vegetarian diet (including vegetables, grain, fruit, eggs, milk and cheese) will find that they will require at least one and a half to two acres if they want to be self-sufficient in food, and they would have to buy in some additional feed for the chickens and goats. However, goats don't provide a steady supply of milk all-the year round and chickens don't normally produce a lot of eggs in the winter.

If you like to eat some meat you will find that your land requirements will add up to about one acre per person per year, or even more, if you don't make very intensive use of your land.

There are a variety of different combinations of land uses which can help you to get a good yield from your acre(s), notably planting orchards in such a way that you can graze animals underneath and between the trees. Traditional farm orchards used to be planted with standard size fruit trees which made it possible even to graze cows in them. Smaller half-standard fruit trees, once they are properly established, have branches high enough to allow sheep and goats to graze beneath them, but it is advisable to protect the bark. You can thus get fruit, milk, wool and meat from the same piece of land. Bush fruit orchards which are usually planted nowadays because you can get fruit off them in only three or four years are alright as chicken runs and as grazing land for geese.

It is apparent, then, that your diet determines greatly how much land you require for food self-sufficiency, ranging from about half to three-quarters of an acre for four vegans, to about one and a half acres for four vegetarians to about four acres for four meat eaters. However, most people find the aim to be fully self-sufficient in food unrealistic. The normal practice of 'new peasants' is to grow some, barter some and buy some. Very few have food production as their full-time occupation, because self-sufficiency in food, even if you achieve that, does not mean self-sufficiency in all the necessities of life. Most rural settlers must earn some cash income in addition to growing a lot of their own food. In Britain today about a third of family income is spent on buying food and drink. If you use about a quarter to a third of your working time instead for producing food (and drink) for home consumption, this is time well used. You can thus live well on a relatively low cash income which, incidentally, also puts you in a conveniently low tax bracket.