Self Sufficiency
Ecological landscape design & sustainable landscaping
Self sufficiency is a terminology that translates into different meanings to different people. Self sufficiency in its purest form is to support your own existence in terms of food, water, waste and housing purely from elements not derived from products and materials produced from modern economies consuming fossil fuel energy.
With that said a more obtainable stand point is to be self sufficient in terms of local food production. A more realistic notion but by no means an easy reality in terms of survival. A man would need to farm one acre, with organic gardening methods, no machinery and live a completely vegetarian existence to have enough food sustain him. Using more permanent forest systems this could be brought down to one tenth of a acre but the diet of someone living this existence would look much more different from a modern Western European. The amount of land it takes to support one person takes into account numerous factors of which calculate our ‘ecological foot print’. It has been said if a circle was drawn around London to represent its ecological foot print its edges would reach Paris.
With that said a more obtainable stand point is to be self sufficient in terms of local food production. A more realistic notion but by no means an easy reality in terms of survival. A man would need to farm one acre, with organic gardening methods, no machinery and live a completely vegetarian existence to have enough food sustain him. Using more permanent forest systems this could be brought down to one tenth of a acre but the diet of someone living this existence would look much more different from a modern Western European. The amount of land it takes to support one person takes into account numerous factors of which calculate our ‘ecological foot print’. It has been said if a circle was drawn around London to represent its ecological foot print its edges would reach Paris.
To be completely self sufficient is a huge unrealistic feat for most modern people but small changes to our habits and consumer lifestyle can reduce our foot print, improve our diets, increase our physical fitness, increase our mental well being and even safe us money. At Ecospaces we realise reducing our energy demands on the planet happens on a local level through good design and landscape installations. We can install infrastructure for animal husbandry, design in ecological irrigation and drainage systems. Build landscapes which provide food and recycle waste.
Further Reading