New from bestselling author Mark Shepard! Written as a companion to the bestseller, Restoration Agriculture, this book will help farmers capture water in areas they want to, and avoid having water flow immediately to the low point. The result? Less water expense, healthier crops and livestock, and less erosion . . . just to name a few. What you will listen to in this book is a distillation of over twenty-five years of on-the-ground experience working with and modifying the Yeomans Keyline Plan. From the back yard suburbs to 10,000-acre ranches and everywhere in between, from permafrost mountainsides just shy of the Arctic Circle, to equatorial boulder fields of East Africa, areas with 300 inches of rain per year to those with less than three inches, I have personally installed systems based on the Keyline design methodology and its modified forms. What you will listen to in this book is tried and true. It is intended to give a sufficient background to any landowner so that they can optimize their water resource for higher site productivity, have greater drought resistance and just as importantly, to know deep in their heart that they have made even one little piece of earth a little more life-filled, livable and green.
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.