All-Season crops?

[Higgs Boson]

This exciting article from Science Daily could revolutionize world agriculture. Considering that many countries will be facing starvation as global warming proceeds, one hopes this can be perfected soon.

[Billy]

Let's hope it can be done without "genetic modification". Putting Monsanto between us and our daily meals is no security at all, but rather a portal to 12th Century feudalism. The other possibility is switching to perennial instead of annual plants.

there are cultivation practices that don't require new plants.

Farm for the Future

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harvesting winter feed for cattle is the largest expenditure of fossil fuel on this farm. Winter grazing at a neighboring farm is possible because of the mix of grasses, which make the grasses strong enough not to get dug up by cow hooves. Grasses don't require fossil fuel. Grasses inspired by woodland grass that grew naturally, without encouragement. Woodland grass grew on soil with biological diversity. Plowing killed soil organisms. Fossil fuel allows more plowing, and provides chemferts. Fossil fuel is used to grow crops in soil that is essentially dead. When fossil fuel runs out, we will need living soil. Cattle require a lot of land, and for Britain to become self sufficient, people will need to eat less meat, and farmers will need to raise other crops as well. Introduction of permaculture and permaculture expert Patrick Whitefield. Three ways of farming, drugery, fossil fuel, and design.

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Woodland are the most efficient growing system for the British climate. Farming based on natural ecology. "What we got to do is take the principals of this (the forest), and think how far we can bend them towards something more edible."

- Patrick Whitefield The demonstration farm is a collection of small clearings in a massive woodland. Chris & Lynn Dixon produce all the fruit, vegetables, meat, and the fuel they need to cook them, in return for a few days work per week. When they started, 20 years before, the farm was degraded, marginal, pasture land. The first thing that they did was let the land return to its natural state, a chaotic woodland, but in its present state, the chaos is very highly structured. The gorse fixes nitrogen, the bracken collecting pot ash, and by encouraging the birds, they are encouraging the phosphate cycle through the system. Thus no need for sacks of fossil fuel fertilizers, it's all provided by nature. Carkey Campbell (sp?) ducks provide insect protection. All the plants provides some service. Willow Leyland Ash (tree) branches are fed to horses, cattle, and sheep. Using the full height of trees and hedges, you can squeeze higher yields out of the same piece of land. Plants not producing crops are recycling nutrients. Cannon (sp?) Alder supplies nitrogen through its leaf litter ;O), root systems fed

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by beneficial fungi that link up everything under the ground, and move nutrients around. All the plants are there for a reason, or multiple reasons. Plants that attract beneficial insects do away with the need for pesticides. The garden requires, over the year, a day a week of work, but a lot of that is harvesting. Maintenance is 10 days/year. Yields from a forest garden (a low energy, low maintenance system) should be able to feed 10 people/acre, which is double the amount of people that contemporary farming can feed. What you can't grow is cereal crops, which can be replaced by nut crops, which are more sustainable. Orchards require less energy than a field of wheat, and require less water. Nutrient composition of chestnuts is similar to that of rice.

Gardening with hand tools is more productive and energy efficient than farming. It's the attention to detail that an experienced gardener can give to a small plot that makes it so productive. They can provide up to

5 times more food per sq. meter, than a large farm.

Modern farming and distribution methods are unlikely to survive the increasing costs of petroleum. The modern demographic change of the 21st Century will be re-ruralization. Proportion of people involved in food production will increase.

----- The above remarks come from Martin Crawford, Patrick Whitefield, and Chris Dixon. See site below.

[EdwardMIlls]

Blueberry crop is a all seasonal crop.So friends let me know about the fertilizer and other goods which are used in production and cultivation and can extend the productions.