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From 01-Jan-2014: Post #72
Summary, for 12 people: (my work, greenhouse area)
Coffee 298 m^2
Soybean 475 m^2
Wheat 600 m^2
Potato 145 m^2
Rice 157.5 m^2
Corn 120.5 m^2
Black Pepper 3.5 m^2
Barley 13.5 m^2
Sugar Beet 13 m^2
Fenugreek 0.378 m^2
Vanilla 3 m^2
Grapes 12 m^2
Orange/Lemon 6 m^2
Apple/Pear 6 m^2
Plum 6 m^2Note: you can graft any citrus to any other citrus, any stone fruit to stone fruit, and any apple to apple. I include one orange tree with a single branch of lemon. There is one exception to this rule: you can graft an "interstem" of a variety of apple called Winter Banana to an apple tree; then graft pear to Winter Banana.
Also assume a device with in-vitro chloroplasts: recycle CO2 + H2O -> O2 + starch. This device will require a nursery to grow peas: at 2 weeks, leaves harvested for chloroplasts. You will have to grow some pea plants to maturity for seads.
chemicals: Salt, ammonia processed with CO2 to become baking soda. Grapes processed to form tartaric acid. Baking soda + tartaric acid + starch -> baking powder. Ammonium nitrate as nitrogen fertilizer for soil.
Other crops not sized yet:
Oats
Onion
Beet
Garlic
Parsley
Sesame
Pea
Green beans
Black beans
Carrot
Cassava (tapioca)
Flax (source of omega-3, important for meatless diet)
Guar (a bean)
Irish moss (carrageenan) - sea weed, grows in a water tankMarmite:
Also necessary for a meatless diet: vitamin B12. A variety of cyanobacteria called Spirolina has it, but some bacteria also produce B12. Streptomyces griseus is a bacterium once thought to be a yeast, and can be grown with yeast to add B12. One article claims Propionibacterium shermanii and Pseudomonas denitrificans have now replaced S. griseus. In either case, the UK variety of Marmite is fortified with B12 from a bacterium.
This is a total of 1,859.378 m² for 12 people, or 154.95 m² per person. That doesn't include the additional crops for which area is not worked out. Basis was to calculate per capita consumption of each crop, then how much area a farm field requires to grow that much on Earth. Nothing extreme.
If you want to produce "artificial flour" with starch from in vitro chloroplasts and protein from a microbe, then we don't require most of the wheat. Area for sugar cane is already reduced. Sugar cane to produce molasses, white sugar produced from in vitro chloroplasts. This chart includes sugar beet because they grow in cold climate such as Canada or North Dakota. However, molasses from sugar beet is, um, not tasty, so we would need sugar cane for that.
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