re: Society breaks down and you have to make it in a subsistence agriculture situation

Everybody saying 1 acre or less is forgetting about the necessity of raising some kind of animals for protein, and the necessity of having a cash crop to sell/trade for things you can't grow or make yourself. Paw Paw and MeeMaw may have had a little garden on the side, but they also had some other source of income. You could get by for a year or two with a big garden. For long term survival you're looking at 40+ acres, and the skill/equipment to scale up a regular farming operation. Almost no one who doesn't farm for a living would know how to do that, and even most farmers would be lost trying to plow with a mule, if they could even find a mule drawn plow and a mule to pull it.