They say "You can't feed even one person with permaculture" -- thread of proof that's not true

To grow all your food ..  you need to figure out a diet ..  daily/weekly/yearly ... staple crop .. storage if needed ....

2000-2500 calories/person/every day

If you plan to use animal products , you will need more land. 

As I state in another thread , I don't see how you can do it on less than 2.5 acres/adult

I would like to communicate with someone/anyone who has grown all their food.

agree. he may bring stuff in, but I tend to look at what someone is doing and if I think they could do it all in house or if they have to rely on others for them to make a living. Sometimes they are just trying to return on investment.

Who's more likely to survive a supply chain disruption: a permaculture farmer or an industrial farmer?

jmy wrote:
 

As I state in another thread , I don't see how you can do it on less than 2.5 acres/adult

i recall once reading a rather convincing report that a family of four can subsist relatively well on the year-round product of a hydroponic set-up in a double walk-in closet -

i guess it goes to show that opinion can span a wide horizon -

Maybe only if a few permie grow all their food because of question of energy return on energy/equipement/skills/time/money invested.

What if the most efficient way to self-sufficiency on a broader scale is to grow 80% (or 70% or ..) and trade the surplus to get the needed elements ?

First: who are the Bullock Brothers?

As of permaculture, I agree with Adam that there is a lot of folks, especially in Australia who do the design course to teach others permaculture. That's new agies who shy away from the hard work of producing food and it's hard indeed.
My second thought what is permaculture afte all? Permaculture picks up concepts of organic and traditional farming, so I guess that each farm is unique and what some say it's permaculture others would describe as organic gardening.
If you sell produce you wouldn't sell them as permaproduce you would sell it as organic produce and your buyers won't even realize that thy by permaculture produce.
I admit that I've seen lots of suburban garden, where the gardeners claimed to be permies, which haven't been terrible productive, especially when you factor in the loads of stuff in form of mulch they bought. They seem to raise seedlings for each and everything (peas corn) and shy away from growing carrots.

Bullocks Brother's permaculture homestead:  http://www.permacultureportal.com/

I would like to communicate with someone/anyone who has grown all their food.

We grow our own food but we also eat our own animals fed by food we've grown and we hunt and forage. I admit I buy milk, yeast, flour, some pulses and rice and sometimes buy stuff for a treat. We have had our own milk and will again and we intend to grow wheat for flour next year. 

i grow 80% of our food in the spring/summer/fall months and a lot during the winter. but i still buy some items like spices, grains( hoping to change that soon), and milk.

id like to see how many people a giant field of corn can feed for a month. vs an established forest garden. the way i see it the corn people might get to eat more in weight, but there food will be nutritionally deficient and might lead to them getting sick in the long run. where as the forest garden might give slightly less food, but an overall richer diet and healthier farmer/family.

While not completely Permaculture (in my opinion hard to do on 1/5 of an acre)the Dervaes family (four of them) grows 99% of their produce on 1/10 of an acre in town, small livestock and beekeeping as well. Check out their site they have been detailing their progress for a long time. This is a good page to start on for their details: http://urbanhomestead.org/urban-homestead


Jeff

soil wrote:

id like to see how many people a giant field of corn can feed for a month. vs an established forest garden. the way i see it the corn people might get to eat more in weight, but there food will be nutritionally deficient and might lead to them getting sick in the long run. where as the forest garden might give slightly less food, but an overall richer diet and healthier farmer/family.

I agree about the nutrients!  But I disagree about the amount of food.  The forest garden produces food in multiple dimensions - underground, ground-level, mid-story, upper story.  Plus animals.  So I think both the quality and absolute quantity of food is likely to be much higher, for less work. 

soil wrote:


id like to see how many people a giant field of corn can feed for a month. vs an established forest garden. the way i see it the corn people might get to eat more in weight, but there food will be nutritionally deficient and might lead to them getting sick in the long run. where as the forest garden might give slightly less food, but an overall richer diet and healthier farmer/family.

a link to an established forest garden feeding people ?

who are the "corn" people ?

do "corn" people eat only corn ?  How do they prepare it ?

why would it be "nutritionally deficient" ?

jmy wrote:
a link to an established forest garden feeding people ?

Here are some:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ZgzwoQ-ao

http://www.apiosinstitute.org/forestgardens/central-rocky-mountain-permaculture


http://www.permacultureportal.com/

I agree about the nutrients!  But I disagree about the amount of food.  The forest garden produces food in multiple dimensions - underground, ground-level, mid-story, upper story.  Plus animals.  So I think both the quality and absolute quantity of food is likely to be much higher, for less work. 

i agree with you completely to a certain degree, i was split from writing what i did because i know a forest garden of equal size will out yield any conventional farm. i just wanted to make a point about diversity in the diet compared to a bulk food source. and how less food from a forest garden would sustain someone longer vs. eating corn and corn byproducts everyday.

soil wrote:
i agree with you completely to a certain degree, i was split from writing what i did because i know a forest garden of equal size will out yield any conventional farm. i just wanted to make a point about diversity in the diet compared to a bulk food source. and how less food from a forest garden would sustain someone longer vs. eating corn and corn byproducts everyday.

How do you know this ?

because i run two 1/4 acre gardens of equal size. one is run with conventional methods except for the chemicals and pesticides( rows, monocrop areas, tilling, machines, etc...) and the other is a forest garden. although i get quite a bit of food from the conventional garden it all comes in waves, and then there is nothing for some time until the next harvest, and there is only one crop per area( and in the case of most farmers one crop). while the forest garden doesn't give me bulk harvests at once, over the long run it adds up and out yields the other garden by far here( and i wouldnt even call it a fully mature forest garden yet). I think( < key words ) from what i have seen/done that on a scale of a hundred acres or more a proper forest garden with access paths in the proper places can out yield a conventional farm in overall weight annually and in the amount of products that come out of it. with less work in the long run as well.

soil, do you have an estimate of what percentage of an adult diet (especially calories) each 1/4 acre garden produces? 

Thanks. 

i cant really give calories sorry, wouldn't know where to start adding it all up. i do know that in the spring, summer and fall i get about 60-80% of my food from the gardens and in the winter a little less, but also rely on stored warm season foods. all i mainly buy is wheat and its products (flour, pasta, etc...), rice, and cooking oils( but i have olive trees on the way to cover that in a few years). and about a dozen people supplement there diet with my forest garden( they just come over when they want and pick whatever) so i cant measure exactly what they eat either. i do know that i can go out on any day of the year, and pick a meal in the forest garden. and i cant do that in the conventional one.

Thanks. 

Ludi wrote:If folks can give me some other successful examples of permaculture, that would be helpful.

Our farm is based on permaculture and very successful. We can provide all of our own food. I buy luxuries, off farm food, but we are quite capable of providing all that we need to eat. On top of providing what we need we provide pastured pork to thousands of other people - we deliver weekly to local stores and restaurants.

Those people aren't just eating our meat. They also eat kale, carrots, potatoes, chickens, eggs, beef, etc. Each can be produced locally and via permaculture on small scales. Many small farmers are capable of feeding the world, without Big Ag. Remove the subsidies that Big Ag gets and the price of Big Ag food would skyrocket.

Some people get confused that just because one can do something (e.g., grow all our own food) that we must do it always. We are part of the local permaculture web. We sell one thing, pork, because that is something we are very good at although we raise other foods as well. Man does not live on pork alone.

Cheers,

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project

Thank you. 

In most cases, permaculture or not we are only self sufficient to a certain degree. And that does not depend on the method. Most people buy their grains rice and maybe pulses and oil. This is why grains are difficult to process and for oils you need a press. You can have enough fat from animals but who wants a salad with lard dressing? Stables need a lot of space and when you say that you are 90% self sufficient you refer to the bulk or the weight. But the calories you buy need a lot more space, because the yields per m2 or grain are quite low (however you get valuable straw).
And I have no idea how much I am eating, but I reckon that 2000-2500 kcal per day are hunger rations, especially if you are hard working, you might sustain a keyboard worker like this, but certainly not me!

ediblecities wrote:
In most cases, permaculture or not we are only self sufficient to a certain degree. And that does not depend on the method. Most people buy their grains rice and maybe pulses and oil. This is why grains are difficult to process and for oils you need a press. You can have enough fat from animals but who wants a salad with lard dressing? Stables need a lot of space and when you say that you are 90% self sufficient you refer to the bulk or the weight. But the calories you buy need a lot more space, because the yields per m2 or grain are quite low (however you get valuable straw). And I have no idea how much I am eating, but I reckon that 2000-2500 kcal per day are hunger rations, especially if you are hard working, you might sustain a keyboard worker like this, but certainly not me!

We use lard extensively and I would agree I would rather not have that for certain things. On the dressing, a local substitute, other than lard (: is to use a yogurt or sour cream base for salad dressings.

Storage isn't a big issue since most of our food is out on the hoof and on the plants for most of the year. Winter storage of plant food is to a very large degree on the hoof again - meat and fat is a way of storing summer over for the winter.

We know what it is like to produce all that we need as at times we simply didn't have the money to buy food for extended periods, sometimes almost a year, and we simply grew and ate our own food. It does put limits on variety. There are things I missed like chocolate during those times. Having someone give you an orange becomes very special.

Frankly, I'm glad not to have to do that all the time. I know I can but I like the luxuries I can buy in the store with the money I earn from selling our pork and wood. Commerce has its benefits.

We can provide many examples of Permaculture gardens feeding not only families, but supporting food security at schools and communities.  We've been working with local NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa since 2002 - primarily using Permaculture, as well as other sustainable land & resource use systems. 

In this context, where soil erosion (in large part due to over use of synthetic inputs) has damaged soil structure, Permaculture practices have proved valuable and successful for the practioners we train – reducing their demand for water (irrigation) and redirecting and storing rapid run-off during the rainy seasons. 

But the ethics and practice are at the centre of this – and resonate with traditional African farming practices – skills around which are fast being lost. This makes Permaculture training more appropriate than any other model than I have seen, in terms of how people relate and respond to it.  Not only are we seeing people feeding themselves and their families (our first requirement) but also sharing food, materials and skills with others in their community.  It is soon possible to see dry and derelict areas springing to life – with dusty ground being transformed with canopies of indigenous edibles. 

For us, Permaculture is about creating resilient and viable communities in an uncertain future.  So, yes, it does far more than feed people.  Your detractor is welcome to make contact with us.

Thank you. 

this is my first post....

Vita la Palma in Spain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veta_La_Palma

Dan Barber at TED 2010 gives an entertaining talk about it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html


Hope that helps.

Travis Philp wrote:
I have this sinking feeling that somehow, some way, the monsanto's of the world will continue to do what they've been doing. I could see further subsidizing at the expense of taxpayers to offset rising fuel costs, and further exploration/experimentation with more desperate methods of oil extraction (eg. Tar sands, Shale beds etc.)

I hope this is not the case, but these multi-nationals aren't going to go quietly into the night, and I think they have too much pride and/or ignorance to see the light of natural farming.

they will push to keep oil around as you say, and will likely be more subsidized. I agree.

they dont need oil to have a horrible agriculture though.

jmy wrote:
To grow all your food ..  you need to figure out a diet ..  daily/weekly/yearly ... staple crop .. storage if needed ....

2000-2500 calories/person/every day

If you plan to use animal products , you will need more land. 

As I state in another thread , I don't see how you can do it on less than 2.5 acres/adult

I would like to communicate with someone/anyone who has grown all their food.

http://thequarteracrefarm.com/

They grow 85% of their food on 1/4 acre of land.

  there was an peer reviewed article in nature magazine a few years back. It wasnt on perma culture per se, but organic non conventional farming, I believe was the designation. It was poly cropping.

   the article was put together in response to an industry study showing that industrial ag had higher outputs.

   In three major staples when you factored in all things the poly cropping won hands down. It DID have higher yields, because in addition to 80 percent of the corn on the same land there were other things produced. in addition to the rice there was fish and ducks etc..... they DID use specific well established poly cultures, but that isnt the point....

   Truthfully permaculture wins hands down, especially when you look at the farmers perspective. they can have onsite inputs, and because of that have profit margins that wont have them on the border of loosing their land.

    if you get into grain production, it certainly takes more labor to go by hand, but you can have much higher yields per area if you go by hand.....

    Industrial agriculture was built by government intervention.  after ww2. the reason why its myth is so well established, is because the economy was screwed at the time. Phosphorous was especially missing in the soil. the government didnt however fund one of the known ways to harness it in permie style ways, this WAS talked about, they didnt go with rock phosphates which was the cheapest and fastest option, instead they built industrial ag.  

    initially there were huge boosts in yield because the key things plants need to grow had been farmed out of the soil through a few decades where folks were just scrapping by. advanced ag methods WERE known but the knowledge simply wasnt in peoples hands.... So for awhile we had two agricultures. there were those that did things WELL with the old school ways.... Lots of them in fact at that point. there were a bit mrore though who bought into the cheap easy fix.......

    then the green revolution came. Talk about doublespeak!!! what the green revolution was, was a MASSIVE breeding project that focused on key staples, with the pure intent of higher yields to make other methods seem bad. this was a HUGE effort, tons of money. so they effectively breed plants that RESPOND to the synthetic ferts!!!

     so here we are a generation later or so. guess what, this level of breeding has NOT been done for the bulk of crops within other systems!!! A project you can read about on KUSA's website was done for barley in india. they bred a dryland barley for poor soil no less, let alone a good organic one, and it out produced green revolution wheats (which wheat produces more then barley in general in addition) on WORSE soil, non irrigated!!! the government of india destroyed the project!!1 luckily a few of those advanced strains were sent out before they could.  so this proves that breeding for organic soil, CAN beat green revolution stuff. the single crop that got that attention did just that!!!

    With perma culture though, that same barley on the same site in india, will have a more and more fertile soil over time. retain more and more water... on and on. so production would feasibly be higher.....

    Permaculture needs to get into breeding ASAP. Its the missing link imo!!! Once we breed for high production within these systems we will have it. ESPECIALLY if we get large projects going, and we can.....  Im hoping to build interest here, to get a few going actually, atleast some passive ones where it doesnt take to much skill or knowledge other then seed saving skills....

  there is also raising meat. Our current system works only because of HEAVILY subsidized grains, which were raised on oil that was subsidized before it was fertilizer. Its extremely inefficient. 50 percent of the world beef is from arid regions!!! TONs of beef grown around me here, so far in my experiments I think i could increase biomass by 10-20 times. Likely much more if I involved non native grasses, which I am hesitant to do ....... So effectively the same lands here could grow 10-20 times more beef. which opens up more land for other things.....

sure some dryland set ups in pplaces that irrigate might outproduce permie stuff, but permie plus irrigation isnt so terrible, though personally Im not for that. Also its still okay, when system wide, in some areas you produce much more, some a bit less. HOWEVER, the farmers can have wide enough margins with that lower amount because their inputs arent off the charts... so its still good.... taken as a science, cold hard factual numbers.... we simply need to perfect different systems and especially BREED for them, and we are golden...

Geoff Lawton provides 25,000 meals a day at Zaytuna farm, all of it from the farm.  I don't remember accurately the size of his farm but I think it's less than 100 acres. 

It is doable. It surprises me when people say it can't be done. They simply haven't learned how.

We raise pigs, sheep and chickens on pasture. Their winter paddocks provide us with acres of rich gardens even on our mountain soils. We can produce 3,600 or more of meat per acre per year plus vegetables without any need to import grain or the like.

We sell through local stores and restaurants as well as direct to individuals feeding thousands of people in addition to being able to produce virtually all of our own family's food needs. We could produce a lot more for sale but there is a limit to how much work we want to do.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

SILVERSEEDS wrote:
    Permaculture needs to get into breeding ASAP.

It does not, what it needs is people not saying what it needs to do, or anything.  What it needs is people who go out, read, learn and do it for themselves without trying to change words, ideology, or anything.

Plan the property out properly for time as a factor as well as food.

[quote author=pubwvj ]It is doable. It surprises me when people say it can't be done. They simply haven't learned how.

It's the apathy, people don't want to try, or are scared to try something new & different.  Instead, people like you, and I by extension for at least trying on my soil need to keep pushing forward and helping our communities understand.

All permaculturists who save their own seeds are into breeding plant varieties. 

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
All permaculturists who save their own seeds are into breeding plant varieties. 

True, but the passage was starting to sound like a GMO sales pitch by Monsanto...  ..to me.

pubwvj wrote:
It is doable. It surprises me when people say it can't be done. They simply haven't learned how.

We raise pigs, sheep and chickens on pasture. Their winter paddocks provide us with acres of rich gardens even on our mountain soils. We can produce 3,600 or more of meat per acre per year plus vegetables without any need to import grain or the like.

I love information like this from people who are actually doing it!  Thank you! 

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
  Most of the objections seem to be kind of strawmen, like "It's too hard!" and "People will starve while waiting for their food forests to grow!"  and there's not much I can figure out to say in response except "it's easier than some other kinds of food-growing" and "the idea is to plant the food forest well before you're going to be starving."

Starting with nothingMany poeple like me are dirt poor and for us the short term is our biggest hurddle. I would suggest to other poor like me, grow perennial crops that mature in less than 2 years. I spent about $4 on scarlet runner beans and $30 on chaiyotes three seasons ago and I now get more than a tone of chaiyotes and 50kg of the beans per year with no work. Nopales (Optuna) is also close to free and takes no work to get going, mine have been slashed with macheties and trampled by soccer players but are still getting larger. I think my enimies will get tired of all the cutting it takes to destroy my nopales and I was told that the man responsible for the slashing has died. Passion fruit also matures fast but is less frost tollerant and has not been a sucksess for me here in puebla. 

Mekka Pakanohida wrote:


It does not, what it needs is people not saying what it needs to do, or anything.  What it needs is people who go out, read, learn and do it for themselves without trying to change words, ideology, or anything.

Plan the property out properly for time as a factor as well as food.

It's the apathy, people don't want to try, or are scared to try something new & different.  Instead, people like you, and I by extension for at least trying on my soil need to keep pushing forward and helping our communities understand.

you seemed to have conveniently skipped the section directly after that  and it changed the context considerably.

<<<<Permaculture needs to get into breeding ASAP. Its the missing link imo!!! >>>>

Its an opinion sorry if you disagree. it will multiply the possibilities profoundly. In fact from reading many permie things, the wrong variety, or the need to breed one, is why many projects Ive seen were so so instead of master pieces. It will catapult the movement into the stratosphere. If you dont agree then dont. I couldnt care less.

the rest of this post, though i agree, is opinion. you didnt quantify it as I had my opinion, that you took as me stating fact....

  in my particular area, i have to say breeding IS nearly mandatory. That is if I want good results. Otherwise I will have no dryland corn, my dryland wheat will be moot, no dryland beans that produce well. technically I could still do those things with very specific geologic locations, or elaborate set ups in infrastructure. that would be extremely hard to convince anyone to do. with breeding though, and solid permie methods, these are all on the way to being solid producing plants. People understanding better ways is great. I agree with you, THIS is among them. imo. Its pure math here.and in more extreme areas like mine makes it even possible to do well, with a wide range of things.

    Also Im NOT trying to change words. I made that clear by my stance that permafarm needs it own word to reach more folks not interested in the rest of what permaculture is.

  I certainly dont want to change anyones ideologies. In fact this is exactly why a word for farming was my stance. I wouldnt want to change perma culture to mean something the practitioners say it isnt. But I also see that many GOOD people dont want to change THEIR ideologies to be gaining knowledge from the field.... hence the idea of perma farm....

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
All permaculturists who save their own seeds are into breeding plant varieties. 

yes in an extremely subtle way, unless your purposely using genepools and making landraces.

Saving and selecting seed alone only can go so far, though still powerful. you have to start with something that al ready mostly works in an area.

Mekka Pakanohida wrote:
True, but the passage was starting to sound like a GMO sales pitch by Monsanto...  ..to me.

I happen to live in an area that breeding takes me from near sustenance level at best, to being able to farm a full range of staples well. In my case it is indeed that profound. You can piece together plants like they were legos. I get the feeling folks here just might not realize just how weighty the potentials are. Monsanto would fade away into the night like a foul odor wafting away in the wind, if permaculture as a whole embraced breeding and constructed large projects for each area...

the entire post was saying how monsanto built a world wide total myth, and it looks like their sales pitch when I point out that permies could multiply their efforts with breeding? if you say so.... Kinda seems to me to be much more a sales pitch for them when you dont fully acknowledge what breeding could be doing. Its the missing link in this stuff. Heck I was watching some of the greats in the fields stuff only last night. They all did great, BUT I noticed more then one instance where the right genetics would of multiplied the efforts.

the staples for homescale production, many of them were bred long ago. If they work for you great, but they could be better. In harsher conditions they could be profoundly better. in fact breeding is literally what built the myth of industrial ag, more then anything else. With breeding permaculture can in time exceed yields with plants bred for organic inputs, and permie methods rather then using plants built for other systems long ago, or for synthetics in modern times. this work has simply not been done to even remotely the level for our applications that it could be. It does indeed have the potential to catapult the movement. the harsher your conditions the more profound it would be, but even better places that have locally bred varieties can be enhanced greatly as well.

One answer is, "does he really think they could not", he has not mentioned how many acres of land he is talking about, if you had enough acres you could maybe eat what you could hunt and such things as dandylion salad and plant a few potatoes for starch, there must be some people around crazy enough to greatly reduce their eating experience so there would be lots of ways to win that competition.
    Maybe he means you can't on a smal balcony and he might be right.
       It is interesting answering such people, it is the propoganda game that the chemical companies win in such a way as to put most farmers off even taking a seriouse look at less poisonous ways of farming. It is the propoganda war that needs to be won and the only way to get good at that is always trying to answer such people, you really do get better at answering those who rouse the rabble, in a direction that is the opposite of the one you think is the most adequate, if you practice it. Answering such people often has little to do with a straight logical answer and a lot to do with invalidating them in return. I do though believe people should make decisions with a totall understanding of the topic that they should be told the science behind the ideas but people who are trying to protect their own business are often merely trying to make those who would reduce their business look silly and what you have to do to them is make them look like what they are.
      Tell him to read Akenfeild it is a book about how the villagerers used to eat from their vegetable gardens in Eneglnad and everyone who knows english ¡villages know about their vegetable gardens and that all vbillgers surel as those at akenfeild did fed themselves from their vegetablee gardens at the begining of last century and for a long time after. They work pricipally to have the house and garden and fed themselves from smallish gardens they had, they where  desperately undernourished but then the gardens werefairly small. Everyone is forgetting the poverty of before, the poverty in europe was so bad that all villagers, nearly, were very undergrown, we had empires but also had  countries full of desperately poor people before the trade unions and the vote and the social services, and free education called equal oportunities our modern countries have the modern look they had because of these things poor countries have a few very rich people and a lot of horribly poor ones.
       What about calling him ignorant, i suppose he is if he does not know how often people people have fed each other organically, not just imply he is ignorant, really rubbing his face in it, you have to get tough, those who fight for chemical companies are likely as not tough as all hell.
      Maybe you have to employ a psycologist to do your propoganda warfare. One who is good at the propoganda branch of psychology. I believe in using experts like Bill Mollison and Sepp Holzer to start a project for bettering the diet in a village and i believe in the use of psychologist in a propoganda war, i believe in proffessionals idf their on your side.
     If they call the oragnics people daffy, we can call them ignorant and gullible. It is maybe a good idea to talk about the gullibleness and sheepishness of the traditional farmer as we are airey fairey which means stupid, we can call them stupid too. They let themselves be coned by chemical factories who are mischeiviously intent on poisoning everyone for a bit of immediate cash.
     How many more insults are there?
    There is the canceriginouse effect of pesticides and the fact that the country becomes more polluted than the town with all the products farmers throw on the countryside.
      I learnt in a documentary i saw years ago that a group in the united states convinced farmers to go organic because chemical fertilisers and pesticides and herbicides are so expensive.
 there is asking what has happened to that age old human activity of building up something for posterity, for the next generations, how has the chemical industry done away with people wish to build up their farms for a far distant future.
     Is not the conviction that we could not feed a modern world full of people the most prevailing arguement for those who are engaged in a crazy career to use more and more chemical fertilisers? Does not everyone insist on the use of them because if not how would we feed the world while here, in spain at anyrate, so little of the land gets used or only in a highly inefficient way, i suppose that is not true for some bits of the country other bit are highly productive. A crazy use of the land leads to more and more barren land so of course we could grow more in any old fashion. What does one do with such with peoples fear that the¡r will not be enough food that makes them accept factory farming being carried to Africa activity that will take away everyones job of feedign themselves and a few more.
      Maybe we just have to insist that they are hell bent on selling chemicals usefull or harmful. How much money do they earn?  Whoever tried to insist that people will do anything for petrol has been sucessful, many people now doubt the motives of our governments if they go to war in a country with petrol reserves. If we could make people that wary of chemical companies we would have won half the battle.  If we convince people they are hell bent on selling chemicals willy nilly maybe people will start to wonder if their arguments are to be trusted. Maybe we need a lot of scientist going round collecting evidence that the chemical companies advice using way more chemicals and spending way more money than is necessary, quantities of chemicals  that are  actually damaging, collecting stories of their abus¡ve conductb to discredit the chemical companies.
      Better idea ask the government agricultural engineers for stories about how the chemical companies gully farmers, they probably have lots already. From one or two videos i have seen it seems to me that these men and women or some of them are interested in the ecological, they must have lots of experience they must be  a mine of information about the abuses of the chemical factories, information that has already been collected, so free information, if they are as i have seen them to be, ecologists. agri rose macaskie.

Silverseeds, I agree. If you are going to feed people with permaculture, I would think you would want to choose your plants. More seed development efforts can make a huge difference. Breeding is not something people walk out of school knowing (you know what I mean), and a lot of the breeders disagree on best methods. Using genetics research, you might be able to breed directly to your trait goal with good success. As table of genes vs traits is filled, better success.

Silverseeds, any documentation on the methods used to breed the dryland barley?

An issue arises from this. -patents-. You have to do something to bind up your Intellectual Property today, even if you give it away. You may not like it, but until the courts of the world say you can not own patents on life, you either own patents on life, or you fight for your life. [some think IP discourages innovation. wonder why.  ]


FYI, I ended up here trying to figure out how to grow the most food possible with the least amount of effort. Most of what I have done so far has been experimenting and eating my mistakes. From my point of view, the brightest people have figured this out and spend their idle time in research, development, and sharing.