All the tools in the kit

Maximizing food production in your permaculture practice

It feels strange and almost wrong to be plugging away on the mundane topic of home food production while the world is increasingly being reduced to bloody rubble. It takes determination to avoid feeling like mine is a worthless pursuit, and I need to remind myself it's part and parcel of meaningful resistance to the Machine. As I wrote on my ‘About’ page, everything is connected. We all have a part to play, even if it's just sharing ways to grow food with less work and more nature-friendly side effects.

Permaculture means doing the best you can with what you have by recognizing and putting to use all available tools. For many, including me, this means maximizing food production by cultivating as many different sources as possible. I can't tell you how many times I've read, “Permaculture isn't about gardening!” I assume that what is meant by this statement is that permaculture isn't only about gardening. I hope this is the case since all the ethics of permaculture are served by changing the way food is produced, namely moving away from industrial food systems separated from consumers to smaller, local systems integrated into communities. Getting involved in producing one's own food is one of the most satisfying and accessible gateways to permaculture.

To preface discussion of making use of a wide array of tools, here is an example of a decision to not use a tool: excluding livestock due to veganism. I'm neither praising nor condemning veganic agriculture, but pointing out that producing food without livestock makes the job much harder since animals are an integral part of natural systems. Permaculture is about making things easier while acting within ethical guidelines. The ethics of permaculture are wide and common-sensical, arose naturally from practice, and are subject to interpretation. By voluntarily adding an extra ethic which is specific and restrictive, vegans handicapp themselves.

Religious or ideological dietary rules can be an integral part of individual and group identity, but it may soon become apparent that they are an unsustainable luxury. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes; nor will there be vegans when global food systems break down. That being said, I respect farmers such as Iain Tolhurst who are working on livestock-free farming because they are performing valuable experiments to answer the question of what it is possible to accomplish when manure isn't available. This is quite different from believing that this approach is the best or most ethical as George Monbiot insinuates with his profile of Tolhurst included in Regenisis.

This isn't to say that everyone should and must keep livestock. That would be ridiculous since most people aren't in a position to do so due to lack of time and land, and local restrictive ordinances. Taking advantage of manure when it is a waste product, teaming up with neighboring smallholders on cooperative grazing, and purchasing meat and dairy products from local regenerative farmers are examples of using this tool when personal husbandry isn’t possible.

The value of perennial crops

Discarding self-imposed dietary restrictions expands the toolkit, as does cultivating a wide variety of food types. Perennial crops are an extremely important tool of a resilient agriculture. In fact, moving away from annual crops toward perennial ones is viewed as a main feature of permaculture and regenerative systems. This transition makes sense for various reasons. Growing row crops on a large scale means dependence on tillage, synthetic fertilizers and herbicides, and fossil fuel guzzling machinery. In some instances it relies on the labor of the vulnerable and easily exploited; in others it provides minimal employment as it becomes more automated. The whole point of earth-friendly agriculture, beyond feeding people, is getting away from these practices and remedying the destruction caused by them.

It's important to recognize that perennial agriculture isn't free from destructive practices. Acres planted in rows of almond, citrus trees, or olive trees constitute a monoculture requiring large inputs including precious water as well as the aforementioned chemicals. Replacing industrial-scale monoculture corn and soybean operations with industrial-scale monoculture tree crops isn't much of an improvement. Perennial crops function best as a solution when grown in multi-species plantings that mimic natural conditions, usually by creating groupings of a variety of different plants.

A place for annuals

Ending destructive, factory-style agriculture is a high priority, but that doesn't mean annual plants don't have a place in permaculture. It seems a popular belief that annual plantings should be minimized or even excluded from permaculture systems, and the problems associated with industrial row cropping are used justify this stance. However, this is comparing apples and oranges. It's the nature of their cultivation at industrial scale that is problematic. Annuals are a great tool in the permaculture toolkit and I won't be eliminating them anytime soon. I've worked to integrate perennial food-bearing plants into the farm, but the last few years the majority of the food we produce has come from annuals.

There have been several years out of the last five with no harvest whatsoever of tree fruit. Badly timed frosts, fire blight, and squirrels carry most of the blame. Also, we've experienced very low berry yields due to fungal problems. The problem with crops like apples or raspberries is that there's no second chance until the following year. Of course, having various perennial crops from different plant families including tree, cane, vine, and herbaceous perennials makes individual loss less devastating.

The highest level of resilience is reached by using the widest array of sources possible including annuals. Growing annual plants means many chances for success during the season. It's already my practice to plant successive crops of things like carrots, zucchini, cucumber, and green beans. If one fails due to weather or bugs, the next will come along soon enough. I plant indeterminate tomatoes, and while the oldest parts inevitably succumb to one blight or another, the vines just keep on growing and pumping out fruit until frost. A small, intensively cultivated and harvested veggie plot fits nicely into a permaculture set up, especially one which also includes livestock.

Integrating animals

Much ado is made about how hungry annual plants are for concentrated nutrients. But in a system like mine with a large, daily buildup of manure that must in some way be processed, an annual plot is the perfect way to turn a problem into a solution. Expect a post in the near future devoted to horse-keeping. For now, suffice it to say that I'm not recommending acquiring the beasts and I've heard all the criticisms of them and their needs. But permaculture is working with what you have and the equines are here to stay for better or worse because I won't take the risk of sending them into an abusive situation. Consequently I have many tons of manure to deal with every year.

Much of their manure is spread directly with no work on my part and goes to work promoting fertility on pastures. They really like pooping and peeing in the barn though, and the easiest way to deal with the daily clean out is to dump it in a pile. I've located this pile near the garden, where after sitting for at least year, it gets shoveled into buckets and distributed to the beds, concentrating fertility.

My chickens create a negligible amount of manure compared to the large herbivores, but they love to scratch, and this activity can be harnessed to process large amounts of waste and prepare garden beds. Not incidentally, the nutrition gained from eggs is topnotch. The inputs are relatively large and costly, but this is justified by the perfect packages stuffed full of high quality protein plus essential vitamins that result.

While chickens are possibly the livestock most often encountered in permaculture setups due the ease of keeping them, how and which animals are incorporated will depend on each individual situation. It's about integrating and not segregating. Perhaps for some harvesting the deer that decimate native tree saplings and prevent forest regeneration is the best way to include animals. Hunting stacks many functions including providing high quality meat, facilitating land restoration, reducing road accidents, and improving herd quality and health. Many permaculturists write about plant foraging, but hunting not so much. The Venn diagram of hunting enthusiasts and permaculture practitioners needs to overlap more.

No doubt there are tools for maximizing self-sufficient food yields that I've overlooked. Let me know your favorites in the comments.