Part of Phase 3: Small Group
Food at Scale has one article that almost everything else in this domain depends on: Caloric Budget for a Community is a direct prerequisite for five of the other eleven articles here — Seed Bank Management, Crop Pest & Disease Management, Four-Season Growing, Harvest Labor Calendar, and Community Kitchen Design all require it. It calculates a community of 30-150 people’s true caloric needs by season, then converts that into exactly how much land, labor, and livestock it actually takes — the number every later decision in this domain is built on.
Community Kitchen Design is the second load-bearing article: a kitchen feeding 30-150 people daily needs at least 600-800 square feet and a strict one-way flow from raw food to cooked to served to avoid outbreaks, and it’s a direct prerequisite for both Large-Scale Smoking & Curing and Canning & Pressure Preservation. Both of those also require Salt Production & Sourcing — a community of 100 needs 1,500-3,000 lbs of salt a year, whether produced or traded — since smoking and canning both lean on salt as a preservative. A community-scale smokehouse needs at least 8x8x8 feet inside, enough for a 400-600 lb cow or a hog kill, and canning keeps food safe for 1-5+ years with no refrigeration, but canning low-acid foods below pH 4.6 risks Clostridium botulinum if the process is rushed.
Drought Resilience, Food Forest & Permaculture Design, and Sugar Production & Sweetener Sourcing stand apart as their own entry points, needing nothing from this list. Drought Resilience is built for the driest years a community will face, not the average one. Food Forest & Permaculture Design takes 5-15 years to reach full production through seven vertical layers, from canopy nut trees down to root crops, and it’s the one prerequisite Crop Pest & Disease Management actually needs beyond the caloric budget. Sugar Production is the simplest of the three: one strong beehive yields 30-60 lbs of surplus honey a year with no processing infrastructure needed at all.
The Caloric Budget and What It Feeds
The one number this whole domain is built on, and the four planning articles that require it directly.
- Caloric Budget for a Community
- Community Seed Bank Management
- Harvest Labor Calendar & Work Coordination
- Four-Season Growing & Season Extension
- Crop Pest & Disease Management Without Chemicals
Feeding and Preserving at Scale
The kitchen that feeds 30-150 people daily, the salt it and the preservation methods both need, and the two ways food actually gets kept.
- Community Kitchen Design & Operation
- Salt Production & Sourcing
- Large-Scale Smoking & Curing
- Canning & Pressure Preservation
Independent Tracks
Three entry points that need nothing else from this list first.