permaculture

[Sharon Gordon <gordonse@one.net>]

        Does anyone know of any detailed analyses of what would be
modern, sustainable self-sufficient diets in various rich regions of
the world?

***Ecology Action people have done helpful work on this.  One helpful book
is How to Grow More Vegetables (etc) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less
Land Than You Can Imagine, 6th edition by John Jeavons.  One Circle: How to
Grow a Complete Diet in Less Than 1000 Square Feet by David Duhon gives lots
of info on how to design a complete diet that will grow in your area.  The
author lives in the Pacific Northwest of the US, so the examples tend to be
for that region.  Much of what is in the book would work for  the UK.
People from Ecology Action in other parts of the world have developed one
circle style complete diet plans for Kenya (a person in Scotland did a
dissertation on nutritional aspects of  Kenyan biointensive gardens, but I
do not know the name of the person, university, or dissertation.  The
changes in food security were amazing though!)  and Mexico.  These are
available in booklets from http://www.bountifulgardens.org .  The Kenya and
Mexico plans are for regions with a lot more sun and heat, and would be more
helpful to people in southern US, Southern Europe and Australian and New
Zealand.  All of these deal with sustainable biointensive systems and are
designed to provide complete diets on minimal amounts of land.

***Jeavons has focused on doing this with plants with are annual in much of
the world rather than perennial ones, though his book does provide data on
many perennial plants.  The couple of exceptions I can think of are in the
Duhon book which suggests filberts/hazelnuts in one of the plans, and the
Mexico booklet which suggests using a cactus as one of the vegetables.  In
places more toward the equator, plants like tomatoes and peppers are
perennial shrubs.  And there are examples people who have studied indigenous
traditional homesteads around the world where permaculture and annual crops
are integrated permaculture style around the house.  The references I have
seen to these tend to be partial lists of what is grown.  I have not seen
one where the work and yield from an entire homestead was evaluated.  Albie
Miles did do an experiment one year to try to answer this question and a
summary of the results is at http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html .

***Since Ecology Action's focus has been on feeding people on small amounts
of ground, they tend to focus on a small number of efficient foods for that
area.  At the very least I would guard against crop failure by using
multiple varieties of a particular crop.  For instance if you are growing
tomatoes, grow a mix of early season, cold tolerant, heat resistant, cherry,
roma, beefsteak.  That way, what ever the weather a number of plants are
likely to do well, and different plants may do better over the growing
season as well.

***Another thing I would advocate where people have access to the land is to
fully utilize their fair share of the land in a way that is effective and
sustainable from both a biointensive and permaculture viewpoint.  The people
who are currently studying ecological foot prints note that a fair share per
human (disregarding the rest of nature) is 5-6 acres a person.  Of this it
looks like people need to actively use 1 acre or less per person.  From a
permaculture standpoint, what might work is to try and get Zones 1, 2 and 3
into the 1 acre part.  And here it would help to have a lot of people
cooperating so that their less used 4-5 acres were contiguous to preserve
large forests and natural meadows.  Then each family or growing group could
use 100s of different plants in a permaculture way on the most actively used
part of the land.


 For example, if the UK decided to minimise the national
food miles, and eat only UK-grown food, grown sustainably, could we do
it?

***Yes!  The UK did a fine job of growing most of its own food before 1600
and could do so again.  Some things that would help would be

1) Growing everything in a region that could be reasonably grown.  Now some
places import things which they could grow.  To do this it would first be
important to look at what the area is growing compared to what is needed.
The needed part is tricky since it might be that one village needs 1,000
traditional cabbages a month, and that in many months this could be done,
but in other months Asian cabbages would grow much better and provide the
same nutrition.  However, it is easiest to get people to eat locally if they
can have as much as possible of their usual foods to start with.

2) Stopping the flow of most extra goods out of the region.  Perhaps we
discover that we are growing 3,000 cabbages a month and selling the extra
2,000 100 to 500 miles away to people who could just as easily grow their
own local cabbages.  We could then use that land to grow other things we
need, but are getting from somewhere else.

3) Making certain that the combination of what is grown provides lots of
variety and all nutritional needs for humans, soil, and any pets or
livestock.  To do this sustainably in the biointensive system, Jeavons has
found that this tends to result in the combination of
60% compost crops--usually some sort of grain that provides a lot of uneaten
plant which is used to fertilize the soil
30% calorie crops--usually root crops--in the UK a large portion of this
might be many varieties of potatoes.
10% other crops to round out the nutrition

In some countries there are leguminous trees or shrubs that work well as
perennial compost crops.  I'd welcome a discussion of how to do this same
sort of thinking for a more permaculture oriented plan.  And I don't know
that the percentages would be the same.  But it seems to me that one very
functional place to start would be with a nut tree or bush with lots of
leaves that can be composted (so not walnuts).  Nuts have the benefit of
being high calorie, permanent, and easily storable in their natural form.

4) Growing many of the plants in a four season harvest manner (See Four
Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman.)  In this method, many cool weather crops
are grown to full size in the fall in a double covered unheated greenhouse.
They then wait there in the ground until they are needed.  This keeps them
fresh, allows them to live through the whole winter, and means that they
don't need energy, fuel, and labor for preserving.  As he has designed the
system, it uses plastic for the greenhouse covering.  I'd like to know how
it might compare from an overall sustainability viewpoint if glass were used
as the covering.

Ideally, I'd like for every house to have one room which is a glass
greenhouse or conservatory and is used to grow small amounts of the foods
which can't be grown locally due to climate and which people like very much.
This could easily provide people with a steady small supply of citrus fruit
and bananas.  And people might choose to grow other tropical foods such as
tea, spices, sugar cane, or pineapples as well.  Although this wouldn't be a
necessity, I think it would be a better use of fossil fuel, or even better
yet--solar electric to grow the tropical items locally rather than use lots
of fuel to move them 3,000 mile or more.  This would also provide a very
nice room to be in during the winter, and provide some of the benefits of
the outdoors at a time when the weather is difficult.  As bonus it would be
a healthy winter activity.

And using hot compost beds in the winter would help both of these systems.

5) Use more of the available land for growing such as the land around houses
and flats, rooftops (may need modification to make it safe, parts of parks,
containers on balconies, window boxes, allotments/community gardens.  Where
people do have grass, to have a few sheep that rotate among the lawns to
keep it clipped and feed themselves.  To replace some purely ornamental
plantings with edible ones such as edible pear trees for Bradford pears, or
blueberry bushes for nandina.

6) Increased use of traditional low tech preservation methods like
sauerkraut, kim chee, pickles, dried fruits, root cellars, beer, cheese,
bean sprouts, soy and hoisin sauce, nuts, seeds, tins for grain storage.
Where possible eating more foods raw saves cooking fuel as well (Some food
is more nutritious cooked, so a balance is needed).  Where it's warm and
sunny at the right times, solar cookers solar driers work very well and use
no fossil fuel.  Where there isn't much sun, it might be that using house
heating stoves which can have a pot set on them, and food dryers above them
could add to the overall efficiency as long as the chimney systems are
designed to reduce the maximum amount of air pollution.

7) Increased use of local value added food  when higher tech preservation
methods are used rather than shipped valued added food. Making one's own
strawberry jam would be an example. It may be more efficient to have a
community canning kitchen which people can use on a rotating basis for this.

8) More focus on seasonal eating combined with the low tech preserved foods.
Here the gardener would reap the benefits of careful planning for a one
circle style complete diet with the foods oriented toward the more annual
biointensive crops at the beginning of the process and shifted toward more
permaculture crops as those plantings mature over the years.  For example in
a mature system, a person might eat their way through an ever changing
choice of fruit beginning with strawberries, and continuing through
blueberries, apricots, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches,
summer apples, melons, figs, grapes, fall apples, to winter apples.  In some
areas the winter apples might last until the strawberries are ripe.  In
others there might be seven months of fresh fruit and then five months of
raisins and other dried fruits, jams, and pie fillings.  With the four
season harvest technique many sorts of greens could be grown year round, so
something would always be in season, and preservation wouldn't be needed
unless you just wanted to--dried greens for soup for backpacking for
instance.  Grains and nuts store well for year round use.  The yellow and
orange vegetables have something ripe or storable in every season.  In the
summer there would be summer squash, tomatoes, and ripe peppers.  In the
fall there are fall squash, carrots, and pumpkins.  In the winter there are
the fall squash, root cellar carrots, and winter keeper squash.  In warmer
areas sweet potatoes can be grown and stored for the winter.  The hungry gap
and early spring time are the most difficult times to have fresh or stored
of these items.  In some areas carrots can be kept covered and dug or last
fairly well in the root cellar.  In others it would be very helpful to have
dried tomatoes, squash, pumpkin, and peppers.  Some of the more high tech
options are good here too like canned/tinned tomatoes, tomato sauce, and
salsa, relishes, and chutneys.

9) Learning to grow, eat, and preserve a wider variety of crops.  Having a
system for sharing successful growing information is a big plus here.  And
then it helps if the successful cooks publish locally generated or adapted
recipes to go with the increased variety of crops.  This is especially
helpful when cooks can develop recipes for items that are usually available
together in good quantities in the area.

10) Fine tuning which crops are grown and which varieties of them are grown
to produce a steady supply of food which can be eaten fresh.  Growing some
things which all ripen in the same week for storage though can be beneficial
such as for grains.  Then other crops can be grown in that area.  It's also
possible to use the space similarly with variable ripening crops by
transplanting or sowing items on a plant by plant basis if the succession is
well planned.


 Would we have to become largely vegetarian or vegan to feed
ourselves - I believe that soy, most rice, and many pulses are not
suitable to grow in the UK, and if so, how would we replace them in a
vegan diet?

***It seems to be true in most areas that you can grow more human food on a
given unit of land if it's vegan or vegan plus a bee hive.  However there
are often benefits to having the help of small animals.  A few chickens in a
chicken tractor are very helpful for getting the insects out of a
biointensive bed before the next crop goes in as well as preventing all
sorts of insect problems in an orchard.  Ducks are very efficient weeders of
rice paddies.  (See chicken tractor book and The Power of Duck books at
http://www.permacultureactivist.net .)  The eggs are a nice vegetarian
bonus.  Eating the meat of some of them is a way to keep them from
overpopulating and becoming a garden problem.  Wild birds can serve many of
the same functions, and also take the same sorts of work to prevent garden
damage, but they don't provide any of the same bonuses in most cases as it's
illegal to hunt them or eat their eggs.  The wild ones do provide bonus of
beautiful appearances and variety of song that are different from chickens
and ducks, as well as eating some different pests as they are flying around.
Sheep make good lawn mowers where it's useful to have grass. And they have
the bonuses of providing cheese, clothes, blankets, and optionally meat.
The occasional baa-ing is much more pleasant to me than the roar of lawn
mowers.  In the UK there are great sea resources (fish, shell fish, seaweed
and more) which could be harvested sustainably.  I don't know how well small
scale fish farming works in the UK.

***If you did want a fully vegan diet, the strategy would be to select
grains and pulses that do grow well in your particular area.  For grain
nutrition in the UK, I'd go with wheat, barley, oats, and flax seeds
(clothes bonus here from the stalk for linen) for starters.  And then I'd
check to see if there are millet and amaranth varieties that do well.  And
then I'd try and develop some more low light, cool tolerant, and rain
tolerant versions of other desired grains like rice, corn, and so on just
for extra variety, but nutritionally they wouldn't be needed.  As for
pulses, they are supplying concentrated protein.  In the UK the obvious
first choice might be fava beans.  The other easy choice there would be nuts
such as filbert/hazelnut and walnut that does well there. (Chestnuts seem to
be more of a starch provider than protein source.)  A second choice would be
to use the part four season green house in the summer to grow the additional
pulses that need more warmth.  However, you wouldn't need it as instead of a
soy-rice-onion veggie burger, you could make an oatmeal-barley-walnut-onion
one.  See the veggie burger section at http://www.recipesource.com for ideas
of combinations and added spicing that works.  And you might serve things
over cooked wheat rather than rice for example.

***It's nutritionally possible to feed a normal size average adult male all
the calories and nutrition he needs from 855 Square feet of land (and 8
month growing season) in a frequently cool and rainy area  on a vegan diet
from only filberts/hazelnuts, potatoes, collards, parsnips, and garlic, all
of which could be grown in the UK (details in the One Circle book).  Most
people would want more variety than that, but it shows what is possible.
The One Circle book and the other booklets give other examples with more
variety.  The Jeavons' book gives lots of data so you can develop your own
plan using foods you like that grow well in your area.  Over time you can
also collect data for your area and for other less common plants that you'd
like to add to your system like specific Asian greens or tayberries for
example, and then use that info for further planning.

***For most foods that can't currently be grown in the UK, there is
something which serves the same function that will grow.  In some areas
people are trying to develop more winter hardy or in some cases more heat
tolerant versions of foods so they can be grown more widely.  In northern
California to pacific north west of the US some people are trying to get an
olive that will grow.  I think they are using olives from the cooler, higher
elevations of Italy to find or develop one that would work.  Pecans that
will grow much further north in the US than they did originally have been
developed.  People are working to get apples that will grow in more tropical
areas and are slowly getting them closer to the equator.  This can be done
faster with annual plants and more slowly with perennial plants.  But anyone
can try to develop things they want for their own area, by getting some
plants that come closest to working and breeding those and then continuing
to breed the ones which do best in your area.

        (BTW I'm sure we could make a case for continuing to import
small quantities of low volume, high added value luxuries via sea
freight, such as Fairtrade chocolate :-)

***I am in favor of that.  What I'd like to see overall is growing
everything outside possible locally, growing some marginal things with the
use of unheated greenhouses and four season harvest techniques, and growing
a small amount of things that need heated space.  For the items that are
imported, I'd like to see them all sustainably grown, fairtrade grown, and
not grown in place of local food which people there need to eat.  And this
might mean choosing to eat oatmeal-raisin scones in the northern hemisphere
more often than we eat chocolate chip cookies/biscuits, but I think that's a
choice the Earth can live with :-).

Sharon
gordonse@one.net