Target "Sanity Check"

GOAL: Determine whether it is feasible for an indoor farm to be run by one person in reasonable space and produce enough calories to sustain them indefinitely.

Explanation

It seems obvious that a person working alone, outdoors, could produce enough food to survive year-round by going hard during the growing season and then storing the excess for the off-season. But in a food crisis, outdoor gardens are vulnerable to pilfering, unpredictable weather, and pests. So Project Calorie Fountain will explore indoor, year-round production.

Deliverables

• a list of candidate crops
• a data table measuring the caloric power of each crop

Success conditions

• multiple potential crops identified
• requires small enough space to fit inside a single room in a typical family home
• no special skills required
• no equipment required that can't be found in a typical hardware store or small town garden center
  • e.g. no fancy electronics, chemicals or materials

Methods used

• Surveyed the internet for discussions about high-caloric yield crops and built up a list of candidates.
• Did some independent digging for a few possibilities that I hadn't seen discussed anywhere else.
• Assembled a spreadsheet of candidates
• Researched crop yields in bushels/acre or pounds/acre in regional farm reports
• Researched calories per pound in reputable nutrition databases
• Converted bushels into pounds for all bushel/acre yield values
• Gathered approximate seed-to-harvest cycle times for all crops, based on seed supplier data sheets
• Computed approximate caloric power (cals/sqft/day) for all crops
• Estimated sqft/person fountain space requirements for each crop (assuming 2000 cal/day/person requirement)
• Of these, seaweed, salsify, sweet potatoes, potatoes, leeks, and oats all had space needs < 1000 sqft/person
• But seaweed and salsify require < 1/3 the space of all other candidates

Final Report

Several crops were identified with sufficient yield to meet daily caloric needs indefinitely, in the context of a small-footprint indoor farm.

DELIVERED: Project Calorie Fountain's first delivered document is the Caloric Power Table, version 1.0.

Recommendations

1. Accept target-sanity as successfully achieved
2. Create new targets primary targets:
   • Target Salsify Prove to confirm expected yield holds for indoor farming methods
   • Target Seaweed Prove to confirm expected yield holds for indoor farming methods
3. Supporting targets:
   • Target Kratky Tank to build a small kratky growth tank with monitoring equipment
   • Target Seaweed How to find out more about how to grow seaweed
   • source some salsify seeds
   • source some kelp seeds/cuttings