Sofien Koro Gueddana

"Growing your own food is like printing your own money", and paying yourself with. Of course, how much you get depends of a lot of things.

True that fruit trees tend to require less work, but require more time to reach maturity. Although, harvesting rate is important too. Harvesting mulberries taught me that even harvest can be a hard work. I was doing 3kg per hour, with the arms raised all the time. A neighbour conventional farmer just gave up his new zealand spinach harvest, because he could not pay workers wages to harvest with the earnings from spinach they harvest. @Matu, is harvesting the nuts really easy ? how much quantity would you get per hour ?

True also that processing is a good way to make your work and products more valuable. Actually, for picking "dirty" mulberries to make jam, I used a tarp and shaked the branches which fastened the harvest up to 10kg per hour. Selling and promoting surely cost hours too, I never tried but I am convinced that it's not the time consuming part, is it ?

No I don't have the land to start with yet, do you advise me to try to find a land with mature fruit/nut trees and shrubs ?

I have little capital to invest, but I count on local community for starting small, and grow up later, like, taking part in a collective project, some one lending me/us a land, sell to direct customers and local farmer market. I have no experience in marketing and I am just starting to know the community.

Here is the detail that I already found :

1. In Bec-Helouin farm in France, the french agricultural research INRA conducted a study on 1000m2 (1/4 acre) and found that with a full time (2100h/year) you can earn up to a gross turnover of 32k euro (42k$) per year, which after expenses and taxes leave you with a net 14k euro (18k$) per year, for such workload the gross wage is 15 euro (18$) per hour, not far from the french minimum wage. In this study, the cultivation technique used is mainly bio-intensive farming with a touch of permaculture, including annual vegetable cultivation on raised bed outdoor, in greenhouses and under fruit trees. Interestingly, earnings from vegetable of the greenhouses and from fruit and vegetables of tree areas are the most profitable per surface. Unfortunately the report don't mention how much kg of vegetables and fruit is produced, but my guess is 5kg per hour, 10 ton per year. (Source : http://www.fermedubec.com/ecocentre/Etude%20mara%C3%AEchage%20permaculturel%20-%20Rapport%20interm%C3%A9diaire%202013.pdf)

2. "An economic mini-farm earning $5,000–$20,000 on as little as 1⁄8 acre with one person working it, and of a complete vegetarian diet for one person being grown on as little as 2,800 square feet", are feasible with bio-intensive cultivation method, according to John Jeavons from Ecology Action research organization, in the introduction of his book "How to grow vegetables than you even thought possible on less land that you could imagine". For example in this book, tables show that potato cultivation can have a yield of 200 pound per 100 sqft (370 kg per 10m2), a 20k pound per 1/4 acre (or 3.7 ton per 1000m2).

3. For aquaponics, I did not find workload, but only production and earnings per surface. For basil, a plant that works well with aquaponics, 23kg/m2 (515 $ per m2) can be produced with aquaponics, to compare to 8kg/m2 in field cultivation. (Source : http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/ista/ista6/ista6web/pdf/676.pdf)

I know that there is people living from selling permaculture products, I guess they are getting payback for their work but I still find it difficult to get hard numbers. I count on you, permies.com users.

Hi all,
I am wondering how much you can earn from permaculture products, with which cultivation techniques, on how much surface ? By products, I mean veggies, fruits, etc, excluding selling knowledge with teaching, books, or consulting.

I've been looking for this info (i.e. $/h) for days, I found numbers for bio-intensive farming and aquaponics, but not for permaculture farming (well except this more bio-intensive than permaculture system, in french : http://www.fermedubec.com/ecocentre/Etude%20mara%C3%AEchage%20permaculturel%20-%20Rapport%20interm%C3%A9diaire%202013.pdf).

The reason I am asking, is that I would like to start a full-time permaculture project, and I have no more saving from the rat race to support my engagement, so it need to be financially self-sustained. I try to learn from those who have done such a project.

Yes Dana, it is possible that they dont get enough chilling hours, I will look into that. But one of them is starting to flower, so it got enough chilling, I will see if it gets fruits.

Thanks for the reply John. Very interesting, I never thought that shallow root get the light rain of growing season and tap root from rainier season.

Our water table is not very deep (5m), so deep rooted figs thrive for years with no irrigation, and also shallow rooted mulberries, almonds and grapes. But many trees (apricot, peach, olive) make no fruits, like you said. We try to make hugelkultur buried wood around citrus and other trees to keep water at the surface for dry season. We try to find pistachio and germinate avocado to add to the garden. Seems nice the forest garden you did in there.

We'll try like you said shorter of recommended distance, like 80% of this distance, and keep 20% more than canopy width around trees between tap rooted and shallow rooted. As you mention only water as being the problem, I guess that being a nitrogen fixer tree make no difference and will suck up too much water if closer to fruit trees.

I think the trees were irrigated, but I am not sure of that. Do you think it influences the spacing Tyler ?

We are converting an orchard to a forest garden in Mediterranean climate. I've been searching for days the right spacing between shallow rooted fruit trees and tap rooted fruit trees or nitrogen fixer trees, a topic essential in forest garden design. I hope permies.com community can enlighten me on that.
What is the right spacing ? Recommended distance between shallow rooted fruit trees seems to be 50% more than crown size (according to Martin Crawford). Do you think that between shallow rooted and tap rooted fruit trees this distance should be smaller, as soil is better partitioned ?
Should this distance be smaller also when spacing fruit trees and nitrogen fixer trees (often tap rooted though), so they intermingle their roots and the fruit tree access the fixed nitrogen ? If it is the case how much smaller should it be ?

Wondering myself tree spacing in similar climate (mediterranean, about 700mm of rain per year) in Tunisia.
I noticed in oasis more in the south of here (with average 250-400mm of rain per year) that fruit tree planting under palm trees was very close, 1-2m sometimes for relatively large fruit trees (fig, pomegrenate), it seems to me like a strategy to maximize shade and minimize evaporation, but I am not sure. Hope someone get us a better answer for this climate.

In dry climates, we have also the issue of slugs in mulch, but in winter. Nobody mentioned yet the insects predator of slugs. Ground beetles and firefly larvae love eating slugs, and fortunately they also love mulch.
We had a lot of slugs after mulching (and in lasagna beds), but seems that predator insects are catching up. We tried beer traps, but ended up with more of these predators in the trap than slugs (who knows they may have drown there chasing a drunk slug), so we let the nature do the job, and just protect sensitive seedlings (with plastic bottles and will try with the chili spray)

Hi,
I guess you know about permaculture project of Geoff Lawton Greening the desert in Jordan or the permaculture farm in Palestine, this is arid but middle-east, not north africa. I know that there is permaculture projects in Marocco and Egypt, and we started one 2 months ago in Tunisia. You can find info about our project in http://permaground.wordpress.com/ and http://permaground.wikispaces.com/Ras+jebel, still young but ambitious. Can I ask you why are you looking for north african projects ?

Koro