Restoration Agriculture: Balancing Agriculture and the Environment

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Post-ice age megafauna (mastodon, giant sloth, giraffes, giant armadillos and more) thrived on the exact same plant systems that are with us today.
Post-ice age megafauna (mastodon, giant sloth, giraffes, giant armadillos and more) thrived on the exact same plant systems that are with us today.
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A view across the
A view across the "savanna" at New Forest Farm. Comprising about 40 acres, this section of the farm is planted to white oak (on 60-foot spacings to provide a park-like savanna in 120 years), chestnuts, apples and a main crop of hazelnuts. Cattle and poultry are rotated through this system throughout the summer.
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A view from the
A view from the "polyculture" block to the "north ridge chestnuts." The foreground is a polyculture that consists of four rows of hazels, then one row of chestnut, apple, serviceberry, mulberry, black alder and raspberry. The pattern is repeated several times over ten acres. This was done in an attempt to maximize tree canopy area exposed to the sun which should result in greater total photosynthetic yield. At the top of the ridge are young chestnut trees, planted with the intention of establishing a closed-canopy forest over time. Woody crops are planted at very high densities (oftentimes 1,000-4,000 tress per acre) in order to discover the genetic variants that are young to bear, heavy producers, and thrive under a regime of sheer, total, utter neglect. Losers in this human-guided process of natural selection are used as firewood, mushroom substrate or material for local craftsmen and wooden toy manufacturers.
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Commercially selected cultivars of plant species can outyield their
Commercially selected cultivars of plant species can outyield their "wild" counterparts and can potentially support even more mammals than even the late Pleistocene.
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Not your typical apple
Not your typical apple "orchard." Daffodils at the base of the trees eliminate sod while repelling rodents and providing early spring nectar and pollen for bees and cutflowers. Iris between the trees also provide sod control while yielding cutflowers and tubers used by a skin-care products company. Comfrey (large green leaves) is used by a medicinal herb company and accumulates potassium and calcium while providing overwintering habitat for predatory insects and substrate for morels. This "guild" of compatible plants is only a small part of the larger system which includes (on the left) chestnut, grape, hazelnut, rugosa rose, Siberian pea and currants and pears, with seedless grapes (on the right). The pattern then repeats itself across the hillside. Hogs are used for pest control when they graze through the system to harvest the pest-infected "June drop" and after harvest when they eat the pest-riddled fruit that pickers toss on the ground.
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Mark Shepard describes a vision of nature-inspired farming in
Mark Shepard describes a vision of nature-inspired farming in "Restoration Agriculture," based on his experience creating his own 106-acre perennial agricultural ecosystem, and offers advice on how to create a farm that works with, rather than against, the dominant conditions of the environment.
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This list of species and their arrangement from taller to shorter is somewhat of a Rosetta Stone for perennial agriculture systems in North America. Evidence shows that the current species that make up the North American oak savanna have ebbed and flowed through no less than four different ice ages.
This list of species and their arrangement from taller to shorter is somewhat of a Rosetta Stone for perennial agriculture systems in North America. Evidence shows that the current species that make up the North American oak savanna have ebbed and flowed through no less than four different ice ages.

Restoration Agriculture (Acres U.S.A., 2013) by Mark Shepard reveals how to sustainably grow perennial food crops that can feed us in our resource-compromised future. The goal of a restoration agriculture system is to take advantage of all the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems by creating agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel and other needs, and this book is a guide to creating such a system based on real-world practices. The following excerpt from chapter 7, “The Steps Toward Restoration Agriculture,” deals with identifying the natural system in your area.

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Restoration Agriculture.

Identify Your Biome

In order to successfully create a restoration agriculture farm, you must first have a basic understanding of what the biome is where the farm is to be established.

Simply defined, a biome is a region on planet Earth that has similar communities of plants and animals, similar rainfall patterns, and relatively similar soil types. If you were to walk around and observe the plants and animals of your region, you would get a specific list for your area. If you live in coastal Georgia, you would expect to be surrounded by certain trees and shrubs. You would expect the temperature or humidity to be one particular way in early versus late summer and to be different in the winter. If you were to be transported instantly to New Mexico, you would realize that you are in a radically different place. The change in biomes would be quite different in this case.

  • Published on Jan 20, 2015
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