permaculture

[loren luyendyk <loren@sborganics.com>]

An established system (20 yrs) like Path to Freedom has harvested 6000 lbs of 
produce on 1/10th an acre= 60,000 lbs per acre.  

A typical mono-crop corn field may yield up to 200 bushels per acre = 70 lbs 
per bushel = 14,000 lbs per acre.
The record soy yield is 155 bushels per acre = 60 lbs per bushel = 9,300 lbs 
per acre.

Those are some BIG differences.  Granted you will harvest many types of 
produce with different caloric values from a diverse cropping system.  
Perhaps this could be calculated as a caloric difference per acre.

Loren Luyendyk
(805) 452-8249
www.sborganics.com
www.surferswithoutborders.org




> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2010 14:19:54 -0700
> From: amillison@gmail.com
> To: norristh@gmail.com
> CC: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Perma-Data needed!
> 
> Thanks Norris and everyone else.
> 
> Even small scale data from one yard is valuable as a sound bite in a
> proposal to show the potentiality of the pattern repeated many times. For
> example:
> 
>  "One 1/4 acre (?) city lot planted in intensive perennial and annual food
> systems in Portland has been measured as yielding up to 600 calories per day
> for one hour of work per day. For a city block of 50 homes planted
> similarly, that's up to 30,000 calories per day for one hour of work from
> each household. That could supply 15 needy children 2000 calories per day
> for relatively little work besides the initial system development."
> 
> That's good stuff in my opinion!
> 
> Andrew
> 
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Norris Thomlinson 
> <norristh@gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > > From: Andrew Millison <amillison@gmail.com
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > > I'm putting together a funding proposal for a State agency who are
> > > requesting Permaculture training for their staff.
> > >
> > > I need to include data in the proposal with *verifiable sources*. Some
> > > examples of the types of statements I'd like to clarify and back up are:
> > >
> > > * Intensive garden agriculture is X% more productive per unit of area
> > than
> > > conventional mechanized field cropping and require X% less
> > > energy/water/dollars to maintain.
> > >
> > > Does anyone out there have sources for useful data to make
> > > Permaculture-supporting statements? I'd really appreciate any input.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Andrew Millison
> > > www.beaverstatepermaculture.com
> >
> > Hey Andrew,
> >
> > This doesn't exactly address the "Intensive garden agriculture" X%
> > elements you listed above, but it might help you as a data point...
> > As I might have told you on a tour earlier this year, we've started
> > recording the weights of all the food we harvest from our yard (about
> > 7000 square feet of growing space), and putting into a database with
> > caloric information.  We've only been keeping records since April
> > 15th, so don't have a full year-long picture yet.  Much of our yard is
> > in immature fruit & nut trees, or less-than-optimally-designed
> > chicken-ravaged playground, or
> > perennial-vegetable-experiments-turning-out-not-to-yield-us-anything-much,
> > so I wouldn't use our data for calculating yield or calories per
> > square foot.
> >
> > BUT I think we have a very good assessment of home-scale garden time
> > input:food output with our data.  We've harvested an average of nearly
> > 600 calories a day, and estimate we spend at most an average of one
> > hour per day between the two of us to maintain and harvest everything.
> >
> > Our harvest log, periodically updated when I feel like doing data
> > entry: http://discountpermaculture.com/cgi-bin/harvest.py
> >
> > My first blog post introducing our harvest log:
> > http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com/2010/05/harvest-log.html
> > A new blog post I just wrote with comments on where we're at now:
> > http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com/2010/09/harvest-log-update.html
> >
> > I hope that helps you, Andrew, and anyone else who's interested!
> >
> > Norris Thomlinson
> > Portland, OR
> > http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com
> > http://discountpermaculture.com
> >
> > --
> > "The absolute bottom line is: what methods of food production build
> > topsoil while using only ambient sun and rain?  *Because nothing else
> > is sustainable.*"
> >
> > Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
> >
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