Over the past 2 years I've been developing an economic design tool for ecological agriculture enterprises.
It creates ten to fifty-year profit and loss projections based on hand-collected & collated hard research data on the following ag enterprise areas:
• Permaculture food forests, forest gardens & agroforestry areas;
• Mixed-fruit orchards;
• Small fruits, berries & hardy kiwi + grape vineyards;
• Organic annual & perennial vegetable production w/ no-till beds & greenhouses;
• Rotational grazing layouts & keyline patterns for larger livestock
• Chickens, ducks, bees and other micro-livestock;
• Composting, worm composting, and aerated compost tea production;
• Short-rotation coppice biomass production for heating & biofuels;
• Gourmet and medicinal mushroom production;
• Wetland agriculture, aquaculture & pond polyculture systems.
Pilot farms using the tool's projections are being developed in the Hudson River valley, integrated with residential and institutional developments. For an example farm prospectus created with the tool, click here.
Anyone interested in collaborating? Contact me: ethan[at]appleseedpermaculture.com and http://twitter.com/ethanappleseed
2 comments:
Good work. Much needed. Now, for the question that is foremost on my mind: how can we use other metrics than US dollars for measuring? How bout for "investing"? Can our designs be based on other input/output in terms of success failure? This is pretty important it seems to me, because basing our primary "currency" of exchange on the US dollar fails to address the (bloody, exploitative, fundamentally destructive and very likely unreformable) system from which it derives it's "value". This is big. Permaculture, if it is to succeed in manifesting the values it espouses, can't solely design adjunct services to mainstream capitalism. So, think local currencies, hour exchanges, collectives, indentifying resources outside of the cash economy etc etc. This must be,it seems to me, intentional from the start of any design. Peas.
Hello, lovely reading your blog. I was wondering if you would like to
write an article for Permaculture magazine. On the website in
particular (www.permaculture.co.uk) we can have anything from a 250
word snippet to a 1200 word article or any video. The more practical
and "how to" the better but also any news you would like to share is
welcome. We do all the promotion and there would be a link back to
your blog. We are currently getting over 56,000 visits a month. If
this sounds like something you'd be interested in please contact
hayley@permaculture.co.uk Thank you!
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