Sustainable Farming

Lend-A-Hand India, a US based non-profit founded by young Indians, has trained over 10,000 students in rural India in various trade skills. They are now developing a course in sustainable rural development based on permaculture principles.

I'm working on this project along with an international group of permaculture experts. The course will be designed to empower these rural students to help their communities meet their food, water, and shelter needs sustainably. Training in permaculture based farm design, water harvesting, waste management, locally appropriate building design and construction, and community action will enable better use of local resources, improved self-reliance, and rehabilitation natural ecosystems.

Please visit the project web page to donate to this project. Since Lend-A-Hand India is a registered non-profit under section 501(c)(3), your donation will be tax deductible!

Science Magazine has an excellent overview of the challenges of optimizing food production for 9 Billion people over the next 40 years:

Producing more food from the same area of land while reducing the environmental impacts requires what has been called "sustainable intensification". In exactly the same way that yields can be increased with the use of existing technologies, many options currently exist to reduce negative externalities. Net reductions in some greenhouse gas emissions can potentially be achieved by changing agronomic practices, the adoption of integrated pest management methods, the integrated management of waste in livestock production, and the use of agroforestry. However, the effects of different agronomic practices on the full range of greenhouse gases can be very complex and may depend on the temporal and spatial scale of measurement. More research is required to allow a better assessment of competing policy options. Strategies such as zero or reduced tillage (the reduction in inversion ploughing), contour farming, mulches, and cover crops improve water and soil conservation, but they may not increase stocks of soil carbon or reduce emissions of nitrous oxide. Precision agriculture refers to a series of technologies that allow the application of water, nutrients, and pesticides only to the places and at the times they are required, thereby optimizing the use of inputs. Finally, agricultural land and water bodies used for aquaculture and fisheries can be managed in ways specifically designed to reduce negative impacts on biodiversity.

NYTimes has a good summary.

Permaculture design principles can help reach a lot of these goals.

View from the permaculture design course site. Yeah, it's going to to be tough to concentrate. ;-)

It's unbelievable that I have managed to not discuss guilds, the quintessential permaculture concept, for so long on this blog! We have discussed them indirectly by considering beneficial interdependence, sunlight harvesting, and complex systems with multifunctional components. But, without any more delay:

Simply put, a guild is a combination of plants and animals, where each plant or animal performs one or more beneficial functions. As these plants and animals are selected to fulfill each others' requirements, the system becomes almost entirely self-managing, requiring no external inputs and very little labor apart from harvesting.

I've found a couple of very well written descriptions of guilds, so let me just quote from them -

Stacia and Kristof Nordin of NeverendingFood write:

A good Permaculture guild generally has seven components:

• Food for us
• Food for the soil
• Diggers/Miners
• Ground Cover
• Climbers
• Supporters
• Protectors

Read their full description here.

Meg Howe and Graeme Young of Small Farm Permaculture and Sustainable Living describe guilds as:

A guild in Permaculture landscape design is a harmonious assembly of species (plant or animal) physically associated with a central plant or animal species to provide it with some benefit.

The range of benefits that can be derived from guild species include:

• Providing mulch
• Offering shelter and protection from frost, wind or sun
• Hosting predators
• Remove pest habitat
• Prey on or deter pests
• Killing root parasites or pests
• Providing nutrients
• Facilitating root penetration

Read their full description here.

One of the major costs in conventional farming is the continuous manual or mechanical work required. In sustainable farming practices any unnecessary activity is consciously designed out. We've already seen how the functions of tilling and pest control are achieved by employing natural services, and how features of the land are employed to minimize labour and energy requirements.

In permaculture design, the zone system is used to minimize the effort required in managing and harvesting the farm.

On a sustainable farm with a lot of different plants and animals, some need more frequent attention and harvesting than others. These should be placed closer to the home to make it easier to visit them. Zones are a way of guiding this layout scheme:

Zone	Purpose	Need for Activity
0	Home
1	Leafy vegetables, herbs, strawberries, plant nursery, work area	Multiple times a day
2	Smaller fruit trees, fruit vegetables, beehives, chickens, compost bin	Once a day
3	Main crop for domestic consumption and sale, food forest	Once a week
4	Semi-wild foraging zone with large trees, mushrooms, firewood, grazing animals	Once a week
5	Protected natural area/wilderness for observation and learning only	Never

One of the few bits of knowledge I will remember forever from when I was studying to be a metallurgist* can be summarized** as:

The action is always at the interfaces.

The interfaces, or edges, between two different systems are an extremely important concept when setting up a sustainable agricultural system too. Due to the sudden change in system properties, interfaces are highly active zones, with energy and materials continuously in flux. Life takes advantage of these energy and material exchanges, and thrives far more easily at these discontinuities than in the more homogenous interior of an area. For example, the most biodiverse and productive sites in an ocean are near the shores as well as where cold and warm ocean currents meet. Comparatively, the open ocean is akin to the Sahara desert in terms of biodiversity and productivity.

In permaculture design, increasing the amount of edges is an important tool for maximizing the productivity of a farm. Specifically, ponds are designed with an irregular shape (as opposed to circular) to maximize the water's edge. Wooded and grassland areas are intermingled. Of course, since the biodiversity is high in any area, there are a lot of micro-interfaces where different organisms interact. All of this improves the resource efficiency and productivity of the designed ecosystem.

The corollary is reducing the interface area when you want to minimize material use and energy exchange. For example, spherical structures have the least surface areas for a given volume, and are thus the most energy efficient for heating and cooling***.

The edge effect isn't limited to the physical phenomenon**** - the most innovative scientific research happens in interdisciplinary fields (and of course, at the boundary between knowledge and ignorance). Some of the most interesting art and music and literature happens where two different cultures or ideologies meet.

So here's to the fringes. They make the world more exciting and productive!



* 1998-2002. Feels like lifetimes ago!

** For those who want a fuller explanation: The things we use every day (alloys, composites, etc) are made of different combinations of elements and compounds. In metals and alloys, the functional units of the material are crystallites (or grains). A huge fraction of the properties of the material (strength, ductility, conductivity, thermal properties) is attributable to the microstructure, and specificlly the grain boundaries. These discontinuities in the material are high energy sites, and influence the behavior of the material tremendously. Almost all of the thermal and mechanical treatments affect the properties of materials by increasing or decreasing the size, shape, distribution, and energy of the grain boundaries.

Control over the microstructure and boundaries is also very important for controlling the properties of polymers, ceramics, semiconductors and composites.

*** I also remember reading that ancient human dwellings progressed from round to rectangular as prosperity increased, and reverted to round shapes in times of prolonged scarcity. Can't find any references right now. Anyone?

**** Also read the post Some Thoughts on Edge on the Permaculture Reflections blog.

The conventionally preferred farmland is a flat piece of land that has easy access to water and is free of large rocks and boulders. Any variations in a landscape are often removed at great expense to reach this ideal. This is of course due to our preference for using animals and machines for doing the work, and growing single crops over large areas.

In fact, the variations in a landscape are a great asset for creating a rich, productive environment.

In a natural landscape, the variations and gradients in topography, orientation, soil structure, and mineral concentration create a variety of niches where different organisms thrive. Combined with natural cycles (seasons, day and night), these gradients give rise to energy and material fluxes through the landscape. These fluxes further specialize the niches, creating the right conditions for a diverse ecosystem. As we know, biodiversity is at the heart of creating a stable, efficient and productive ecosystem.

In permaculture, these gradients, cycles and patterns are observed and utilized for maximizing biodiversity and for situating plants, buildings, and other structures at the appropriate locations.

Water, often the limiting resource in an ecosystem, is a good example. We already saw how swales and ponds are a good tool for rejuvenating a landscape. They are especially important in Asia and Africa, where highly seasonal rainfall and temperature variations often lead to a marked dry season. Swales and ponds built on a natural slope harvest water with only small changes in the landscape, and make the rainwater available more uniformly through the year. By locating them properly, ponds can also reflect light towards plants, improve humidity, and make the local climate more moderate. Furthermore, swales and ponds create more niches in the landscape by introducing a water content gradient - water, water's edge and moisture gradients in the soil. Once you locate the plants according to their water needs, you don't need to waste energy on irrigation.

Similarly, by studying the patterns of wind, sunlight and natural animal movement, a permaculture site can be optimized to make it not only more productive, but also more habitable for humans, plants, and animals. With all these possibilities, why would you want a featureless land for a farm?

One of the major differences in conventional agriculture and natural ecosystems is in the number and complexity of components. Conventional agriculture is a fairly simple and linear system with very few components and pathways. In contrast, natural ecosystems are highly complex with hundreds, if not thousands of active components (microbes, insects, plants, animals) as well as numerous pathways through the system for energy and materials.

The needs of each component in a natural ecosystem are fulfilled by the outputs of multiple components, and in return, each provides multiple useful inputs for others. Furthermore, each need can often be fulfilled through multiple pathways. These needs are not only material requirements like nutrients and water, but also environmental requirements, like the right amount of sunlight, humidity, pest control, pollination and physical support.

This complexity has two direct benefits -

1. Since everything is useful for something else, there is no 'waste' in the system, increasing energy and resource use efficiency.
   
2. Due to multiple pathways for fulfilling each need, removal of a few components does not debilitate the system.

Thus, a complex system with multifunctional components remains stable and productive with only sunlight, water and air as inputs. Conversely, it is precisely because we insist on keeping farms in an unnatural, simplified state that we need vast amounts of energy and labor for growing food in the conventional manner.

In permaculture, such complexity is intentionally designed into the system, creating a "food forest" with as many as 500-600 plant species, a few domesticated animal species, and attracting a large number of beneficial wild insects and birds. With this approach, a permaculture farm can produce an abundance of food practically throughout the year, without any chemical or mechanical inputs, and requiring far less labor than a conventional farm.

We need to shift our point of view significantly to realize how this is possible - we know that managing a farm with five plant species takes work. Managing a farm with fifty productive plant species will probably take even more work. What is perhaps a little un-obvious is that a farm with hundreds of plant species, a number of animal, and numerous insect and bird species can be completely self regulating and self sufficient, provided the components are chosen well to work together with each other and the local climate and landscape:


On a related note, the BBC series 'Natural World' recently showed the documentary A Farm for the Future, produced by wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking:

Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, [Rebecca] sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is.

Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.

If you're in the UK, you can watch this program on the internet. Otherwise, it may be available on your local BBC channel.

In the last three posts, we saw that the major goal of permaculture (as well as natural farming and other sustainable land use practices) is to create a highly efficient and productive ecosystem by utilizing sunlight, land, and rainfall* to the maximum extent possible. The techniques of permaculture, like swales-and-ponds, mulching, or creating a 'layered' food forest, are derived from a few underlying themes.

Once we understand these themes, it is easy to design own low input highly productive systems, even in small urban spaces:

Designing the system with beneficially interdependent components is a major themes underlying permaculture design. This applies not only to interdependence between biological components (plant guilds, plants and bees, or plants and birds), but also to biological and nonbiological components. For example, plants grown on swales reduce erosion of the swale and in return get a dependable source of water.

The other important interdependence, of course, is between the human and natural components of the land. This includes using the waste products of human activities as feed/mulch/compost/manure for the the natural systems, and in return getting a better harvest from the plants and animals.

It is also important to reduce harmful relationships in the ecosystem. This includes increasing the distance between plants that may hurt each other chemically or physically, situating non-biological and biological components to minimize harmful effects of temperature and humidity, etc.


* I should mention maximum utilization of air too! Apart from water, practically all the biomass on the land is the carbon and nitrogen captured from air.

The third critical component in the natural world is sunlight. On conventional farms, orchards and agro-forests, there is usually only one primary plant species, and sometimes a secondary species, in any given area. Furthermore, a significant fraction of the land is directly exposed to sunlight either between plants or between harvesting and the next planting.

Contrast this with a natural forest, where there are multiple species of plants, each growing to a different height, and adapted to thrive in different intensities of sunlight. As a result, the ground in a mature forest is almost completely dark.

Permaculture design aim to replicate this phenomenon as much as possible on a farm, by creating a 'layered' system. The maximum harvesting of sunlight increases the total yield of the land. Considering that plants are the best solar harvesters we have till date, and that they provide a lot of indirect services along with the food or material harvested, it is imperative that we start employing solar intensive permaculture practices everywhere.

Also see:

• This previous post: Re-Solarizing Farming
• A post on another blog about a farm in Goa (India) that is "harvesting sunlight"

One of the major problems facing small and subsistence farmers is the quality of the land. The 'prime' agricultural land - large stretches of level ground with easy access to water - is already in the hands of larger and usually more financially capable farmers. Conversely, the poorest farmers cultivate marginal lands that have lower soil quality, that are often on hill slopes, and have rainfall as the only source of irrigation. Slash and burn agriculture is also often practiced on such marginal land, leading to a whole host of undesirable consequences.

However, most of the productivity of an ecosystem comes from the interactions of it's living components. This is especially true in tropical areas, where the temperature allows things to grow throughout the year. In a permaculture system, everything uses the outputs of something else. Nutrients are naturally integrated and then fully retained in the system. Over time, the inorganic soil serves primarily as a substrate, and all the necessary nutrients are obtained from the naturally composted biological matter on the top.

These beneficial interactions in a complex ecosystem, combined with small earthworks (swales and ponds) can convert any piece of land into a sustainable, productive, and profitable farm. The key is to plan a rich ecosystem that works with the layout of the land, and generates a harvest that satisfies the needs of the occupants.

An added bonus is that permaculture and natural farming practices work best without mechanization and do not require plowing. This is particularly beneficial for small farmers, who often go into debt to borrow farm machinary or even plow animals.

Here is an example of how seemingly barren land can be converted to a productive farm using permaculture principles:

As you can see, the knowledge of bringing barren lands back into production has been available for the past three decades. Unfortunately, the education and implementation has tremendously lagged behind the needs of subsistence farmers everywhere.

With this post, I am starting a series to explore the various aspects of sustainable land use. I still have a lot to learn, but a number of basic principles are becoming clear to me. In this series I plan to discuss the basic aspects of these interrelated concepts. I will discuss the complexities (and corrections!) in future posts.

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The goal of sustainable land management should be to create a habitable system that

• has very low running costs and labor requirements,
• provides for most of the needs of the people dependent on it,
  
• generates a substantial profit.

One of the key resources required for land to be productive is water. In the next few decades, water scarcity is only going to get worse.


Projected water shortage in the year 2050.
Most urban water harvesting schemes (rooftop collection and storage in dedicated reservoirs), though laudable, are expensive in the short term and neither sufficient nor sustainable in the long run.

To fully utilize the rainfall on a piece of land, it is necessary to

1. minimize water runoff
2. increase top soil moisture content and productive surface water
3. replenish deep underground water reservoirs

These water management principles were often utilized successfully to provide water for farming and urban communities. With the advent of modern engineering, we gave up these low cost, small scale techniques in favor of ever deeper bore wells, massive dams and long canals. Especially in the developing world, these mega projects are not only being built primarily for the benefit of large cities and industries, they have also suffered from corruption, social disruptions, massive delays and cost overruns, and most importantly, ineffectiveness.

The false sense of water security of these techniques spurred wasteful water use and indiscriminate water pollution. Conversely, the impending scarcity has brought us to the point where even the availability of water as a free resource is now under serious debate (even 007 himself got involved! ;).

In light of this evidence, probably the most effective (and cost effective) method is to implement water catchment and groundwater replenishment on the small scale. There are many ancient techniques to learn from and improve upon, but one of the simplest and most cost effective method is creating swales (also known as contour bunding).

Swales are simply long and shallow trenches dug on contour in a sloping landscape, with the dug out material piled on the lower end. This creates a barrier and reservoir for the water flowing down the slope. The water pooled in the trench slowly seeps into the ground, and also provides a stable source of water for plants planted on the mound. Especially in regions where rainfall is highly seasonal and/or irregular, swales are a very powerful way of slowing down the water so that it is available more uniformly throughout the year.


Due to their low cost and effectiveness, swales are an excellent way of beginning a permaculture food forest. These simple water features can be complemented by small interconnected ponds that hold water, percolate it slowly to replenish groundwater, and act as more sites for food production. This method also get rid of the false dichotomy of distinguishing between a 'catchment area' and a 'cultivation area', instead utilizing the available land for maximum productivity.

An excellent example of this approach is Sepp Holzer's* forty hectare mountainside farm in Austria that contains many productive ponds, as well as orchards and vegetable areas:


Do you know anyone that has a small farm or unproductive piece of land? Please tell them about this method of bringing the land back to maximum productivity with minimal investment. With the 3 billion new people joining us on the planet in the next forty years, the only way to for everyone to survive peacefully is to bring all the land back to high productivity without any resource depletion or pollution.

*You can also buy a DVD with three films about the various approaches Sepp Holzers has developed on his farm.

I've just created a presentation about sustainable farming. You can view and download the presentation here (.pdf, 4.13 MB). You can also download a version with smaller file size (.pdf, 2.73 MB, sans fancy background!). Let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, corrections, or questions. I'll be happy to share original presentation in .keynote or .ppt format, just drop me a line.

Also see: This presentation [.pdf] created by Himanshu Khatri of Udai, and this presentation [.ppt] created by Erin Runnels for Kansas State University. (Both of these explain Natural Farming techniques, whereas I have explored both Natural Farming and Permaculture.)

Finally putting my money where my mouth has been for quite a while, I have registered for a Permaculture course. Anybody want to join me in Hawaii this April? :) While I have already read The One-Straw Revolution, The Natural Way of Farming, and Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, learning sustainable agriculture techniques directly from the experts and by working on the land itself should be a much more educational experience.

I'm also planning to work with some friends in their organic garden soon, as well as volunteer in an organic community farm. Stay tuned for more announcements about activities.

Permaculture is a popular method of sustainable agriculture management. In this method, the agricultural potential of an area is maximized by

• completely utilizing the resources - sun, water, and land
  
• by making small modifications to the landscape
• and introducing a large variety of productive and interdependent plant and animal species to occupy all niches, creating a high biodiversity environment
  

What does such a landscape look like? The short video below shows the established food forest on the Permaculture Research Institute campus*:


Bill Mollison, the founder of the permaculture movement, gives an overview of the set-up sequence of a typical food forest in this blog post:

Thus the phases of abundance in tropical – subtropical systems of from 1-2 acres upwards in wet seasons could be:

• Season 1. Establishment of an abundant richness of species for trial.
• Season 2. An abundant source of propagation material is produced.
• Season 3. Several species are sufficiently numerous to provide an abundance of yield.
• Season 4. Yield is excellent, propagation material “unlimited”, and slower species start to produce. Absolute abundance is achieved.
• Season 5 on. Abundant yield from as many as 30 perennials and the same number of annuals is achieved, and can be made to persist for as long as is needed.

* You can buy the DVD here.

This is the idea we submitted to Project 10¹⁰⁰:

Your idea's name:

What one sentence best describes your idea?



Describe your idea in more depth.


What problem or issue does your idea address?



If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?



What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

1. Obtain funding and determine size and region focus of the project.
2. Build a coalition of experts and leaders in the field of high yield sustainable small-farm agriculture.
3. Identify the methods of sustainable agriculture that are best suited for environmental, cultural, and economic conditions in each region.
4. Identify existing regional training centers, and organize training programs.
5. Identify trainees in local regions - ideally, small farmers who are actively experimenting with alternative methods of farming.
6. Arrange financial support and other resources for trainees to attend training sessions and to implement sustainable agriculture practices on their farms.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

1. Number of small farmers identifying themselves as sustainable farming practitioners.
2. Small farm area switched from conventionally to sustainably farmed.
3. Reduction in input costs (pesticide, chemical fertilizers, labor, irrigation, etc.) on sustainable farms.
4. Improvement in local environmental conditions, including air quality, ground cover, and water table.
5. Increase in yield and diversity of farm produce, as well as biodiversity in and around the farm.
6. Improvement in rural health and child mortality rates due to improvements in nutrition.
7. Reduction in small farmer debt and increase in net worth.
8. Reduction in rural medical costs.