Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers

Mark's book is one of the most enjoyable I have read on this subject.It's not a 'how to' / instructional book - but I think it has something for both the interested outsider looking to find out more about the subject, as well as the experienced permaculture/regenerative agriculture practitioner.Mark's experience developing New Forest Farm over the last few decades contains invaluable insight for the rest of us and serves as an example of what no-nonsense, science-based, thought-through permaculture is all about. While he many never have met him, Mark definitely has some of Bill Mollison's spirit about him in the way he approached things (and like Bill draws on a background in studying ecology).It's refreshing to read someone who not only knows what they are talking about but who is able to convey the reasons why it is important in such a clear and engaging way.The main value of this book I feel is not to teach the reader how to replicate what Mark has done exactly (though with some training and experience you could), but rather to make a really compelling case for why we need to understand the trouble our food system is in around the world and how we need to change the way we think and act in order to fix it. The fact that (apart from maybe a small handful of others) he is the only one to have actually created a fully functioning, closed loop, ecologically healthy, food producing, economically viable polycultural farm, only makes it more compelling.Definitely well worth a read.

This richly deserves to take its place alongside classics like works by J Russell Smith (Tree Crops), George Henderson (Farming Ladder), James Sholto Douglas and Robert de Hart (Forest Farming; and Forest Gardening), Masanobu Fukuoka (One Straw Revolution) P A Yeomans (The Keyline Plan etc), Takao Furuno (The Power of Duck), Mollison & Holmgren (Permaculture, various), Geoff Lawton (Permaculture dvds, various), Holzer (Sepp Holzer's Permaculture etc).A remarkable contribution to creating profitable farm-scale sustainable permaculture systems to produce healthy and wholesome foods. Highly recommended.

Very good book, makes the case very well and his passion shines through. I found it easy to read but with sufficient depth that it gave a good view of permaculture and how he applies it in practice.

The book is obviously americentric, but it has a wealth of information and is a good read.

Brilliant.. a bit preechy, and take some of it with a pinch of salt, but a template for us all

Perfect

I feel I have to preface this review with a disclosure: I have been involved in sustainable agriculture for over 30 years.I do not like this book. There are many things I do not like but foremost among them is Shepherd's persistence in offering his personal opinion as fact. He does manage to get one thing right: that contemporary agriculture is unsustainable on many different levels. But his assertion that forest ecosystems designed to mimic nature will out-perform tillage in terms of calorific yield per unit area is at best unproven, and more likely, completely untrue for most of the planet's potential food-growing regions. Nor it is the key issue: a change in diet away from dairy and meat towards a greater intake of plant-derived foods would potentially free up so much land that a far less 'efficient' system of agriculture (as measured by the conversion of sunlight into usable product) would be perfectly viable.But where I got really worried was when Shepherd asserted that 'the military represents a huge future market for hazelnuts grown in restoration agriculture systems' (page 88). I had to read this a few times to check this wasn't some sort of joke. But no, Mr Shepherd was deadly serious. He believes that US could grow hazelnuts to provide fuel for the military. It certainly puts a different slant on the word 'restoration'.Nuts

It's OK, but very about US. As for the reader from Europe it was kind of issue.

This book draws attention to the enormous and diverse costs, and relatively low nutritional yields of annual cropping when compared with perennial cropping that mimics nature. It provides incredible insights into the need to change the way we grow and consume.

From my recent blog post:This book outlines Mark Shepard’s journey from his childhood in New England to life at his farm at his home in Wisconsin. As a child, Mark’s family relied heavily on their annual garden and fruit trees to provide food for the family. He remembers garden work to be hot, laborious and never ending. The annual garden was a constant fight against nature. Weeding, watering, planting, a never ending cycle.He then recounts the food they foraged. It was cool and peaceful. They mostly harvested. They didn’t have to worry about weeds, as every part of the natural system worked together. These childhood experiences, along with a few books, led him to the restorative agriculture system he uses today.Mark’s farm in Wisconsin copies natural systems which are conducive to the area which he lives. Within a small area, he will plant chestnuts, apples, grapes, and blackberries. Each plant either complimenting each other, or utilizing different substrates of the area. An area filled with this diverse plant system will produce more food overall. However, if that same area were planted with all apples, you would harvest more apples, but the diversity equals safety. If there is a bad year for apples, the apple producer is completely out of luck. You can even use this system to harvest wood for fuel and building.He also expand this system to include animals. You an have pigs foraging in between the alleys of perennial woody crops, in a paddock shift system. This means that the pigs move from area to area with just enough disturbance to to enhance the area. If there are too many pigs in too little an area for too long ( or one of any of those three “too’s”), you will end up degrading your land instead of enhancing it.This book also commented on how these methods can actually nourish the world instead of “feeding” it. He discussed the nutrition lacking in corn and our other mono-crops. This is evident when we see 500 pound adults with Rickets, a disease partially caused by a deficiency in necessary nutrients such as calcium. They are clearly getting enough calories, but not any nutrition. It is possible to be fat and malnourished.At his farm, New Forest Farm, Mark is also trying to restore the American Chestnut. The American Chestnut was hit with a blight originating from the Chinese Chestnut. The American Chestnut was the East Coast’s version of the Red Wood. When the blight first started to spread, we stupidly decided to cut down all the American Chestnuts to stop the spread. This removed any trees that may have had a natural genetic resistance to the blight.Mark is planting thousands of trees in hopes of finding one genetic variety that has resistance. He does this over planting them from seeds and then using his STUN technique. STUN stands for Sheer Total Utter Neglect. This allows for the strongest of plants to survive. If any tree wants to die, he lets it. The weeds out the weak genetics and brings the strong genetics to the foreground.This book is an enlightening read. It gives hope, and also gives a reason to become active in your food choices. It offers a new prospective on farming and restoration to the land. This book is an entertaining and quick read, but beyond informative.My take aways:Plant more treesPlant things you can eat (they still look pretty!)Plant treesEat from a perennial systems. (nuts, fruits, pastured meats)There is hope.Plant trees that will thrive in your area.I do recommend this book. It has opened my eyes and added to my arsenal of information so that I can make educated decisions. As I start to design my property and plant with a plan, I will be keeping Mark’s systems and philosophies in mind.

Many permaculture books and people seem to lean towards paranoia and wishful thinking.That is why I am always very thankful for down to earth approaches like the road Mark Shepard is walking on.This is certainly not a text book on which alone you can errect your farm.BUT: the points he works through are very thoroughly worked through and one can learn a lot from this „Real-World Permaculture for Farmers“ as the subtitle claims.A wonderful story-driven book with a great reading flow and an inspiring abundance of useful information whether you want to errect your own farm or only dream and talk about it. After reading this book you know what Permaculture is, what problems it might face and how it compares to classical annual agriculture.Just read it, you will not regret it.I love this book.

I have read several permaculture books (Holmgren, Holzer, Hemenway, Jacke, Bane, etc.), and Mark Shepard's 'Restoration Agriculture' is worthy of its subtitle 'Real-World Permaculture for Farmers'. He has combined his hard-nosed practicality from his engineering background with a hefty dose of permacultural idealism to successfully realize his dream of 'New Forest Farm'. Shepard has been doing broad-scale permaculture/agroforestry since the mid 1990's, and has turned an old eroding cornfield into a productive property with fruit trees, nut trees, fruit shrubs, berries, vines, mushrooms, animals, bees, and annual (squash) and perennial (asparagus) vegetables as cash crops to help pay bills until the perennials start bearing more heavily.Of special interest to me were chapters 11 and 12, in which he deals with questions about the capacity of a perennial agriculture to provide enough calories to feed people. Can 'permaculture' really feed people or must we subsidize the permaculture fantasy with destructive annual tillage and a diet based on annual crops? Shepard admits his figures are a bit rough (yields for polycultures will change as trees mature), but corn produces about 13 million calories per acre annually, and Mr. Shepard suggests that a perennial system with perhaps a few annuals alley-cropped, can produce 6 million calories per acre. He says nutritionally there is simply no comparison between a monocrop of corn and the variety of a perennial system - the nutrition of the perennial system is vastly superior to a corn-based diet. The benefits of a perennial system are reduced cost in seed, gasoline or diesel fuel, and tractor maintenance, along with drastically improved soil, minimal tillage, greater capacity for photosynthesis, and an astonishing diversity of yields over a greater period of time. His findings give me hope that there truly is a different way to feed large numbers of people in a way that builds rather than destroys soil, is comparable to annual agriculture in caloric yields, is superior nutritionally, requires FAR fewer fossil-fuel based inputs, and is better for people. The type of thing he is doing seems to be the foundation of a relocalized economy that empowers the everyman rather than enriching elites. To top it all off, the 'New Forest Farm' is a giant informal research station for new varieties of fruits, nuts, and for appropriate-scale nut processing equipment.This book comes highly recommended if you have already been introduced to some of the ideas of permaculture and are interested to see how it really does work on a large scale. Even if you're unfamiliar with permaculture it could serve as a decent introduction to some key concepts as long as you have a bit of farming experience already. If someone you know seems to think permaculture is a joke, lend them this book. The icing on the cake is the book itself is well bound, has a beautiful cover, has the right margins so you don't have to break the spine to read it, and the book just 'feels right' when you hold it. Mark Shepard seems to be the real deal. I really enjoyed this book.P.S. - He is based in Wisconsin, so obviously the species one might incorporate into something like he is doing will vary from climate to climate.

I have to admit that until recently I thought that permaculture was something that frustrated city people did under the pretense of feeding themselves from a few trees and bushes. But I came across it on a farm scale while exploring better things to plant in chicken runs. And then I watched a few videos by Mark Shepard! He's realistic, very holistic in his ideas and decision making, and this book is beautifully written to persuade readers to regenerate soils and habitat by planting perennials that can produce food or fibre, or nurture the soil. Maybe humans can survive the damage that has been done to the earth, and live well with eachother. With leaders like Mark and Allan Savory, I think we can.