What does it take to sustainably feed and clothe the Shoalhaven for one day?

The team at work with the calculations

We have to calculate what it takes in quantities to feed the Shoalhaven population in one day.
We have used the statistics provided for Sydney's population for daily consumption and then firstly divided each of those  values by Sydney's population of 4.6 million people so that we know consuption per person. We then researched our local population statistics for the Shoalhaven which is 98,338 people. Then by multiplying each per head value by our population we worked out what was required to feed the Shoalhaven. We repeated this process for the number of animals or amount of produce needed.
In summary the Shoalhaven population would need:

• 233 pigs
• 18475 fruit and vegetables
• 30484.78 hens
• 193 beef cattle/sheep
• 7867 dairy cows  
•  675 loaves of bread
•  18859261 bees
•  175041.64 grains of rice
•   641.33 hectares of land for cotton    

 each day.

 We imagine that some of that food has a low carbon footprint as it may have been produced in the Shoalhaven region. The South Coast milk label is looking at expanding their operations which indicates that there is a viable local market for locally grown milk. The Unicorn camembert label has also had success in the cheese market but we no longer have a large operational dairy factory as was once the case in Nowra. The Bega Co-operative is also a hugely successful dairy company and ABC at Tilba process their own milk and make an incredible range of gourmet cheeses that are sold to the public from the historic Tilba Tilba village (you can see the cows grazing in the paddocks right next to the processing cottage factory.
As for food waste locally there has been a huge initiative by Shoalhaven City Council to
run composting and worm farming workshops to reduce the amount of compostable waste that has been going into landfill. Our landfill waste station will reach its capacity in around 15 years and there is no where in the Shoalhaven for another to be built which means that people would have to pay higher rates for their garbage to be trucked out of the area. Landfill also produces huge amounts of methane which is a greenhouse gas that we want to reduce in our atmosphere.
They audited peoples' bins before and after the program and it was encouraging to see that people are beginning to really catch on. There is still too much waste going into landfill, especially with our local supermarkets. They should bring in a law to say that all supermarkets should have closed loop composting systems to deal with their waste. Then the gold produced could be used to establish community gardens in areas where communities are particularly disadvantaged so they could grow their own fresh fruit and vegetables.

The details of our calculations are in the table below.

Commodity Group	Kilograms consumed per day in Sydney	Kilograms person per day- Sydney	Kilograms for Shoalhaven population	Produce/animals required Sydney total	Produce/ animals required per person	Animals/plants needed Shoalhaven
Pork	303,726 Kg	0.07	6883.66	10,847 pigs	2.36	232.08
Horticulture	2,090,795 Kg	0.45	44,252.1	8,664,032 fruit and vegetables	1.88	18475.44
Poultry	1,295,562 Kg	0.000000028	0.03	1,423,832 hens	0.31	30484.78
Meat and Livestock	577,205 Kg	0.13	12.78	9,014 beasts	0.002	192.69
Dairy	1,817,315 Kg	0.0000004	0.04	390,146 dairy cows	0.08	7867.04
Grains	693,151 Kg	0.00015069	14.82	31,543 loaves of bread	0.007	674.60
Bees (honey)	12,603 Kg	0.0027	265.51	882,191,781 bees	191.78	18859261
Rice	163,836 Kg	0.04	3933.52	8,191,780,822 grains of rice	1.78	175041.64
Cotton	1,854 Bales = 420,858 Kg	0.09	8850.42	30,000 hectares of land	0.007	641.33