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permaculture - [permaculture] The meagre harvest of yield

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  • From: 1earth permaculture <permaculture1@start.com.au>
  • To: "permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] The meagre harvest of yield
  • Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 7:39:36 +1000

I was wondering if someone knowledgable in such things could summarise
and post a methodology for working out the yield of a small acreage,
please?

A few years ago I was living in an intentional community and was
hunting for finance to buy the place. The banks weren't interested
because of the zoning, but I was able to get the Ethical Investment
Trust interested if I could do a business plan to show that the place
was viable (they didn't finance private homes, but they did finance
businesses).

I started researching the yield per acre of the various trees on the
property (they were over 40 different types of fruit trees on the 1.5
acres of land in use) and was trying to work out the yield per
individual tree. The only information that I could find was 'yield
per acre' - not 'yield per mature tree' - so perhaps a permaculture
yield worksheet needs to narrow the statistics down to 'per tree'.
(any thoughts?)

As it was a big job, I started looking at at other aspects of the plan
- particularly OPPORTUNITY COST - which is working out and comparing
the cost (in terms of money, resources and time) that one
'opportunity' had over another - and decided that the income was too
low to commit to finance. I abandoned the work of determining the
yield per plant at this time, but it is very useful data and something
that needs further examination.

Perhaps a Plants Database should also include information on yield per
mature plant??

Opportunity Cost as it applies to land use is literally comparing
apples to oranges (or anything else) and deciding which gives the
better return for your investment of resources.

Lentils at the moment is giving high yield (per acre) plus high sales
price (per ton) so it is an excellent cash crop. Of course, a small
acreage permaculture system isn't necessarily a 'cash crop' situation,
but perhaps we should be thinking in those terms, otherwise
permaculture might just be an effective subsistance farming method.

Marcus


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