What do you mean by that Koutenay? Do you mean that we can survive on a lot less than what is currently thought?

Denob, my life experiences have taught me that there's so often a story, a reason behind what is done. It may seem selfish or greedy that the guy trademarked what we now view as common terms, but perhaps he tagged them because in reality he was the pioneer of urban homesteading and he saw a liklihood that others were attempting to take credit and likely to trademark those terms themselves. In any event, the guy has been squeaking out a living in simplicity and respect for the environment and he did it mostly on his own ingenuity, beginning long before it was cool or commonplace to do so, so I think he deserves a lot of credit.

I'm 55 years old, and starting in my teens I avidly aspired to learn about organic, simple living & ways of providing food, etc. I bought the magazines and borrowed the books from the library... There was no internet. I don't recall any backyard enterprise as focussed, intentional, productive, varied as what he came up with. And I don't recall any terms like "urban homesteading" referred to, so maybe the ideas evolved from his original perspective and labor, and maybe he does deserve credit, his little "claim to fame" if you will. Maybe... I'm just trying to look at it from a different perspective, I may be wrong.

I didn't want to undermine anything that they have done with regards to growing huge amounts of food on little space.
I just get annoyed at people who do something good, then try to turn it into a huge thing for either fame or fortune.

I have, and don't need 14 acres, but like clearance. A few rv sites for extra income adds to pension incomes. My arts. etc. skills. might have another 30 years left in me, 25 productive ones.:) We are all long lived and spry into our late 80's and nineties.
When I say enough is enough you know what I mean, enough food shelter etc. Mostly peace and quiet days oblivious to the rat race world and just under the tax man and power company radar,being fully off grid. 🙂 Critters are for m, too constricting of my free range nature.:) I just grunt up a moose or rattle a deer, or, go buy some organic beef.:) Labor pool is handy too.
Plenty of moose sign and deer sign on the place. Grouse. Fish down the stream, trouts and salmon..great valley views.
I pretty much got it all. 🙂

Ok, this will depend on many factors, including terrain, climate, etc. That's a given.

What I'm wondering is how much land do you think would be needed to support an extended family of, let's say 20 people? Let's say average prairie kinda land.

You see people do amazing things with 1/4 acre, I'll try to find that inspirational guy from LA who produces an amazing amount of food in his yard.

As you said it depends on a lot of things, I guess you have to look at what you are going to have there for your 20 people... hogs, sheep, cattle, bison, etc...and then when you figure that out you need to figure out how much feed they need for a year...Grazing and winter supply......one cow needs 25 pounds of hay or grass per day....one hog needs about 2 pounds of chop per day...and so on, then you need to figure out what you will grow for the people and how much you need for the year "per person" and what you can keep year round..potatoes and such.....Exsample....my wife and I planted 100 hills of potatoes, we had a poor crop but a 100 hills should supply 6 people for the winter and if you have a bumper crop you should have enough for 8 people so with that said you would plant about 300 for 20 people...more is better then not enough.......So to answer your question is just not that simple you have a lot of logistics to figure out.....Its been a while since I had to figure out amounts for winter supply..Some of the green thumbs around here could chime in and add some info here.....Also Bison will forge for them selves in the winter but are much harder to handle...where cows need to be feed but are safer to handle and you can milk your cows......There's a bit of romance to old time living but it is a lot of work and the saying working to live applies...

And as Traveller has said, more is better. And that doesn't necessarily mean that over-abundance is wasted, as you can always cycle surplus through animals or save for next year's growing.

Also consider that most of the 'systems' being thrown around today as self-sufficient are french intensive based, which requires inputs. Historically these intensive farmers collected horse manure from cities. Practitioners of High Farming used the inputs from the animals on their farm. Predators, disease, famine and/or just a lack of inputs will reduce yield, as crops take out nutrients when they are picked and those nutrients need to be returned as manure or modern pellet fertilizer.

Personally I've become a huge fan of High Farming. Those old timers may not have known the exact why of what they did (but we do now), but they sure perfected the how it was done. The old ways of rotation are tried and proven successful and for that reason alone, I'd personally take the amount of land that is quoted today and I'd at least double it. Sure, modern system's rotate the growing areas, but they do so in relatively small areas. That way animals could be manuring one half while the other is producing veg or grains.