I'm all for improving the success of local agricultural efforts, and the 2.5-acre farms held by many people in the article seems like an improvement over the gigantic thousand-acre ones here in terms of sustainability, but it's hard for me to generalize how something like small scale thresher manufacturing would work in America. The average commercial farm in the US is a much larger operation and has millions of doll…
> 2.5-acre farms held by many people in the article seems like an improvement over the gigantic thousand-acre ones here in terms of sustainability Smaller farms -may- have less vast monoculture sustainability issues. However, how do the 2.5 acre farms achieve the efficiencies that scale affords the massive farms in terms of water, energy, and fertilizer use?
> In many villages, 50-80 percent of families have the full VAC system. Figures show that 30-60 percent of income of most village families may come from the system; in many cases, it may be 100 percent.
> The pond is constructed close to the house so that the domestic and kitchen wastes are drained into the fishpond. The livestock pens and garden are also situated near the pond. The 1000-5000 m2 garden includes a variety of vegetables (i.e. green onion, sweet potato, watercress, etc.) and fruits (i.e. banana, orange, peach, apricot, etc.) and other crops, including sugarcane, tea and cassava. This provides a mix of perennial and annual crops.
This is all on generally less than an acre (1 acre = 4000 square meters)! Fish, crops, and livestock in one self-contained system.