50% by 2015: A Perennial Agriculture Challenge

From Kevin Skvorak of Regeneration CSA to the Northeastern Permaculture Listserv:

"...What percentage of the calories in our diet (NE region) should we be getting from perennial crops?  How if any way should this influence the thinking of people involved in local planning, farmland protection, and smart growth issues?"

My Response:

Howdy Kevin and All!

I think the 'should' is difficult. It depends on who we are talking about, and what their goals are.

If we approach this from the CO2 and climate change angle, and set a goal of reducing CO2 emissions by shifting to perennial agriculture, here's a proposed research track to answer your questions:

• What are the CO2 emissions resulting from annual ag. in the northeast?
• What are the estimated CO2 emissions (or sequestrations!) from perennial ag? We might look at some small-scale estimations (e.g. Martin Crawford's forest garden in the UK) and larger estimations (Badgersett Research Center's Woody Agriculture in MN, Carbon Farmers of America's Holistic Management grazing in VT)
• What might be the CO2 emissions resulting from transition between annual & perennial agriculture?

Personally, I think I can get to 5% of my calorie intake from perennial crops by fall 2010. And, I'm going to aim for 50% of my calories from perennial 'crops' (including animals!) in the next 5 years.

How about that? 50% by 2015? Anyone else want to give this a try with me?

Cheers,
Ethan

Well done team -- crashed the website!

Thanks to Albert and Catherine for their appearance on Coast to Coast last night! They generated enough traffic to overload the financialpermaculture.com website for a few hours.

It's now up and running again -- head on over and take a look!

Holistic Management for Financial Permaculture

Fresh from Darren Doherty, visionary permaculture + Keyline designer at www.permaculture.biz, we would do well to take a look at Holistic Management for the financial side of Permaculture & Ecological Agriculture.

http://www.holisticmanagement.org/

Holistic
Management^® Works.

On 30 million acres worldwide.

HMI works with people around the world to heal damaged land and increase the productivity of working lands.

By
healing the earth’s desertified lands, and by managing healthy land in
concert with natural processes, we can repair our malfunctioning
ecosystem while achieving a “triple bottom line” of economic,
environmental and social sustainability.

Darren says: "What permaculture lacks is a decision-making framework. What holistic management lacks is a design framework. Let's put together a dowry."

Farmer's Market Report for the FPC

Here's the link to a Winrock report on Farmers' markets in the mid-atlantic:

http://www.winrock.org/agriculture/files/wallacemktrpt.pdf

Should be useful for the farmer's market folks...

FPC Ethanol Resources

Some great stuff here for the Ethanol team at the Financial Permaculture Course::

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/reethanol.html

Processing Kitchen - Product Budgets

Financial Permaculture Course -- Green Business Research --

Here are some budgets for individual products that meet be processed in a Community Kitchen. From the INCREDIBLE British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands...

Value Added
& Food Processing: (pdf format)

ENTERPRISE	LOCATION	DATE
Apple Juice	Okanagan Valley	Fall 1996
Apple Juice	Fraser Valley	Fall 1996
Salsa	Okanagan Valley	Fall 1996
Fruit Pie Production	Okanagan Valley	Fall 1996
Fruit Pie Production	Fraser Valley	Fall 1996
Fruit Leather	Cottage Industry	Spring 1996
Jam Production	Cottage Industry	Spring 1996

http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/busmgmt/budgets/value_added.htm

Patterns of Regeneration

Permaculture Designs -- whole systems solutions to the complexity of challenges facing our planet. Designs that harmoniously integrate humans into the landscape to produce food, water, energy, shelter, and all other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.

First up: Financial Permaculture. A lower-right approach to local economic resilience.