Food Circles for Ottawa-Gatineau

     With rising food prices, food security is on many minds, articles and social media posts of people everywhere, including Ottawa.  My reaction to this is to wonder, how much land does the population of Ottawa actually depend on for food production?  

    The food we eat here comes from all over the world and depends on our ability and willingness to pay for food to be imported on top of what is locally grown, though the exact details are very difficult to nail down.  At the very least I wanted to find some general numbers, mainly how many acres does it take to feed one person.

    The results one gets from asking this question through google yields understandably varied results, as the per acre efficiency of growing food varies between crop types, climates, and the diets of a given population. Nonetheless, with the caveat that I understand the data sources may or may not be reliable or relevant to my region, I've put together some infographics to illustrate what I've been able to find from a cursory google search.

    The following infographics are meant to illustrate the radius of a circle of agricultural land required to feed the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan region - population ~ 1,489,000, given various per acre efficiencies I was able to find on google, along with some benchmark efficiencies.


    Again I must stress the reliability and relevance of the data sources may not be applicable to the Ottawa region, but I think it's very important to be able to visualize the land use implications associated with any given efficiency numbers.

    Many considerations are necessary when assessing the land-use efficiency of a given agricultural project, especially when high efficiencies are cited. Is supporting infrastructure included, such as water, electricity/energy, equipment manufacture, storage and maintenance, housing and other staff supports?  What are the inputs? Some high-tech solutions like hydroponics that promise high efficiencies may have large energy requirements.  These food circles certainly don't tell the whole story, but should at least help to illuminate some theoretical minimums associated with certain efficiency numbers.  When we talk about sustainability it's important to understand the implications of our claims.

    

Some links generated by searching "acres needed to feed one person" in Google:

Primalsurvivor: How Much Land Do You Need to Be Self-Sufficient? (primalsurvivor.net)

Perma Culturism: How Much Land Does It Take To Feed One Person - Online Calculator (permaculturism.com)

Plantrician Project: Footnotes – The Plantrician Project

edit: Added links

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Earthships

Image
Earthship Brighton   Dominic Alves   CC BY 2.0        An architectural concept that I find compelling and important to consider is the earthship. Earthships are designed to function off-grid with minimal outside dependencies. They generate on their own the small amount of electricity they use. They collect rainwater for drinking, and reuse wastewater for growing food either outside or in greenhouses. Organic wastes are reused as fertilizer.        Earthships are generally constructed largely from reclaimed materials such as glass bottles and car tires.   Some designs even employ sun-powered convection cooling that can keep temperatures under control in hot climates, without requiring any hazardous refrigerants.  Once built, the overall amount of work needed to keep the earth-ship functional and comfortable is relatively small, allowing the residents to enjoy slow-paced, relaxed life styles close to nature.     The ear...
Read more

Confederation Heights Model

Image
 Different tone for this post. I just wanted to share a random hobby project. This is a 3D model I'm building in Blender of a part of Ottawa I feel is poorly used.  This minor highway, the Airport Parkway which turns into Bronson Avenue does this ramp sprawl in this area, rendering a lot of land un-developable despite being at the convergence of several transportation corridors. It's also  complicated to navigate by foot or bicycle . I want to see if I can redesign the area for a sustainable community. I traced off of maps from Geo Ottawa to build this. Left: Satellite imagery from GeoOttawa, Right: Topographic map from GeoOttawa Blender Render.  Gray: Roads, Red: Transitway, Very narrow lines: Railways Note: the O Train overpass over the VIA line isn't included as the GeoOttawa maps haven't been updated to include it.  
Read more