permaculture

[Juergen Botz <jurgen@botz.org>]

n 05/12/2010 03:22 PM, Rain Tenaqiya wrote:
> What hasn't been tried, to my knowledge, is to grow all of one's
> food by maximizing the area covered by food forests.

Our guru of agroforestry here in Brazil, Ernst Goetsch, is doing
exactly that.  He claims he can feed a family of four from a
hectar (2.5 acres) of his style of agroforestry, and he practices
what he preaches, feeding himself, his wife and two children
almost exclusively off what he grows.

Ernst is vegetarian and his staple food is the starchy fruit of a palm
tree called "pupunha" (beach palm?), which also used to be a staple
of the native peoples of the Northeastern coastal region of Brazil.
Today it is all but forgotten, the palm being grown commercially only
for its heart-of-palm ("palmito"... a crime, really, as you have to
kill the palm to take the heart).  Besides pupunha, of course he grows
a wide variety tropical fruits, and as a backup staple there is always
manhioca, which in the low-land tropics produces a calorie density/area
at least as high as potatoes in temperate climates, and is easier to
grow.

He also grows cacau, bananas, and wood (for carpentry) as cash
crops, and he does all of this on the very poor soil that's
typical of the region (his farm is in Southern Bahia, just a
few hundred kilometers North of mine, so I know).

I don't know how feasible something comparable would be outside of
the tropics, but at least for our climate, Ernst's system of agro-
forestry is by far the easiest method of achieving food self-
sufficiency that I've seen and provides a rich and varied diet.
Everything is grown from seeds following the principles of natural
succession.  One can harvest various vegetables in the first year,
then some fruits like bananas in the second, and so on, until a
food-forest is established, at which point the system needs a
minimum of labor while producing a steady supply of food.

:j