Restoration Agriculture

From my recent blog post: This book outlines Mark Shepard’s journey from his childhood in New England to life at his farm at his home in Wisconsin. As a child, Mark’s family relied heavily on their annual garden and fruit trees to provide food for the family. He remembers garden work to be hot, laborious and never ending. The annual garden was a constant fight against nature. Weeding, watering, planting, a never ending cycle. He then recounts the food they foraged. It was cool and peaceful. They mostly harvested. They didn’t have to worry about weeds, as every part of the natural system worked together. These childhood experiences, along with a few books, led him to the restorative agriculture system he uses today. Mark’s farm in Wisconsin copies natural systems which are conducive to the area which he lives. Within a small area, he will plant chestnuts, apples, grapes, and blackberries. Each plant either complimenting each other, or utilizing different substrates of the area. An area filled with this diverse plant system will produce more food overall. However, if that same area were planted with all apples, you would harvest more apples, but the diversity equals safety. If there is a bad year for apples, the apple producer is completely out of luck. You can even use this system to harvest wood for fuel and building. He also expand this system to include animals. You an have pigs foraging in between the alleys of perennial woody crops, in a paddock shift system. This means that the pigs move from area to area with just enough disturbance to to enhance the area. If there are too many pigs in too little an area for too long ( or one of any of those three “too’s”), you will end up degrading your land instead of enhancing it. This book also commented on how these methods can actually nourish the world instead of “feeding” it. He discussed the nutrition lacking in corn and our other mono-crops. This is evident when we see 500 pound adults with Rickets, a disease partially caused by a deficiency in necessary nutrients such as calcium. They are clearly getting enough calories, but not any nutrition. It is possible to be fat and malnourished. At his farm, New Forest Farm, Mark is also trying to restore the American Chestnut. The American Chestnut was hit with a blight originating from the Chinese Chestnut. The American Chestnut was the East Coast’s version of the Red Wood. When the blight first started to spread, we stupidly decided to cut down all the American Chestnuts to stop the spread. This removed any trees that may have had a natural genetic resistance to the blight. Mark is planting thousands of trees in hopes of finding one genetic variety that has resistance. He does this over planting them from seeds and then using his STUN technique. STUN stands for Sheer Total Utter Neglect. This allows for the strongest of plants to survive. If any tree wants to die, he lets it. The weeds out the weak genetics and brings the strong genetics to the foreground. This book is an enlightening read. It gives hope, and also gives a reason to become active in your food choices. It offers a new prospective on farming and restoration to the land. This book is an entertaining and quick read, but beyond informative. My take aways: Plant more trees Plant things you can eat (they still look pretty!) Plant trees Eat from a perennial systems. (nuts, fruits, pastured meats) There is hope. Plant trees that will thrive in your area. I do recommend this book. It has opened my eyes and added to my arsenal of information so that I can make educated decisions. As I start to design my property and plant with a plan, I will be keeping Mark’s systems and philosophies in mind.

Mark Shepard's book is entertaining and readable. It provides clear examples of real-life practices for cold-climate permaculturists, whether a professional farmer or not. Yes, Shepard comes at the topic of permaculture from the standpoint of a farmer looking to transition from "Big Ag" methods to a sustainable alternative, and makes a great case for making the switch. But a clear picture with ideas to try are included that any gardener, homesteader or permaculture designer will find useful. Shepard presents ideas for producing food and other products sustainably, beyond organic, that can take place on any size agricultural acreage. It's a fun read. For instance, did you know there is a movement to reintroduce very large mammals into the North American ecosystems, like elephants? There are lots of interesting tidbits and anecdotes, told in a witty, conversational voice. At the same, time, Shepard successfully portrays the extremely serious, accelerating death spiral of current agricultural practices. It was the first time I was really struck with the full truth of what is happening and where we are heading if we don't change how we farm. As a student in Geoff Lawton's online Permaculture Design Course, I am finding in retrospect that Shepard worked the principles of permaculture into the text in a very digestible form. Now as I learn about the foundations of permaculture, I think of this book and think, oh, that's why he did that! I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in sustainably farming or gardening in a cold climate, and believe it is essential to any permaculture designer.

Can't reasonably expect one book to be complete on any subject. That said, this is a Decent intro for why reaching beyond organic ag (to restoreAg) is a necessity, and offers some practical steps for transition Audience & Focus is more toward: ~shifting mindset away from ChemCorp /PharmAg practices, which comprise the majority of current US production ~beyond tillage farming of organic annual cropping ~feasible, interim strategies for large-scale producers to implement while in transition toward sustainability. To these ends, it's a good start, and should be required reading in ecology 101. Mainstream awareness is obviously critical to shift markets from lowest price to favoring suppliers who follow humane, sustainable practices. The transition is most economically sound for the consumer: ~sustainable practices make production less costly and a higher quality product ~shifts a "gourmet" to the mainstream, improving the standard and eventually price Market shifts pressure big Corp 'Pharmers' to clean up their act and improve product in order to compete. ~To these ends, should be required reading in any intro economics class, especially home economics. Silvopasturing is touched on in prose, but follow-on poly-culture mob stock grazing (a cornerstone practice for economic and ecologic stability) is given far less attention than i hoped. The few examples that only elude to actual nuts&bolts of specific RestoreAg practices, their economic impact or projections, and scalability are only a good start, and left me wanting for more hard data. I recommend it, i enjoyed it, give it 5 stars, but I'm not in the large-scale Ag commodity production business. For my far smaller-scale aspirations, I've found books by J. Salatin, M. Phillips, Bill Mollison or Yoeman more helpful for my circumstances and stage of learning.

An excellent synthesis of ecological history and the art and science of ag land management -- all written from the perspective of "sustainable living" (living within the limits of our global ecosystems). In this book, Mr. Shepherd outlines the foundation of a "new agriculture" which will necessarily be adopted by progressive (or surviving) farmers to prevent collapse of their farming systems. As an ecologist and an anthropologist who happens to own a farm in the Midwest, I've independently come to the same conclusion as Mr. Shepherd: Our current farming methods are highly unsustainable and will result in ecological and economic collapse if not reversed. Shepherd goes further in his book by laying out the foundations for a new agriculture for the Midwest (and elsewhere), one whose methods turn agriculture on its head by rebuilding soil, replenishing aquifers, and relying on renewable instead of non-renewable inputs. In a nutshell: Our current methods essentially mine and sterilze the soil. Shepherd, a trained forester, encourages farmers to focus on long term ecological health and productivity instead of corporate farm profit-driven productivity based on annual crops and petrochemicals.

I was entertained and educated by Mark Shepard's "Restoration Agriculture". He made me recognise the value of polyculture in a way that hasn't sunk in well before and especially the pest control aspects.. One example- recognising that you don't get the organisms that eat pests and diseases without having pests and diseases- and if you try to fix the P&Ds by poisons, over time you're selecting the P&Ds that can cope with the poisons- laying out the welcome mat to the bugs of tomorrow... The book is more realistic about potential income than you'd expect and based on a real-world attempt at "commercial" permaculture. And there's an interesting nutrional and calorific comparison to industrial agriculture that every farmer should consider. Where the book is lacking is in sketches and plans that illustrate the written comments on tree spacing and farm layout, etc. Compare it to Bill Mollison's Permaculture Designers' Manual and it's easy to see how a second edition of this book would be helped with even scribbled sketches- a picture is, after all, worth a thousand words. Great value for money nevertheless.

This book has a glimpse of a fundamental change in Agriculture that will shift the human species from an overpopulated mess turning all the world into unsustainable deserts--into a richer, healthier species that will increase the quality and quantity of food for ourselves and all other creatures. Currently, we have annual crops that have a lot of calories, but weak in micronutrients, leading to emotionally troubled warmongers, and thus repeated civilization collapse. This food is grown with plows that damage the soil, leading to local temperature extremes, and floods and droughts. The book describes different kinds of biomes, and how we can create healthier ones with many different crops on the same land, for a higher total yield of much more nutritious food. Our cultural memory is of farms like E-I-E-I-O, many species, not a dozen square miles of one poisoned thing. Perennial polyculture is more satisfying and interesting, and with the help of this book, and others about regenerative agriculture, we will create delightful farms better than parks. We are in transition from one age (at least 6000 years old) that is DYING amidst great shrieks and pain and utter insanity, to one that will prove far better. Life can be so much fun. Buy this book and help create the future.

For anybody interested in sustainable agriculture, I would highly recommend this book by Mark Shephard. The first few chapters are a good introduction to the topic and make a convincing case against conventional ag. Unlike some books, though, which are mostly rants against the current system, Shephard provides a step forward. Most of the book is devoted to his methods of improving genetics, using ecological systems, and (what he would consider to be the biggest improvement over the current system) his use of perennial staple crops like chestnuts and tree fruit. Perhaps the biggest inspiration I had from this book was the concept of using multiple livestock species to improve productivity and minimize inputs such as mowing and pest control. Overall, I highly recommend this book, and hope everybody enjoys reading it as much as I did.

This is a pretty broad overview of the Restoration Agriculture system(?). You will not get much how to, or step by step instructions so you can copy what Mark has on your land. Besides you don't want that, unless you are Mark Shepard, in which case, could you sign my book? This is more of a call to action, how to act, and why-kind of book. This is the bridge, not the vehicle; the means of how you cross the bridge doesn't really matter. Likewise what plants you need to plant, what techniques you will use, and what your goals are will vary. This book will help snap you out of focus on the details, and help you build the framework that you need for your situation If you want how to so you can permie up your postage stamp you can find that online and in other books. If your interested in feeding people en masse, in a smart and cost effective way to build a self sustaining future free of chemical ag, foriegn oil, and building a strong ecosystem (or whatever social-ecological-economical-political reason you have) you should really read this book. Side note, the quality of the actual book is very good. Good paper stock and quality cover. I did tape the cover so it would last longer. P.S. Mark, your "grains causes the downfall of civilizations" argument is a logical fallacy.