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  • From: Neil Bertrando <neilbertrando@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] cash crops
  • Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 07:59:23 -0800

Caveat: I do not make my living by farming, nor do I intend to except as a
supplement to other income streams. however, I will offer some options
that you can layer creativity on top of.

I want to second the reference to Joel Salatin...his book "you can farm"
describes a fair amount of how he has diversified and eliminated fixed and
variable costs. some quick examples are books, lumber, and berries, in
addition to his highly successful livestock operation.

Another useful reference are Greg Judy's books again about livestock
farming. he goes into more financial detail than any permaculture book
I've seen.

Sepp Holzer is making a lot of money farming as well.

If you want a tool, I suggest checking out the Holistic Management Decision
making framework and specifically the financial planning section of the
concept.

In Permaculture, we assess and integrate short-, medium-, and long-term
yields into our systems. One example was described earlier in the thread
as alley cropping at New Forest Farm. This has us changing our crops over
time, ideally without any abrupt transitions so we can market effectively
as well.

In my experience, getting the short term crops to really support us needs
to be a focus at the start to finance the implementation phases of the long
term plantings and development.

When possible, we also want to schedule and design to that as much as
possible our maintenance tasks are also our harvest tasks, or that animals
do the maintenance for us when we take care of them properly (i.e. paddock
shift or other methods)

I also recommend re-visiting the strategies which increase yield in the
Designer's Manual.
There's a lot to think about presented in about 4-5 pages.

It is not unlikely that you will have some main cash crops, and my
interpretation of diversity is that we want to maximize beneficial
connections first, then implement diversity of income so that if our 2-5
main cash flows do poorly, there are some specialty crops that get us
through the lean times.

When we look at value adding, i tend to stay away from food crops (unless
you have connections with a commercial kitchen, or it is your passion) and
look at things like dried herbs, furniture, bamboo (still requires a shop
and tools, just depends on what on-site resources you have available).

I wish you the best.
Neil



On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:58 PM, Jennifer Nazak <jnazak@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Offhand, I would say that if you (and by "you", I mean not just you but
> anyone else, me included) are experiencing a conflict between "making a
> living off the land" and "permaculture", I suspect that there are some
> opportunities you're overlooking to integrate permaculture design
> principles into your growing practices, farm layout, etc.
>
> A frequent design error is trying to farm on too large a scale. All too
> often, this excessively large scale (of the farm or other operation) is
> dictated by way-too-high overhead.
>
> Most permaculture folk are pretty good at reducing their household and
> business overhead, but there are three stubborn areas where even permies
> have trouble reducing household overhead. Those are 1) mortgage; 2)
> children's college tuition; 3) medical bills. Do whatever it takes to
> eliminate these albatrosses (or drastically reduce them), and you will be
> able to downsize your farm or other land-based enterprise to a more
> manageable, more human scale and have a better chance at making a living
> off the land without wearing yourself out.
>
> In addition to cutting overhead: Don't forget to explore value-added
> offerings as a means of increasing your land-based income. Don't just sell
> tomatoes - make salsa. Don't just sell milk - offer ice cream in really
> creative flavors using ingredients specific to your bioregion. Create a
> product that your community will clamor for. Either find a demand or (by
> coming up with an irresistibly delicious recipe) make one.
>
> Also: team up with other households in your neighborhood. Share equipment;
> sell off duplicate tractors etc. Sharing is a time-honored permaculture
> strategy, often overlooked even by permies because our American consumerist
> indoctrination encourages us to forget it. Sometimes the simplest and most
> low-tech measures end up paying the largest dividends. Plain, good
> ol'-fashioned sharing is a prime example.
>
> If you're experiencing a conflict between your permaculture practice and
> any other area of your site (or your life), it could be a sign that you're
> overlooking opportunities to apply permaculture design principles to those
> "other areas."
>
> * * * * * * *
> Jenny Nazak
> Austin Permaculture Guild
> www.austinperm.com
> Use permaculture design to optimize your life and "Work SMART, not hard."
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