What? Aren't you up in Queensland? Isn't that where sugar cane comes from? If Australia doesn't produce cane, sugar beets work pretty well...I guess...even though it fugged' up the recipe for Coke here in the states.
But being where you are, wouldn't you have to work less to survive?
Not so sure on betting the farm on vegies. Living on the coast there is a world of food out there just waiting to be fried up. Can be caught in nets or on a hook.
So much depends on the weather when planting crops.
5 acres is fine for scrub goats that give milk and hair to weave into clothing. Beef cows are just left on their own to survive as are hogs that get fat on acorns. The woods up here yield tons of nuts and berrys, have to look at what the indeginous people lived on if they were hunter gatheres.
Today we have all these plant diseases that we never had before, with nothing to combat the bugs, we will have to go to a meat eating society. Lots of vegies grow wild, grapes and greens.
Humans need fat, animal fat, one can starve to death eating rodents, or non fat carrying anamals.
What is that group in Africa that survives on just the blood and milk from their cows.?
Escomos that survived for 2,000 years on fat and the meat of what they could catch. Not one Vegetable in their intire life.
Places in the Andies people raise and comsume Ginnie pigs, some societies eat pigeon, we call it Dove, same thing.
We ajust to conditions and food is perhaps the most important. We milk and use for butter,yougert and cheese, camels, yacks and any thing that gives out milk, including humans.
Harvesting food from the ground is one heck of a hard thing to do, milking a sheep and eating lamb chops is oh so much easier.
We have to wait 90 days for vegies to mature, in that time one hog can drop 8-10 piglets that can fatten up in the field.
We are talking about survival here, our bodys change to what foods we injest. I have seen the drawings of the people from the far north when we first began exploring, their livers had expanded to process the high fat diet. Then there is the diet of the Norse Men and familys that was very high in cows milk, their hight began to grow.
Use what you have, never depend on nature to feed you, go with what you know will feed you and yours. A tomato may one day cost a fortune, but one can live without that treat.