This is interesting, to say the least, and bears out what many of usare discovering and know.... that healthy soil and organic methods*can* provide more food than "they" say is possible.Another section talks about the nutrient density and makeup of organiccompared to factory farmed food.Biotic means organic, in this article.Posted to also as David was asking about perma/polycultureand sustainability recently, and because those of you in Oz seem to bea bit ahead of us here in the US........in regard to this matter, atleast. ;-)CharlieFull article at:Another Agriculture is PossibleMany well-substantiated studies show that intensive biotic polyculture-- that is, the cultivation of many species of food plants in a smallfootprint, using biotic soil amendments and nutrient recycling --produces far more food per hectare than factory farming; uses far lesswater; and builds, rather than destroying, topsoil.Although more human ingenuity, care, and attention are required, theadoption of permaculture principles and techniques reduces the drudgeryof food production considerably; the permaculturist is assisting foodto grow rather than forcing it to grow (or more hubristically,"growing" it), which is much less work all round than our cartooncultural memory of dawn-to-dusk backbreaking peasant labor (whichbecame backbreaking to pay "tribute" and debts to people with weaponsand ledgers, not survive).What intensive biotic polyculture does not do is maximise moneyprofits, minimise labour inputs, or facilitate large-scale extractivecash-cropping.For these reasons -- not for any failure to produce food for eating --it is derided by industrial agribiz "experts" as impractical,inefficient, inadequate, etc. In fact, poly/permaculture's abundantsuccess in producing food for eating is one of the things that makes ita frightening prospect for those who control people by controllingpeople's access to food.What they don't want us to know is that it works. Eisenia hortensis --the European...

I didn't see any reference in the article to organic farming being more labor intensive. Perhaps it is with weeding, but then it is a trade-off between paying for poison to pour on the ground or having healthy food.Since I seem to be ripping-off authors today let's take another look at "Omnivore's Dilemma".Corn adapted brilliantly; to the new industrial regime, consumingprodigious quantities of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever moreprodigious quantities of food energy. More than half of all the syntheticnitrogen made today is applied to corn, whose hybrid strains can makebetter use of it than any other plant. Growing corn, which from a bio-logical perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight toturn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of convert-ing fossil fuels into food. This shift explains the color of the land: The reason Greene County is no longer green for half the year is because the farmer who can buy synthetic fertility no longer needs...

100 Pounds of Food/Year From a 12 Square Foot Plot?

Apr 26, 2008 41 Replies

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FarmI 18 years ago

The Napa valley reminds me of Australia. Similar shaped hills and that golden dry summer look.

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Billy 18 years ago

Mt. St. Helena (not Mt. St. Helens), above Calistoga, is of volcanic origin. Clear Lake is the caldera. The valley broadens as you go south from Calistoga (region 3 for grape growing: cabernet, merlot, ect. ) to the city of Napa and the San Francisco Bay (region 1: chardonnay, and pinot noir).

It has long been assumed that California was called the "Golden State", because the lack of rain fall from May to October turned the hills a golden brown, and, of course, there was that thing at Sutter's Mill;-)

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