How much agricultural land and how many workers laboring in agriculture does it take to support large modern cities?
How much agricultural land and how many workers laboring in agriculture does it take to support large modern cities?
Just curious, figure someone on here will know
Edit: Thank you all for the great answers.
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The minimum amount of agricultural land necessary for sustainable food security, with a diversified diet similar to those of North America and Western Europe (hence including meat), is 0.5 of a hectare per person. This does not allow for any land degradation such as soil erosion, and it assumes adequate water supplies. Very few populous countries have more than an average of 0.25 of a hectare. It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare–and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. From the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1993)
.5 hectare ~ 1.24 acres
NYC pop 8.468 million ~ 10,500,320 acres
us pop = 331.9 million ~ 411,556,000 acres
world pop = 8.1 billion ~ 10,044,000,000 acres
using .5 hectare estimate
world pop = 8.1 billion ~ 10,044,000,000 acres
or about 40 million square km, roughly 3 times the size of russia
Yeesh and yet you have bazinga brains asking for a billion Americans.
there's 15 billion acres of land, and this doesn't count the sea or ancillary resources like urban farming, i assume. just to keep anyone from taking this data in a malthusian direction. 1 billion americans (as they are now) is a nightmare
Agreed. I think capitalism hinders the adoption of those techniques though, and the billion Americans people are also all capitalism worshipers
I would imagine in practice there's some overlap -- like, an acre of agricultural land meeting some fraction of input to several cities at once
This does not allow for any land degradation such as soil erosion, and it assumes adequate water supplies
That's really the problem imo, not space. Geometry is easy. It's all the limited reagents in the formula for feeding millions that's the problem.