Description
Restoration Agriculture reveals how to sustainably grow perennial food crops that can feed us in our resource-compromised future.
How our food is produced is too often overlooked in the quest to get it into our mouths. Around the globe most people get their calories from “annual” agriculture. The majority of the carbohydrates, proteins and oils that feed humanity are from annual plants; those that grow fast for one season, produce lots of seeds, then die. Rice, wheat and corn are all seeds from annual plants. But human cultures have only relied upon annual plant seeds as staple food crops for 10,000 years. In addition to requiring ceaseless labor, annual plants have carried with them another curse. Every single human society that has relied on annual crops as staple foods in their diet has collapsed.
The restoration agriculture system described in this award-winning book works! It is possible for humans to produce staple foods using perennial agricultural ecosystems that actually improve the quality of the environment. This can be done on a backyard, farm or ranch scale and is needed right now — on a global scale.
Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel and many other needs. Using the restoration agriculture system, an oak savanna mimic will produce more than twice the number of edible human calories per acre as an average acre of corn, never needs to be planted again, prevents erosion, creates oil, and can be managed with no fossil fuel inputs. This book, based on real-world practices, presents an alternative to the agriculture system of eradication and offers exciting hope for our future.
- Publisher : Acres U.S.A.; 1st edition (January 1, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 344 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1601730357
- ISBN-13 : 978-1601730350
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.75 x 9 inches