I would say corn, then potato. But you're right, the startup isn't being all that forthcoming with details and it's likely their claims are (greatly) exaggerated, or perhaps, from a purely "well, technically..." point-of-view.
In the calorie department, corn is king [..] corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre [..] wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million. Rice is also very high-yielding, at 11 million, and potatoes are one of the few crops that can rival corn: They also yield about 15 million [..] Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million
If I was designing a two-acre farm to feed my family, I wouldn't devote much space to corn. Corn is a very useful crop but mostly once it's processed and you need a lot of it.
Here's what I think I'd grow:
Potatoes - Incredibly easy to grow. Produces a ton of food. Can be grown in trash cans on otherwise unusable land. Very versatile and useful in so many cuisines. If I had to place my bets on one staple crop, it's potatoes.
Green beans (Blue Lake variety or similar) - Also very easy to grow. You trellis them and they don't take up a lot of ground space. Incredibly bountiful crop--you'll have trash bags full from 50 sq ft of beans. Puts nutrients back in the soil--very good crop to rotate.
Kale - Nutritious, versatile crop. Easy to grow.
Tomatoes - Nutritious and so easy to grow. Can be grown vertically in raised pots for more space efficiency.
Tomatillos - Tasty, good for sauces. These grow as voraciously as the green beans.
Pumpkins, squashes, etc. - These are wandering vines so you can plant them in good soil on the edge of unusable land and let them grow out over the areas that you couldn't plant in.
Various lettuces - Not easy to grow--they're susceptible to pests and they bolt as soon as the weather gets too warm--but they grow fast and if your family likes salad, you'll eat a lot of them.
Seconding this. My dad's been trying to grow a bit of corn on our land in Texas for years, probably decades at this point. All we have to show for it is a once-a-year small ear of corn on Thanksgiving.
The potatoes, on the other hand, he grows by the bucket in piles of hay thrown into old, bald tires. I suspect the damned things will grow in anything that's been near a nutrient.
Yup. Something that I can recommend if you have children: just buy a large flower pot (15" diameter), put it on your balcony, and stick 2 potatoes in it.
Your children will see potatoes grow live, and you can eat them with them. Fun thing to do, very easy, and works so well.
For soil, just some normal soil you can dig out anywhere is enough, but you can also buy pre-fertilized soil if you wish (as said, the potatoes would even grow in garbage cans)
Most important thing I would add to that is cabbage, which I believe you can grow together with the potatoes. Entire countries survived WW2 on cabbage and potato soup, it's very nutritious.
If you're after some flavour, I'd also add onions and celery, which I guess go in normal soil with the cabbage and potatoes, and also carrots, which will want sandy soil. There's a good reason these three veggies together form the basis of lots of French and Italian cooking.
Note: "However, many chemicals are often unsuccessful when used against this pest because of the beetle's ability to rapidly develop insecticide resistance."
If that was my staple crop, I'd be dead of starvation right about now.
Agreed with you list. Corn can be interesting to feed chickens, though. (I mean maize when I say corn, do you guys mean maize or wheat?) BTW, you can grow beans in the corn, it grows over it.
I would add a bit of barley/oat but that's more work than the rest.
These are 1st year or 2nd year numbers. The output per-acre will steadily decline afterwards unless you know to set some land aside to be fallow and grow something that will return nitrogen to the soil.
And like was mentioned by dghughes, rotation is important. From about the middle ages to the early 20th century, European farmers practiced the three-crop rotation scheme. Winter wheat or rye in one field, peas, lentils or beans in a second, and the third would be "resting". It got replaced in Britain and Belgium with the four-crop rotation plan, which produced more calories.
There's an excellent article that champions the calories-per-acre metric by WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...
In the calorie department, corn is king [..] corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre [..] wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million. Rice is also very high-yielding, at 11 million, and potatoes are one of the few crops that can rival corn: They also yield about 15 million [..] Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million