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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rothe" data-source="post: 3398447" data-attributes="member: 39813">8,000 makes sense and would call this a city by medieval standards, a small city by Roman standards.If they are planting wheat seeding 2 bu/acre with an average yield of 4:1 (a good conservative medieval tech number), you'll need 2 ac per person assuming 12bu year to feed one adult human male.  This is eating real good by medieval standards basically a good 2000 calories a day by bread alone. Since it is also wheat they'll be eating like medieval nobility.  Add in goats, figs and sheep you'll do well.  If they grow what was the common food, spelt, emmer, millet etc. you'll get higher yields and basically be able to feed 1 person per ac.  Some of these plants are also more resistant to salination, a concern with extensive irrigation.Assume an acre per person for cultivated land (no rotation but with all those caravan animals manure/fertilizer shouldn't be a problem) will give you fields extending about 2 miles from the walls in each direction using 8,000 acres, 1 square mile=640 acres.  Which is really not that far as the horzon is 3 miles for a person standing on flat ground.   So you'll certainly see the desert from the city gates.Animal fodder is probably just as much a concern as food for people, with all the caravn animals going by.  There are plenty of rangeland web sites from various agriculture departments that can tell you how many AUM (animal unit months) a given acre can provide, nd guidelines for estimating such based on ground cover.  1 AU = 1000 lbs of animal.All of this with average soil and basic medieval tech/Roman tech.  Add in better soil, great weather, better plant varieties, better fertilizer, each improved factor can increase yield 20-50%.  Of course if any of these are for the worse, they each can decrease yield by 20-50%. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Add in seed drill, horse-hoes and cradle scyhtes and things get much, much better.  Row cropping by seed drills and horse-hoeing can increase your yields by 75-250%.</blockquote>

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