Designing Sustainable Small Farms

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NUTRIENT RECYCLING

Farmers are in the import-export business. Nutrients, materials, and energy are imported, often from distant sources; then farm products carry embodied nutrients, materials, and energy off-site. The goal in permaculture is to convert such nutrient flows to cycles, both within the farm ecosystem and at the local and regional levels.

A good farm design provides for the recycling of livestock manure in composting systems, fish ponds, gardens, and orchards ... retrieves leached nutrients with green manure crops ... and traps and stores rainwater. At the local scale, organic refuse (such as leaves and vegetable wastes) is reclaimed from the landfills. And on the regional level, properly treated human wastes are applied to farmland as compost or sludge.

DIVERSITY

Finally, permaculture systems favor diversity over monoculture. However, because interactions among plants are both beneficial and competitive, diversity in and of itself is not as important as the right kind of diversity. Plant relationships take many forms, including competition for light, nutrients, water, and pollinators ... relative attractiveness as food sources for insects ... and chemical interactions. Photo 10 shows the competition between a hedge and a shade tree for nutrients, water, and light (the tree seems to be winning this one). As another example, in the eastern United States planting apples in the vicinity of red cedar will almost inevitably result in apples afflicted with cedar apple rust (Photo 11). Thus, less diversity-in this case, no cedars within half a mile of the orchard species sometimes results in higher productivity.

In other words, the number of elements in the landscape is not as important as the number and quality of the linkages among them. Good design maximizes the number of beneficial interactions among plants, structures, and people while minimizing or eliminating those interactions that are harmful. Such a setup is shown in Photo 12: Here grapes and blackberries are grown in close proximity in a northern California vineyard, a wise combination because the blackberries attract a parasite of a major grape pest.

Diversity can also be considered from an economic standpoint. With farmers' incomes dependent on the vagaries of the marketplace, having several salable products instead of one tends to avoid large (and possibly disastrous) fluctuations in financial returns. As prices vary, some farm commodities can be held or sold to maximize profit. Of course, once your lettuce is in the ground, it must be marketed as it matures. But livestock and pasture crops permit flexibility in selling strategy. My father's 1,300-acre farm in New Zealand, for instance, provides varying amounts of lamb, mutton, wool, beef, barley, red and white clover seed, and ryegrass seed for sale in any one year.

Depending on the relative prices, cattle can be held a year before they're slaughtered, a potential seed crop can be used for hay, or sheep can be heavily or lightly called.

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