Reddit reviews Restoration Agriculture
We found 10 Reddit comments about Restoration Agriculture. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Acres U S A
Reddit reviews Restoration AgricultureWe found 10 Reddit comments about Restoration Agriculture. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
There are some great resources to read over the winter.
Bill Mollison was the guy who started Permaculture. A great start would be to read his Design Manual.
This will give you a framework to think about Permaculture. You could spend years following the aspects that fascinate you whether it is landscape design or grey water systems or rocket stove heaters, mob grazing, natural swimming pools, or a million other directions you can take it. It's good to have an overview first.
About making a living, there were a couple aspects that never made sense to me. First if I wanted to make living on a permaculture farm full time, how was I supposed to eat apples all year? I like the idea of perennials, but I was confused. Then I met Mark Shepard in Wisconsin at his farm. He explained that it's more than just fruits. He grows hazelnuts for oil, chestnuts for carbs, and veggies between the rows. That made more sense to me. Mark has a permaculture design course that he calls Restoration Agriculture where he talks about how to purchase the land, how to structure your business, etc.
The second area of confusion for me was how to make a living teaching design courses. In any given area, there is a finite number of people interested in Permaculture. For you to teach courses and continue to get enough people to make a living, you need to be a big name like Geoff Lawton. So I thought about falling back on design. Even fewer people have the money to pay you to design their property. Meanwhile more and more people want to do this for a living.
Basically, I'm still struggling to figure out how to realistically pay my bills just doing permaculture. I hesitate to say this because I don't want to discourage you. Permaculture is amazing.
I'm not sure it is possible to do it with small-scale, localized agriculture.
I think the goal is to scale permaculture up to the size of conventional agriculture, but even here the jury's still out. There's no real data yet because there hasn't been enough people doing permaculture at that scale. On the one hand, I can imagine Permaculture out-competing because you get so many different crops from one acre of land; on the other, conventional agriculture is so much more efficient per input, since virtually 100% of your input is going to the crop (versus going to nitrogen fixers, ground cover, etc.). I think Fukuoka was able to beat conventional farms in Japan, but none of his students have been able to, so one of the few examples I can think of adds to the ambiguity.
Mark Shepard is really trying to address this; he does think that Permaculture scaled up can out-compete. I'm reading his book right now, and it is mind-blowing.
Anyway, I guess this a really long-winded way of saying this argument isn't settled yet and ultimately only will be once people start doing permaculture.
EDIT: fixed my crazy link :/
I am also interested in what foods you are growing/planning on growing /u/mrsfrugalwoods
I read this book last year and the way Mark Shepard approaches food growing is a lot like early retirement planning.
Do you have any plan on how the livestock you mentioned will be incorporated into that area? If not, I'd recommend Mark Sheppard's "restoration agriculture".
Also, if you're interested in a larger list of potentially compatible plants you can see one [here.] (http://www.americanplant.net/index.php/gardening-tips/organic-gardening/13-resource-library/plant-care-sheets/60-plants-to-grow-under-black-walnuts)
I am just about to finish Mark Shepards "Restoration agriculture". im sure its been brought up on the forums before...
I highly recommend it due to his more extensive discussion of growing staple crops in a regenerative fashion (instead of some fun loving feel good hugelkulture backyard project book =P).
heres a link
http://www.amazon.com/Restoration-Agriculture-Mark-Shepard/dp/1601730357
here is a link to his website though, where you can read a little more, purchase his hazelnuts, and many different kinds of rootstock (which i am going to do in a year or 2... thousands!!).
http://www.forestag.com/book.html
regards
>I'm always happy to hear from people about what hey want. Dialogue is important. It's a complex subject full of moral and ethical hurdles. I believe in conventional ag because it maximizes yield.
I dont have the exact numbers off my head but the farmer mark Shepards book outlines that a polyculture system that includes grains out performed conventional systems massively in calorie count while being organic. It's like in chapter 10
https://www.amazon.com/Restoration-Agriculture-Mark-Shepard/dp/1601730357
Gabe doesnt use any fertilizer other than cover crops and animals and is more concerned about profit than yields.
I think gabe speaks better for himself than I can, this is a short lecture, there is longer ones on YouTube where he really gets into the weeds of his operation, plus he just wrote book
https://youtu.be/_2IURGFk5Yw,
The way mycelium works as I understand it is like a highway that shares and moves nutrients back and forth, working with plants providing a shared economy
Agrominst Ray Archuleta speaks better to it than I and the story starting at 3 minutes hits close to home for me.
https://youtu.be/a5qQatQQ3-0
See "Restoration Agriculture" https://www.amazon.ca/Restoration-Agriculture-World-Permaculture-Farmers/dp/1601730357
I don't think all of his systems are workable. You will need some form of easy to move electric fence. You also will need some form of protector animals that live with the flocks. (Eat Alberta Lamb. 10,000 coyotes can't be wrong)
From what I understand it's basiclly because of the chain of production that goes into raising cattle (water required for the crops to grow feed for the animals). Everything needs to be overhauled. We grow mostly corn, but the majority of what's grown isn't even used for direct human consumption.
A good book to read on the subject is Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard
I can't seem to find the passage at the moment, but I'm sure I read somewhere in mark shepard's book about no-till coming from the organic/permaculture movement. I could be mistaken however, so I'll edit that.
However, cover crops almost entirely fell out of favor after WW2 due to n-based fertilizer, organic farmers were the ones who developed it since:
http://www.jswconline.org/content/70/6/130A.extract