FarmStart

I am not yet a farmer, as I do not yet have land, and am planning on appretincing extensively through 2009 and 2010 before I start my own operation.

I have an interest in Permaculture, which is something you should all read up on. It is a what you could call "a design system, and set of principles for sustainable living" which is usually applied towards the goal of self-sufficient / off-grid living, through ecological landscaping, green building, etc.  Of course part of this is sustainable agriculture.

 One food growing technique utilized by self-described Permaculture farmers and even people who don’t use the word Permaculture is Food Forests / Forest Gardens. The idea is to mimic natural systems which are highly productive: forests. Looking at a forest and all the niches and relationships occuring in them, and then filling those niches with edible species. The model ends up looking like an orchard (canopy of fruit and nut trees) interspersed with shrubs, perrenial and annual herbs and vegetables, etc.

The biodiversity and mutualistic plantings of the system essentially controls pests; letting old vegetation decompose where it falls contributes to soil building; the system usually is built in coordination with passive water harvesting, negating the need of irrigation (search "Green The Desert, Geoff Lawton"), 

But a homestead scale, food forests tend to appear chaotic due to the incredible biodiversity and biomass; this is advantageous, because functioning food forest produce incredible ammounts of food, build up soil

 The main challenges seem to be uncontrolled growth (requiring cutting back vegetation, which translates to a steady supply of mulch), AND potentially the difficulty of finding and identifying the food part of the forest. (I.E. Inefficiency inharvesting food; and definately disallowing the use of machinery for harvesting)

What I was wondering is if anyone thinks it is possible to manipulate this model for commericial food production.

There is an Austrian farmer named Sepp Holzer (google him, there is a good documentary) who seems to have worked out a system which is commericially viable, but I’m not sure how readily his experience can be transfered to Ontario.

 Any ideas? Any experiences people have with intercropping  within orchard?

Adam,

There is a natural farming revolution happening in India.  Currently, 15000 farmers are suiciding because of Green Revelotion introduced by the Ghandi Political dynasty.  Green Revolution introduced the Conventional farming to rural poor farmers. Rural poor farmer who lived off an acre of land is going bankrupt and their pride is forcing them to suicide.

 There is a guy changing it by re introducing the Natural farm techniques which is pretty much mimicking the nature.

Check out his website:

http://palekarzerobudgetnaturalfarming.com/aboutme.html

According to him if you use vermiculture compost then you don’t have an Organic farm.  

Here is an analysis of India’s Green revolution and the damages caused.  The sad part is, they are going to do it again.

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/devsh_suicide.html