I have just a few acres. I've actually done this math. If the End of the World came, I could probably just about feed my family on my land. I could put in two acres of corn, an acre of vegetables, and keep a few of my sheep for the occasional Sunday dinner with meat. We have sime chickens in the back yard which are self sustaining during the summer but have to be fed corn in the winter. The sheep would need corn and hay in the winter as well. It wouldn't be a pretty existence but we might survive.

But I'm surrounded on all sides by other families. There are 13 people in addition to my family of four within shouting distance of my back door. They aren't farmers. Some of their land is theoretically arable, if they knew how to do it and had the equipment, which they don't, and if they had already improved their soil to make it amenable to subsistence farming, which they haven't.

Small farmers could have fed the country fifty years ago, when there were a lot more of us and when many more people who weren't farmers nevertheless substantially supplemented their diets with family gardens. But there are far fewer farmers and far more people to feed now.

It could be done - it has been done in the past - but we are heading in the opposite direction and have been for several decades.