“Mark Shepard, manager of New Forest Farms and author of the book Restoration Agriculture, will offer a critique of annual crop-based staple food production, while laying the ecological framework and reasons for designing a perennial staple food crops farm.
sustainable agriculture
Regenerative Agriculture: Beyond Organic
You hear the term regenerative agriculture more and more these days. What does it mean? “Regenerative agriculture is a sub-sector practice of organic farming designed to build soil health or to regenerate unhealthy soils. The practices associated with regenerative agriculture are those identified with other approaches to organic farming, including maintaining a high percentage of organic matter in soils, minimum tillage, biodiversity, composting, mulching, crop rotation, cover crops, and green manures.
Restoring Degraded Land: Growing Crops on Bedrock
This blog post is part of an ongoing series on how to restore degraded land. Good land is hard to come by and often not affordable unless you’re rich. The facts presented here are from the video Building Soil with Clive. His farm in Hawaii was scraped bare with a bulldozer down to bedrock not once, not twice, but three times before he started leasing it. The thought of farming land like this seems hopeless, right? But over the last 18 years Clive has built up 3”- 4” of topsoil on bedrock using the techniques he describes in his video, which are summarized here. He feels his main job is creating good habitat and taking care of the organisms in the soil using primarily mulch and cover crops. It’s interesting to note that he never seems to find time to make IMOs (indigenous microorganisms). Instead, his focus is on creating massive quantities of organic matter to build soil. The results speak for themselves.
Badgersett: Woody Agriculture Research and Development
Badgersett is one of the largest forest gardens in the US. “With roots going back to 1978, Badgersett Research Corporation works on bringing “Woody Agriculture” into the mainstream world of full scale staple food production.” In summary, their ideas show how farmers and homesteaders can transition to sustainable agriculture and still make an income.
Transition Forest Gardens Part 2: Alley Cropping
In my first blog post about Transition Forest Gardens I outlined some of my ideas about how to make a forest garden on degraded land. Today’s blog post covers some of my newest ideas for a transition forest garden.