>>> It takes 5+ acres in a decently arable region with fertilizer to feed one person. By the time you're providing for a significant fraction of your caloric intake, it ceases to be a "garden".
This is incorrect, it takes around 1/2 an acre if it's vegetarian or 1.5 acres including chickens/ducks for meat and eggs. That's using a traditional organic farming. If you use Hydroponics (Plants grown in water with no soil) or Aeroponics (Hydroponics grown in towers) or Aquaponics (Hydroponics with aquaculture, where the fish provide both protein and the fertilizer for the plants) the yield is dramatically higher (5x-10x per sq ft) can be done year round and indoors. It's not a perfect solution, it takes knowledge to setup and run, a very small capital investment for startup, and a constant power source. That said it IS commercially viable, you can already today buy produce produced this way in almost any grocery store, and it's viable for home production. I personally have several systems running in my apartment ranging from off the shelf commercial systems (AeroGarden Back to the Roots...) to custom built aquaponics systems. On a pure dollar level it's more expensive per lb of food, no doubt but within reason I don't care about that. I grow better and fresher food and most importantly I control the supply chain.
We can and should use these kind of technologies to replace as much of the modern agriculture system as we possibly can. No of the this mentions the MASSIVE environmental improvement that switching to these systems would make, which is reason enough to do it.
This is incorrect, it takes around 1/2 an acre if it's vegetarian or 1.5 acres including chickens/ducks for meat and eggs. That's using a traditional organic farming. If you use Hydroponics (Plants grown in water with no soil) or Aeroponics (Hydroponics grown in towers) or Aquaponics (Hydroponics with aquaculture, where the fish provide both protein and the fertilizer for the plants) the yield is dramatically higher (5x-10x per sq ft) can be done year round and indoors. It's not a perfect solution, it takes knowledge to setup and run, a very small capital investment for startup, and a constant power source. That said it IS commercially viable, you can already today buy produce produced this way in almost any grocery store, and it's viable for home production. I personally have several systems running in my apartment ranging from off the shelf commercial systems (AeroGarden Back to the Roots...) to custom built aquaponics systems. On a pure dollar level it's more expensive per lb of food, no doubt but within reason I don't care about that. I grow better and fresher food and most importantly I control the supply chain.
We can and should use these kind of technologies to replace as much of the modern agriculture system as we possibly can. No of the this mentions the MASSIVE environmental improvement that switching to these systems would make, which is reason enough to do it.