Oil Crops: Some people may be wondering why I’ve included this. The truth is that oil is necessary not just for various fats the body needs (in small amounts). But is a major culinary boost and can be a real help to anyone trying to survive off of only potatoes. Additionally oil can be used to make everything from soap to biodiesel (not ethanol you need sugar crops for that). Oil is also needed in working with tools, waterproofing cloth, lube, paint, lamp oil, and probably several other miscellaneous uses I can’t even think of. The point is that oil is useful, here are some places to get self-sufficient oil from. Please note that nearly everything on this list requires some kind of an oil press to extract the oil out of. Also a piece of data sourced by Wikipedia is journeytoforever.org which has an easy to use list of oil yields per acre of crop, however I cannot find any sources for this information that was found other than sources that look to be copied from journeytoforever.org. So take this data with a grain of salt.
Avocados: Millennial dream, shame it only grows in warm climates up to usda zone 9. Avocados produce 282 gallons of oil per acre, that’s roughly 6.26 gallons per 1000 square ft, a considerable amount. This is great info, but for a single tree that takes up around 200 square feet (and is 30-40ft tall) a single tree produces 60lbs of avocados. Assuming that as much as a third of their weight is in oil and all of that can be extracted (this is a big if), that should be roughly 20 pounds of oil per tree (or 2.6 gallons of oil per tree), still considerable provided that one hundred percent of the oil can be expelled from the avocado. As a side note Avocados do not require a pollinating companion.
Walnuts: These nuts are fantastic for self sufficiency, high in protein, high in oil, and the trees can be taped for sugar rich nutty sap to make a product comparable to maple syrup. An acre of walnut trees can produce 258 gallons of oil or roughly 5.73 gallons of oil per 1000 square feet. A single walnut tree takes up anywhere from 450-2000 square feet, they require pollination, but are wind pollinated, not by insects. Doing my own math here. Walnut trees drop 66-350 pounds of walnuts with the highs and lows being on alternating years. Assuming a 60% yield of oil and 15% usable nut meat per nut, that single tree can produce 210lbs of oil or roughly 3.9375 gallons in a good year. Though realistic values will go average out to about 2.25 gallons of oil per year. Please note that the time and effort required to process walnuts is extensive to say the least. Why is it every time I try to do math on walnuts something looks wrong?
Pecans: Not just for pies and southern cooking. Pecan trees can produce 191 gallons per acre or roughly 4.2 gallons per 1000 square feet. Pecan trees can grow to be massive at 70ft tall and a spread of 50ft, Meaning a single tree can require nearly 2000 square feet of space or roughly the same size as a walnut tree. Pecans are roughly 65% oil at 100lbs of pecans for a healthy tree that number is roughly 65lbs of oil converting to roughly 8 gallons of oil for a single tree. Pecans can self pollinate but do best when there are other pecan trees nearby.
Olives: An oil solution from the Greeks, thank Athena, I just wish she gave them a growing zone above USDA 7. Olive trees produce 129 gallons of oil per acre or roughly 2.8 gallons per 1000 square feet. The average olive tree grows only about 18ft wide taking up 250 square feet of land. A mature olive tree produces roughly 40lbs of olives a year, at 20% oil content that translates to just under a gallon of olive oil per tree. Although it would be beneficial to have two for the purposes of cross pollination.
Rapeseed (Canola): First on the list not to be a permaculture crop. This means less long term planning is needed as this can just be planted every year as needed. This also means that it has to be planted every year, and harvesting is likely more difficult than shaking a tree onto a tarp and waiting for the fruit to fall. Anyway rapeseed produces 127 gallons of oil per acre or roughly 2.8 gallons of oil per 1000 square feet.
Opium Poppy: This one surprised me too. At 124 gallons of oil per acre it produces roughly 2.7 gallons per 1000 square feet. I would try growing rapeseed instead though as it’s less likely to involve a raid by the police.
Peanuts: Already mentioned in the protein crops so this one is a winner. At 113 gallons per acre peanuts produce 2.5 gallons per 1000 square feet.
Sunflowers: At 102 gallons per acre this is an excellent crop for both aesthetic, pollination, and oil production uses. Per 1000 square feet this produces 2.2 gallons of oil.
Rice: Also on the bulk calorie crops table so this crop has a surprising double use. At 88 gallons per acre this produces 1.9 gallons of oil per 1000 square feet.
Sesame: A vital component in tahini and therefore hummus production. At 74 gallons per acre this is actually a pretty decent crop for oil production. At 1.64 gallons per 1000 square feet it’s not terrible.
Hazelnuts (Filberts): Surprisingly little of it in Nutella. Filberts are a great tree to grow when space is limited and something other than fruit is wanted. Hazelnut trees can be planted in areas roughly 20ft by 20ft, or at a 20ft diameter circle of 314 square feet though this varies greatly with species. Modern hazelnut varieties provide roughly 2800lbs per acre, although this number is currently rising due to new varieties. Roughly 108 trees can be placed well per acre, and will yield roughly 2800lbs of nuts. That’s roughly 25lbs of nuts per tree. At 60% oil by weight of dry hazelnuts a single tree can produce 15lbs of oil per tree with an efficient process or nearly 2 gallons. Meaning that 3 trees can produce up to 45lbs or 5.5 gallons of oil, on nearly 1000 square feet. An impressive figure provided nearly all the oil can actually be pressed. Although hazelnuts are wind pollinated they still need another variety nearby to pollinate with, though with many trees being as small as glorified bushes (10 to 12ft tall/wide) finding spaces for these trees is usually not a concern.
Flax (linseed): The fibers that make up linens will have an excess of seeds. These can be pressed to produce roughly 51 gallons per acre, or roughly 1.2 gallons per acre of seed fuel. Not bad for something that would need to be grown anyway to produce linen. Additionally this oil is well known for its ability to preserve tools and uses in the machining world.
Hemp: Hemp seeds are getting to be known as a superfood, so with hemp beginning to be grown more and more for one reason or another, hemp oil will likely enter the market as a superfood one way or another. At 39 gallons per acre, help produces about 0.86 gallons per 1000 square feet as a byproduct. Sell or trade it to dumb people for more money! It can be an excellent bonus on top of twisting to hemp into fiber for rope or fabrics.
Cotton: Eli Whitney inventing the cotton gin is one of the oddest takeaways everyone seems to remember from elementary school. The cotton gin separated the seeds from the cotton fibers easily and cheaply, turning cotton into the cash crop of the 1800s. A side effect of growing so much cotton is the ability to take the excess seeds and press them into oil which appears to be good for machining purposes. At 35 gallons per acre, 1000 square feet of cotton produce roughly 0.77 gallons of oil. Not a great result, but an excess of seeds can make this a free oil source.
Corn: Literally the only reason I’m including this on the list is because I never realized how inefficient corn oil is. Corn is a great crop for producing carbohydrates, terrible for oils. There’s a reason corn ethanol is produced and not corn biodiesel. Corn produces about 18 gallons per acre when grown for oil, or roughly 0.4 gallons
Algae?: This one everyone has heard about. Most people probably remember headlines years ago stating that algae would be powering everything within ten years due to its ability to produce biofuel out of practically nothing but waste water. Nowadays the only time I hear about algae fuel is in the background of science fiction novels. The truth is algae seems to be an incredibly effective way of producing fuel, but at the moment it’s more small scale and not large industrial scale. It’s more analogous to brewing or mushroom farming than factory farming which is part of the reason it hasn’t taken over. Nobody can just chuck a vial of microalgae culture into a pond and come back a year later to harvest a transport fleet’s supply of oil. At the moment algae is completely viable for small scale setups such as reused fish tanks and old rain barrels. But foreign contamination can take over easily which means infrastructure costs are heavy for large scale production. There are plenty of tutorials for small scale biodiesel production on the internet with various levels of success depending on skill and luck. Technically speaking Algae can produce anywhere from 5000 to 15000 gallons of fuel per acre or 188 gallons per 1000 square feet, though this would take a great deal of effort to make and refine. A more realistic number would be 1.8 gallons of fuel for 10 square feet of space, say from out of old water heaters. If anyone wants to learn more, I recommend researching Appleseed biodiesel reactors.
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