[PDF]Permaculture: Producing Forest-Based Food Products in Permaculture Systems

Producing Forest-Based Food Products in Permaculture Systems 1



Mark L Shepard 2

ABSTRACT : The basic Permaculture Principles introduced in this paper are elaborated on with a special emphasis on
creating forest-based food production systems. Drawing from Permacultural and other texts, this paper explores the creation
of perennial polycultures using the New Forest Farm of Viola, Wl and other sites around the region as practical examples.

This paper outlines the practical steps to be taken in order to transition a typical upper midwestern farm into an agricultural
forest. Species which are especially well suited to Permacultural systems are listed as well as sources of these plants.
Specific groupings of plants (guilds) that have proven to yield well in northern climates will be discussed as well.



Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to provide a basic
background to the science of Permaculture, to
demonstrate the practical steps needed in order to
transition a typical upper Midwestern row-crops farm
into a Permaculture system, and to provide the case
study of New Forest Farm near Viola, WI
(Southwestern WI) as an example of a farm making
that transition.

The results gathered from the first four years of the
transition show a great deal of promise for the
economic development of a diverse, ecologically
stable forest-based family farm.

What Is Permaculture?

The actual word Permaculture is an invention of
Australian authors and educator/farmers Bill Mollison
and David Holmgren. It is a contraction of the words
Permanent and Agriculture. The word Permaculture is
also used as a contraction of the words Permanent and
Culture for the authors of the word realized that
without a truly sustainable agriculture, there would be
no sustainable culture. It has been the inherent
unsustainability of the agriculture of the empire
cultures that has helped them all to collapse
periodically. It is the unsustainability of our own
modern agricultural system that is helping to
exacerbate many of our civilization's problems as
well. Topsoil loss, groundwater contamination, rising
cancer rates, and the bankruptcies of farmers all across
this country are common topics in newscasts these
days and even topics of presidential commentary. I'm
not interested in debating the issues on television and
radio. Neither am I out to place blame for the way
things are. I'm interested in getting to the roots of the



situation and creating a truly sustainable agricultural
system.

In order to continue, we all need to have at least a
basic idea of what Permaculture is. Sound-bite
definitions cannot possibly encompass all of what
Permaculture is and might even cause some folks to
pidgeonhole the concept. However, if definitions are
seen as a foundation upon which we build our house of
knowledge, then we will be on the right track toward
an understanding of Permaculture. I will use other
people's definitions that I have conveniently
paraphrased.

Bill Mollison writes:

1 . Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the
conscious design and maintenance of
agriculturally productive ecosystems which have
the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural
ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of
landscape and people providing their food, energy,
shelter and other material and non-material needs
in a sustainable way.

2. Permaculture design is a system of assembling
conceptual, material, and strategic components in
a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its
forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one
of working with, rather than against, nature; of
protracted and thoughtful observation rather than
protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at
systems in all their functions, rather than asking
only one yield of them and of allowing systems to
demonstrate their own evolutions.

With those basic definitions as the foundation that we
will build upon, you and I will spend the rest of our



'Workshop presented at the North American Conference On Enterprise Development Through Agroforestry: Farming the Agroforest for Specialty Products
(Minneapolis, MN, October 4-7, 1998)

2 Permaculture designer & Agroforest research farmer, New Forest Farm, P.O. Box 24 Viola, WI 54664



115



lives building our house of Permaculture knowledge.
As long as there are humans living on earth,
knowledge of what Permaculture is will continue to
grow, transform and become more refined.

Ethics and Principles

Being that it is an evolving body of knowledge- action
that is at the very basis of civilization, Permaculture
can be taught as a set of principles or guidelines which
are ethical by nature. This paper presents a
dramatically shortened set of guidelines that, in my
opinion, will give you all of the decision making and
conceptual tools you will need in order to apply
Permaculture principles in your thinking, in your life
and on the farm. Also, since my focus here is on the
transition of row-crop agriculture toward
Permaculture, I will not be discussing at all strategies
for the suburban or urban environment. Neither will I
mention techniques that apply within the home and
immediately around it. The Permacultural way of
thinking however, can be applied in all areas of life no
matter who you are or where you live.

Ethics

The primary ethical decision that we must make is to
take responsibility for our own existence and that of
our children. Every facet of our lives makes physical,
social and environmental impacts. Being conscious of
our impacts and striving to take responsibility for them
is where we all begin.

Care for people and care for the life support systems
of the planet we live on are paramount for the future
survival and well being of our children and
grandchildren. Leaving our children with more cash
dollars than we were left is not the only way to take
responsibility for the future. Actively creating healthy
agricultural ecosystems, clean air, clean water and a
safe social order are as important if not more so.

Cooperation , mutual support and information
exchange is the basis of the survival of existing life
systems and for the future.

Principles of Permaculture

All of the principles below are linked to one another.
None of them stand in separation from the others.
They are all part of the functioning whole. This, of
course, is one of the principles and that is:



Relative location

Nothing stands in isolation. Every farm is located
within a certain bio-geographical region. That region
determines what the major weather patterns will be. It
determines what plants and animals will be found there
and which exotics are likely to thrive. On a smaller
scale, every farm is located somewhere in a
watershed. . . up on the ridge, side hill or down in the
valley. The valley farm is connected to the ridge farm
by landform, water, weather, animal movements and
more. On a smaller scale still, an apple orchard is
planted in relation to certain aspects of slope, may be
surrounded by cornfield, next to the equipment yard or
the road. Within that same orchard, the interplanting of
other species are in relation to the shady side or the
sunny side of the tree, uphill or down hill from etc.

All of the above factors and their relationships have an
effect on crop yields, pest and disease pressure, ease of
harvest, and disaster survival rate, (drought, flood,
wind-shear etc)

Diversity

As a general rule, the more diverse a system is, the
more stable it is in the long term. A corn farmer wiped
out by hail is finished for the year. Financial hardship
will follow no matter how good an insurance policy
was carried. A corn, beans and hay farm that finished
beef or milked dairy animals would be more stable. In
a poor bean year maybe the hay will be better. If the
corn gets hailed maybe it'll make decent silage. Year
in and year out you can usually come up with
something to feed to the cows. However, both of the
above farms are very capital intensive and depend
upon the wisdom of our elected leaders to write
equitable legislation. Times of international financial
turmoil and political irresponsibility can undo a farmer
as severely as any hail storm. It is especially painful
for the farmer because the failure of his business could
happen despite the fact that he is an excellent farmer!

The more diverse the system is, the less likely there
will be a total loss. Hedge your bets and don't bet on
the bankers and politicians!

Energy

Do not consume or export more energy than can be
captured and stored by the life forms on your farm. I
will use a classic example here of the conventional egg
and the Permacultural egg.



116



Figure 1 is a flow chart that shows the inputs and
outputs of a conventionally produced egg. As you can
see, it is a rather energy intensive process from the
production of the materials for the equipment (tractors,
plows, combines, grain elevators, feed mills etc) to the
petroleum based fertilizers herbicides and pesticides to
the transportation of those materials. The chicken then
gets to live in a wire cage which is not the
environment in which the animal evolved. Battery egg
houses generate a tremendous amount of manure
which is costly to deal with, and use more energy.

Figure 2 is an illustration of a Permaculture egg. It is,
of course, somewhat of an idealized illustration, but
most of the ideas can be used in commercial egg
production facilities. Uncaged, free-range chicken
eggs are all the rage in the stores these days and the
producers receive more for their product. Free range
growers can add hedges of seed-producing trees and
shrubs around their hen yards, as well as medicinal
plants that the animals can eat free-choice to ward off
parasites, coxcidiosis etc. Electric bills can be reduced
when water pumps aren't operated constantly and the
roofwater is used in gravity feed watering systems.
Most of the energy needed to raise that egg came from
the system.

Energy costs money whether it is in the form of
electricity for the water pumps or fuel for the combine.
Using conscious design we can place food-bearing
plants next to/over/with/the poultry. We can design or
retrofit buildings to use less energy. Forage chop and
deep straw hen yards and pastured poultry all produce
chickens and eggs while using less energy.

By no means have I covered the entire topic of energy.
Energy and Permaculture systems could be the topic of
an entire workshop of its own.

Water

Even though the upper Midwest is an area of adequate
rainfall for unirrigated agricultural production, we still
experience extremes. In 1996 on my own farm we had
nearly a foot and a half of rain in the month of June
which included 6 1/2" in one storm. We then had no
measurable rainfall until October. 1988 was a drought
year and many families lost their farms because of it,
but any of you who were here then will remember that
during the drought the trees remained green. Water is a
form of biological energy. Without it plants and soil
life dies. Row crops which have a clean soil surface
beneath them tend to allow rain to run right off the
fields contributing to contaminated streams and silted



dams leading to angry environmentalists and lake
recreationists. Tree crops, however interact with water
in many different ways, (see figure 3) The leaves slow
the impact of the rainfall reducing the damage to soil
structure. The trunk is a bundle of tubes which
transport and store water. The roots act like drills
which can penetrate any hardpan to help drain wet
soil. These same roots allow the tree to access deep
water in times of drought that annual crops cannot.
Keep your water on your farm and use it by converting
it into some kind of living thing. Plants first then
animals. Keep the water as high up on the watershed
as possible so it can do as much work as it can before
flowing out to sea.

Figure 4 shows some basic land shaping schemes in
order to store water in the farm landscape. Most
farmers in this region either have a bulldozer or a
neighbor who has one. With a bulldozer to make
ponds in the proper place and a one bottom plow to
make water catching swales, nearly all water that falls
on the farm can be captured and stored in the soil.
During catastrophic rain, channels and dams can be
designed to allow excess water to run off without any
erosion. The topic of pond building leads me
conveniently into the next principle and that is this:

Work with nature rather than against it

The classic example of this is the farmer with a low
spot on the back forty. Every spring the low spot
puddles and remains soggy until the heat of summer
finally dries it up. Some years it's dry enough to put in
a crop, three times he's gotten the tractor stuck in it
and some years he knows better than to go anywhere
near that spot. The farmer who would work against
nature would go to the bank or the federal government
and get a loan for far too much money and have drain
tiles installed in the area. Even though all of the
farmer's fertilizer now gets washed directly into the
tile and into the ditch beside the road, it seems to work
for awhile. Eventually, however, the tiles break from
freezing and thawing too many times or they get
clogged with roots and eventually the wet spot returns.
This costs a lot of money, a lot of energy, and time,
and in the long run draining didn't work.

The same farmer could work with nature, however and
build a pond. The excavation could be big enough and
designed so that the fields surrounding it naturally
drain into the new pond. It might actually lower the
water table in the surrounding fields allowing for
higher yields than would be expected from swamp
corn. The pond now becomes a new resource on the



117



farm. It can be stocked with fish and thereby provide
additional protein for the family while it gives Mom,
Dad and the kids some quality time together.
Ornamental wetland flowers, grasses and shrubs can
be grown and crafted into saleable goods. Bird
watchers and hunters both might enjoy paying for a
campsite near the pond. The wet field becomes a
resource rather than an expensive nuisance. This leads
me into yet another Permaculture principle and that is:

The Problem has the seed to the solution
embedded right in it!

The above example illustrates this principle well.
Every problem has a creative, productive solution to it.
We just have to think at the problem from the other
side and accept the answer instead of imposing our
will expensively upon it.

The above principles have been more the broad
theoretical ones. At this point the principles become a
little more specific and directly applicable to
transitioning a farm into a Permaculture.

Plant succession

Most people in the area have been able to observe an
old field somewhere as it gradually began to turn itself
back into a forest. This of course, happens in areas that
naturally were and want to be forest. Those who live in
>>>