Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard

Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard

Restoration Agriculture reveals how to sustainably grow perennial food crops that can feed us in our resource-compromised future. 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.

Mark Shepard is the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC, founder of Restoration Agriculture Development LLC, and award-winning author of the book, Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers. Mark has also been a farmer member of the Organic Valley cooperative, the worlds largest organic farmer's marketing co-op, since 1995. He is most widely known as the founder of New Forest Farm, the 106-acre perennial agricultural savanna considered by many to be one of the most ambitious sustainable agriculture projects in the United States.

Review Quotes:

“This book, written from real experience of working with the land and referencing real results of experience over time, will be invaluable and is destined to be a permaculture classic. This will be a reference book of great value for anyone interested in using permaculture design in a farming operation and valued by future generations.” -Geoff Lawton, managing director, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

“In Restoration Agriculture, Mark Shepard convincingly makes the case for notillage, perennial agriculture. He draws inspiration from J. Russell Smith, Bill Mollison, Masanobu Fukuoka, his father, his grandfather, his neighbors and others who showed him that trees are the key to productive and sustainable agricultural systems. Shepard shares his practical knowledge and hard-won wisdom gleaned from years of experience growing up on a farm in central Massachusetts and later transforming a barren overgrazed landscape in western Wisconsin into a richly productive polyculture. The discussions include rotational livestock management, beekeeping, soil and water management, plant breeding, turning a profit on a small farm, and many others. This book is well organized with lots of delightful and informative personal anecdotes.” -Larry Korn, translator of The One Straw Revolution and Sowing Seeds in the Desert and student of Masanobu Fukuoka