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

"Hi Ethan,
I'm doing a research project at Umass for my climatic change class. I want to do a case study of some different permaculture sites that are using permaculture to deal with and adapt to changes in the climate. My professor is skeptical and I really want to knock his socks off with my project. Do you know of any good sites/projects I could research? Also know of any good resources for finding more info on these projects?"

In Australia, look for Crystal Waters Ecovillage. And Melliodora on www.holmgren.com.au - one of the best-documented permaculture sites in the world.

And, Murrnong: A Permaculture Subdivision.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOW-RdCFax0


And look for Village Homes in California -- best example of a permaculture development -- there are several books about it.

Good luck!
Ethan

Rudolf Steiner - The World Economy

A discussion with Seth Jordan from ThinkOutward has alerted me to Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the 'World Economy'. Seth thinks there may be some solid connections between this text and Financial Permaculture -- head on over and check it out!

Rudolf Steiner was an incredible visionary -- the founder of Anthroposophy, Biodynamic Agriculture, Waldorf education, and more.

Here are the Steiner Archives: http://www.rsarchive.org/index.php
The home of the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association: http://www.biodynamics.com/
Wikipedia on Anthroposophy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophy

WOW. LocallyGrown.net ROCKS.

Seriously. This is one of the most awesome presentations I've seen yet at the Financial Permaculture Course.

In a Nutshell: Eric Waldrop of www.locallygrown.net has solved the major challenges of Traditional Farmer's Market's, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), & Buying Clubs with an easy-to-use piece of internet software. (No nerds required! - Did I saw "wow?")

The virtual farmer's market he runs in Athens, Georgia has 60 growers, 1500 customers, and does over $10,000 of sales every week. By Eric's reckoning, that makes it the largest Farmer's Market in Georgia and the One of the largest in the Southeast USA. (Did I say "wow?")

I almost can't believe the ease and grace with which Eric has used the permaculture principle "the problem is the solution" to transform the challenges of small-scale ecological farming into stunningly simple solutions.

The Food & Agriculture business design group is in complete awe. I'm not even sure if we need investment capital to get this business started! Eric has made this so easy that half the participants (myself included!) are running home to start up their own local virtual farmers markets.

Watch a video explaining locallygrown.net: Click Here

One word descriptions of Eric's presentation by Financial Permaculture Course participants:
Awesome, fantastic, connective, wow, congratulations, nouveau, hopeful, excited, hunky dory, impatient to do, inspired, valuable, do it, possibilities, resourceful, cool, great, brilliant, cutting edge!!!

WOW.

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...

Permaculture Agriculture Search Terms

Here are the most useful search terms I've found for the current phase of Permaculture Agriculture research I'm doing:

"small farm enterprise budget"
"organic enterprise budget"
"organic crop budget"
"small farm crop budget"


Basically I'm developing an excel-based  ecological agriculture design tool to provide, in phases:
1. basic economic information & budgets for new eco-ag projects
2. detailed sensitivity analyses and a decision-making tool for eco-ag elements
3. triple-bottom line accounting for eco-ag projects

anyone else doing this sort of work?

FPC Ethanol Resources

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

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