Last year we developed a toolset that allowed us to clear an
abandoned baseball field of perennial sod and convert it into a vegetable
producing mini-farm. This petrol-free toolset included a low-wheel cultivator made by Glaser
and a two-foot wide broadfork. It is quite likely that we used these tools
in a more rigorous way then they were intended, (opening new land instead of
working pre-established vegetable beds), yet the tools withstood hours of work
with only a handful of needed repairs. After last year’s experience we consider the combination of the broadfork and the low-wheel cultivator to be an appropriate
toolset for small-scale vegetable cultivation because they efficiently use manual
labor in place of fossil fuel powered equipment to prepare vegetable beds.

This blog will revisit our method for preparing vegetable beds
in light of the fact that we are no longer fighting against tough perennial sod,
and instead, we are removing our over-winter cover crops.

Step 1: Removing Cover Crop

We use a sharp scythe to cut the cover crop off as low to
the ground as possible. Once the crop has fallen we rake up the remains and
cart it off as a nitrogen input to our compost piles. In the earliest part of spring,
we are careful to remove only the cover-crop from the vegetable beds that we immediately
plan to prepare for transplant or direct seeding. This allows the other areas
of cover crop to continue growing as much as possible in the increased
temperatures and daylight hours of spring.

Jason Using Sharp Scythe to Clear Cover Crop

Cover Crop Cut Close to the Ground With Scythe

Step 2: Breaking Ground

After the cover crop has been removed we are left with the
gentle stubble of annual cereals and legumes. We have noticed that the loam soil is
quite soft and easy to work with, and we attribute this to the fact the area we are working was established last year. A prime consideration at this stage of bed preparation
is soil moisture. We want to be careful not to work the soil too wet or we will
remove an unnecessary amount of soil as we cut through the stubble of the annual
cover crops.

Low Wheel Cultivator Cutting Into Soil

Step 3: Loosening the Bed

After the stubble of the previous crop has been broken free
from the soil, the next step is to broadfork the soil. The broadfork is two
feet wide and includes five tines that sink into the soil about ten inches. It
is amazing how much easier it is to broadfork the soil this season than it was
last year. We have changed the width of our beds this year from 5-foot wide beds to
4-foot wide beds. This change has put us into some areas of soil that is
similar to last year when we had to combat the sod. Pushing the broadfork into
the previously worked sections versus the reclaimed sod sections really shows
what one-years-worth of work accomplished for reducing compaction and improving
aeration. Again we want to be aware of soil moisture, so that we do not smear
wet soil together in the prying and lifting action of the broadfork.

Chris Sinking Broadfork into and Prying Down

Step 4: Cross-cut the sod and rake

After the bed has been forked, there are entire clumps that
have been lifted and are uneven. We use the low-wheel cultivator with a 3-tine cultivator attachment to
cross cut the bed and thereby remove the clumps. By the time we are finished with
cross cutting we have up to five inches of loose soil on the surface which
makes a good seedbed. It is also easy to transplant into the newly cross
cut bed. If we intend to seed the bed we rake the surface smooth and make sure
there is no trash that could interfere with the drill-seeder.

Jason Cross-Cutting Bed with Three-Tine Cultivator

We like this toolset because it clears an area of grass or
cover crop and produces a vegetable bed that is suitable for
direct seeding or transplant. In this method the soil remains loose and aerated
up to ten inches and it does not entail the soil disruption of double digging
or rototilling. By making sure to compost the soil and debris that is removed from
the area in which you intend to make a bed, you make a good step toward sustainable
soil management in which no soil is lost and on-site nutrients are cycled back
into the beds in the form of compost.

If you are curious you can click here to check out and contrast our
bed preparation method from last year.

Brookside Farm has accomplished an initial goal of getting
our veggies to young children and into a local institution! North Coast
Opportunities pre-school has agreed to purchase two shares from the CSA at
Brookside Farm. The kitchen staff is looking forward to utilizing fresh farm
produce and cooking according to the harvest season. It is exciting to see that there is demand
for our produce and the goods of a Relocalized food system.

View of North Coast Opportunities Preschool

To meet the demands of the CSA, we set to work preparing our
first beds in order to transplant spinach and lettuce and to direct seed
onions, beets, carrots, lettuce, and parsnips. We removed cover crops with a
scythe, broke the soil with the low-wheel cultivator, loosened the soil with
the broadfork, and cross cut a final time with the low-wheel cultivator in
order to ready vegetable beds. The following is the sowing dates and area for
the crops that we direct seeded.

Direct Seeding Beets by Hand

According to our planting schedule, March was slated to be one
of the most active months in the greenhouse. Lettuce, cabbage, chard, spinach,
kale, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tomatillo were on the list of a
scheduled 1600 starts. Unfortunately, we had poor germination on many of the
starts that were seeded early in the month (kale, spinach, and cabbage). We
monitored the Max-Min thermometer in the greenhouse and were noticing overnight
lows in the 30 and daily highs in the 70’s. After considering what might have
led to the poor germination and we finally concluded that the average soil temperatures
and nighttime temperatures were too cold. We utilized the warming temperatures
toward the middle of March to catch-up on the plants that did not do so well
earlier in the month and continued to sow starts to remain on pace with our
greenhouse schedule. By the second week of the month we had sown our peppers
and tomatoes in David Drell’s greenhouse. David used electric heating mats to
secure sufficiently warm germination temperatures, and by the end of the month
we had excellent stands of little peppers and tomatoes awaiting transplant from
their seed-flats into four-inch pots. It was amazing to see the difference
between plants started with the heated soil mats and those that fended for
themselves in the early part of March.

Tomatoes and Peppers in Four-Inch Pots

This month we also began a relationship with a local welder
to make adjustments to our low-wheel cultivator and the broadfork. Last year we
had a terrible time shearing off
the bolt that connected the stirrup hoe implement to the low-wheel
cultivator. Kevin, at KLR welding, suggested that he weld a small plate near
the back of where the stirrup hoe connects to the frame. By adding the plate
excess and needless motion has been eliminated, the implement base remains
rigid, and we have significantly reduced the threat of shearing the bolt. We
are also asking Kevin to weld reinforced tines onto the broadfork. This should
make the tines sturdier and less apt to bend and break off as they did last
year.

Glaser Hoe with Metal Block to Limit Excess Movement

Broadfork with Reinforced Tines

Winter is the time for making plans for the main growing
season. While the sometimes frenetic
activity of a farm is invigorating, I really enjoyed the time to study and
think for the past few months. January
was filled with bouts of mouth-watering pleasure when considering which peppers
and melons to eat in August.

One of my main projects was developing detailed plans for
what to put in the ground when, and the natural implications for preparing of
beds, distributing finished and building new compost, space-time relationships
in our little greenhouse, harvest duration, and number and varieties of seeds
in stock and to be ordered. I like
working with numbers and wanted a way to efficiently go through iterations and
refinements of our crop plan. There are
so many variables that optimizing one can cause problems elsewhere. As we explore these relationships we find
compromises and end up with a plan we have confidence in—knowing that the real
world will “interfere.” Plans are useful
for organizing time and resources, and signaling to us when we are ahead or
behind, but we also know that a change of course may be needed if new
information demands it.

Attached below is a spreadsheet file with many linked
pages. Each page is drawing attention to
a particular issue of farm life. It
starts with the decisions of what crops to grow (e.g., tomatoes), and how much
of each we want (e.g., pounds per week).
The amount of food can be translated into approximate areas (e.g., 200
square feet). Each plant that gets put
in the ground starts as a seed, so we can estimate backwards from harvest time
to seed time and therefore greenhouse space if required (e.g., tomatoes harvested
in early July begin in the greenhouse in early March). When clearing an area for a vegetable crop,
the cover crop sown in the fall is removed.
This becomes material for compost piles that are applied a year
later. Does our crop plan allow cover
crops to fix enough nitrogen and produce enough carbon to make sufficient
compost for our site (ca. 2600-5200 lbs per year)?

The spreadsheet is made specifically for Brookside Farm, but
could readily be modified to suit farms of different sizes and locations. It is modeling the annual pattern of
intensive vegetable cultivation with cover crops. If you find this useful for your situation
please let us know.

"Can
we rely on it that a ‘turning around' will be accomplished by enough people
quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but
whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer "yes" would lead to
complacency; the answer "no" to despair. It is desirable to leave these
perplexities behind us and get down to work." E.F. Schumacher, Small is
Beautiful

I would rather have titled this essay "Where the Hoe Meets
the Soil" but that phrase is not part of our cultural lexicon, which is itself
a symptom of the problem I am working to address. Setting aside any prolonged discussion of
whether or what about the modern world should be saved, this essay is primarily
about what it means to "get down to work" as Schumacher puts it. But very quickly, to me saving the modern
world means setting a goal for the human economy to be properly scaled relative
to the global ecology, and maintaining a sufficiency of social stability
necessary to manage a transition.

Before getting to work, I want to make sure the work I do is
useful. This is where a clear
understanding of the big picture helps.

Ecological Economics

The question of proper economic scale is examined by the field of ecological
economics. In the ecological economics
model, the human economy is a subset of the Earth system, and therefore the scale
of the human economy is ultimately limited.
The human economy depends upon the throughput or flow of materials
from and back into the Earth system.
Limits to the size of the human economy are imposed by the interactions
among three related natural processes:

(1) The capacity of the Earth system to supply inputs to the human economy
(Sources),

(2) The capacity of the Earth system to tolerate and process wastes from the
human economy (Sinks), and

(3) The negative impacts on the human economy and the resources it relies on
from various feedbacks caused by too much pollution.

Fig. 1. The ecological economics model
of the relationship between the human economy and the Earth system highlighting
the importance of sources, sinks, feedbacks and scale.[i]

For an expanded look at the relationship between our economy and the planet
see the engaging on-line film "The Story of Stuff."[ii]

One measure of whether the human economy is too large is the
ecological footprint (EF), which calculates on a nation-by-nation basis the
consumption of resources and the build-up of wastes relative to resource regeneration
rates and the waste-absorbing capacity of the environment. According to two independent EF analyses (which
I will call EF 1 and EF 2) the human economy (population plus consumption and
waste generation) is in a state of overshoot, meaning it is too large relative
to the long-term capacity of the planet to cope.[iii] The Earth can provide for us beyond its means
for a long time before the consequences become severe, just like a millionaire
can, for a time, live high on the principal in a savings account instead of the
interest. The degree to which we are
drawing down principal as opposed to living on interest is called our
"ecological debt."

Figure 2. Change in
ecological footprint over time according to EF 1 with our cumulative ecological
debt in blue.[iv]

Getting More Specific:
Fossil-fuel Depletion and Climate Change

Indicators like the ecological footprint are important for
understanding we have a problem and giving us a sense of the scale, but they
aren't very specific. In order to do
something about reducing our footprint, it would help to know what is causing
the ecological footprint to be so large.
A significant portion of the ecological footprint represents consumption
of fossil fuels and the resulting waste, mainly greenhouse gases. The "carbon" footprint component is about 52%
for EF 1 and the similar "energy land" is 88% for EF 2.[v] According to EF 2, "energy land" is 93% of
the North American footprint. A priority
on reducing fossil fuel consumption appears justified. The human ecological footprint can be lowered
below "1 Earth" only by eliminating the pollution from fossil fuel
combustion.

EF analysis uses the capacity of the environment to absorb
greenhouse gas emissions, which, as seen in the model shown in Fig. 1, means EF
measures "sink" capacity. The real
picture is more complex and more disturbing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, fossil fuel extraction is reaching
limits sooner than expected. Since we
have not been weaning our economy off fossil fuels steadily for the past few
decades, rapid energy price inflation will likely make it difficult to maintain
the kind of economic vitality and stability needed for a smooth transition to
renewable energy alternatives. Secondly,
recent evidence suggests that climate change is happening faster than
expected. Ice sheet destabilization is
one major indicator that the Earth system is more sensitive to greenhouse
emissions than most scientists and policy-makers have presumed. Recent articles by Kurt Cobb[vi]
and Richard Heinberg[vii]
review all these points, and the "Climate Code Red" report[viii]
goes into truly excruciating detail so I won't elaborate further here.

The bottom line is that every measure must be taken to
rapidly eliminate fossil fuel consumption and dependency in every component of
our lives. The key word is
"rapidly." Don't passively assume
inexpensive alternative energy substitutes will arrive to replace fossil fuels-we
may have waited too long to respond to have a smooth transition. Therefore, focus most attention on reducing
energy demand rather than substituting a new energy supply. And finally, in the context of ecological
economics, fossil fuel depletion and climate change, ask whether what you do in
your life, vocation, hobbies, and habits, contributes to the long-term function
(or dysfunction) of society.

The U.S.
Food System and Fossil Fuels

It would be hard to argue against a claim that a secure and
healthy food supply is indispensable to society. A widely known and troubling fact is that the
current food system in the U.S.
(and most highly industrialized nations) is very dependent upon fossil
fuels.

As far as I am aware, the most comprehensive study on the
topic of energy use in the U.S.
food system is by Heller and Keoleian of the University of Michigan's
Center for Sustainable Systems.[ix] The report is from 2000 and makes use of data
from the mid-1990s. Although the data
are about 10 years old, I don't believe the basic structure and function of the
U.S.
food system has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. In fact, current trends of increased
industrial meat consumption[x]
and biofuels[xi], which
both rely on grains, make the following case even stronger.

We learn from the study that over 10% of the energy
consumption in the U.S.
can be attributed to the food system, and that about 20% of this occurs in the
agricultural production sector. Home
energy consumption (e.g., refrigeration and cooking) consume the largest share
at about 30%. Between the farm and the
home are everything else (transportation, processing, packaging and
retail). Much of this middle portion is
a function of the geographic disconnection between production and
consumption. Eating food out of season
either requires long-distance transportation or energy demanding
processing. Both transportation and
processing require investments in storage.

Sorting out the proper scale of operations for farms,
processing and transportation systems is very difficult, however, because optimization
for one factor (e.g., transportation), may be sub-optimal for another (e.g.,
heat intensive food processing). Within
a category, such as transportation, the technologies analyzed may be limited
too. A study comparing rail cars, large
semi-trucks and small produce trucks may conclude that bigger is better, but
what about hyper-local transportation systems using bikes, small electric
vehicles and bipedal locomotion? Another
complicating issue is that studies may assume the U.S. food system should be more or
less similar in its mix of products while lowering energy consumption. For example, tomatoes can be processed using
canning or drying. Canning lends itself
to centralized operations and so does drying if fossil fuels are used as heat
sources. But a naturally decentralized
and fossil-fuel free technique such as passive solar dehydration may not even
be considered. Large energy savings can
be found everywhere in the food system, but especially so if assumptions about scale
and consumer-level demand are allowed to change.

Fig. 3. The energy
inputs to the U.S.
food system are several times larger than the energy content of the food. A life-cycle analysis identifies how energy
consumption is partitioned among economic sectors.[xii]

Another graphic from the Heller and Keoleian report clearly
identifies a huge savings potential.
Over 50% of U.S.
grains are fed to domestic animals, and most export grains go to animal feed as
well. Overall, only 26% of U.S. grain
production in 1995 went to domestic human consumption.

Although poultry need grains, red meat and milk products
dominate the feed market and grains are not a natural part of their diets. If red meat and dairy production were reduced
to only what harvested hay and pasture could provide, perhaps half of annual U.S. grain
production could be eliminated. The
acreage out of food production could be used for green manure crops to build
soil and fix nitrogen. A 2004
Congressional Research Service report showed that fertilizers are the largest
part of farm energy use, and that natural gas to produce nitrogen comprised
75-90% of the fertilizer input (Fig. 5).[xiii] Fixing nitrogen naturally, therefore, saves
significant energy. Some of the vast
cropland area no longer producing grains could then be used for appropriately
scaled biofuels to power farm equipment instead of fossil fuels.

Fig.
4. A reprint of Fig. 3 from the Heller
and Keoleian report. See graph label
above.

Fig.
5. A reprint of Fig. 2 from a 2004
Congressional Research Service report.
See graph label above.

An older and less comprehensive on-line
review paper[xiv] titled "Energy Use in the U.S. Food System: a summary of existing research and
analysis" by John Hendrickson of the Center for
Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison concluded that:

"It appears that some of the greatest
saving can be realized by:

• reduced use of petroleum-based fertilizers and
  fuel on farms,
• a decline in the consumption of highly processed
  foods, meat, and sugar,
• a reduction in excessive and energy intensive
  packaging,
• more efficient practices by consumers in shopping
  and cooking at home,
• and a shift toward the production of some foods
  (such as fruits and vegetables) closer to their point of consumption."

Hendrickson's paper is helpful in republishing and comparing
tables from many previous studies, including "Table 5" reprinted here on the
energy consumption of home grown versus market-purchased fruit and
vegetables.

Taking Responsibility: Brookside Farm Examples

With this extensive background I introduce the project I
have been working on for about two years now, Brookside Farm. This is a 1-acre mini-farm in Willits, CA. It operates as a program of the non-profit
corporation North Coast Opportunities, functions as a working farm with a
community supported agricultural program serving 15 "shares" per year, exists
at an elementary school and is therefore open to classes and tours, and
conducts research and demonstrates aspects of a local food system with the collaboration
and support of Post Carbon Institute.[xv]

Brookside Farm thinks about food from a "farm to fork" and
back again perspective. Farmers create
artificial ecosystems, and we therefore look to ecology to guide our
practices. Highly productive and stable
ecological systems are noted for a diversity of species both in kinds and
functional forms. When these diverse
species interact effectively, they maximize the rates of productivity and
nutrient retention in the system using ambient energy sources. We view ourselves as human members of the farm
ecosystem with our labor and wastes as parts of the whole.

To get by on ambient energy as much as possible, we have
sought alternatives to fossil fuels in every aspect of the food system we
participate in. Table 1 considers each
type of work done on the farm, to the fork, and back again and contrasts how
fossil fuels are commonly used with the technologies we have applied.

Table 1. Feeding
people requires many kinds of work and all work entails energy. In most farm operations the main energy
sources are fossil fuels. By contrast,
Brookside Farm uses and develops renewable energy based alternatives.

Our use of food scraps to replace exported fertility also
reduces energy by diverting mass from the municipal waste stream. Solid Waste of Willits has a transfer station
in town but no local disposal site. Our
garbage is trucked to Sonoma
County about 100 miles to the south.
From there it may be sent to a rail yard and taken several hundred miles
away to an out of state land fill.

We are also planning to irrigate using an on-site well and a
photovoltaic system instead of treated municipal water or diesel-driven
pumps.

How much energy does Brookside Farm
save?

The complexity of the food system makes it difficult to
calculate how much energy Brookside Farm is saving. A research program at UC Davis now devoted to
just this sort of question is recently underway, but with few results to share
thus far.[xvi]

From previous studies we can find clues about the high
energy inputs to fruit and vegetable cultivation. From Fig. 4. above, we can see that fruits
and vegetables account for (102,370/921,590) 11% of crop production by weight. Table 3 (given below) of the Congressional
Research Service report shows that energy invested in fruit and vegetable
production is proportionally higher, accounting for (3759/18364) 20% of the
energy for crops at the farm level.

Much of the savings at Brookside Farm occurs off the farm by
replacing what would normally be imported, through passive solar preservation
and storage techniques, and by shifting consumer habits towards seasonally
fresh cuisine proportionally high in vegetables.

Does Brookside Farm Scale? Lawns to Food

Before it was Brookside Farm, it was a field of mostly grass
at an elementary school. The school
district watered and mowed it (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Brookside
Farm in early spring, 2007. The image
shows the farm site adjacent to the forest and bordered by grassy fields,
school buildings and a residential neighborhood. Arrows from a home contrast distance and
direction of food coming from the local Safeway supermarket and Brookside
Farm. The 1 acre Brookside Farm occupies
about a quarter of the available play field at Brookside Elementary School.

Using satellite imagery, the area of lawn in the United States
has recently been estimated:

"Even conservatively," Milesi says,
"I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn." This means
lawns-including residential and commercial lawns, golf courses, etc-could be
considered the single largest irrigated crop in America in terms of surface area,
covering about 128,000 square kilometers in all.[xvii]

The same study identifies where and how much water these
lawns require:

That means about 200 gallons of
fresh, usually drinking-quality water per person per day would be required to
keep up our nation's lawn surface area.

Let me put the area of lawn from this study into a food
perspective. The 128,000 square
kilometers of lawns is the same as 32 million acres. A generous portion of fruits and vegetables
for a person per year is 700 lbs, or about half the total weight of food
consumed in a year.[xviii] Modest yields in small farms and gardens would
be in the range of about 20,000 lbs per acre.[xix] Even with half the area set aside to grow
compost crops each year, simple math reveals that the entire U.S. population could be fed plenty
of vegetables and fruits using two thirds of the area currently in lawns.

Labor Compared to Hours of T.V.

For its members Brookside Farm's role is to provide a
substantial proportion of their yearly vegetable and fruit needs. Using our farming techniques, we estimate
that one person working full time could grow enough produce for ten to twenty
people. By contrast, an individual could
grow their personal vegetable and fruit needs on a very part-time basis,
probably half an hour per day, on average, working an area the size of a small home (700 sq ft in veggies and fruits plus 700 sq ft in cover crops).

American's complain that they feel cramped for time and
overworked. But is this really true or
just a function of addiction to a fast-paced media culture? According to Nielsen Media Research:[xx]

The total average time a household
watched television during the 2005-2006 television year was 8 hours and 14
minutes per day, a 3-minute increase from the 2004-2005 season and a record
high. The average amount of television watched by an individual viewer
increased 3 minutes per day to 4 hours and 35 minutes, also a record. (See
Table 1.)

So if we imagine families having the discipline to cut out a
single sitcom viewing per day, or one baseball or football game per weekend
during the growing season, that would free-up sufficient time to become
self-reliant in fruits and vegetables and likely improve overall health.[xxi]

(A note of caution though, an article from The Onion warns
"that viewing fewer than four hours of television a day severely inhibits a
person's ability to ridicule popular culture.")[xxii]

Conclusions

For those wanting to contribute to a lower-energy food
system, starting with fresh produce makes sense for several reasons:

(1) Significant production is possible in a small area,
often what people already have,

(2) Tools and equipment are simple, inexpensive and readily
available,

(3) Fruits and vegetables are heavy due to high water
content, and therefore energy-intensive to transport and process either by
canning or dehydrating,

(4) Growing vegetables and fruits is generally more energy
intensive than other crops because of high fertilizer and irrigation inputs,

(5) Quality declines rapidly after harvest, so home or
locally available food has higher nutritional value and usually tastes better,

(6) Labor, packaging and storage demands of fruits and
vegetables are high in mechanized production systems, making the investment in
home-grown produce financially competitive, and

(7) Gardening and small-scale fruit and vegetable farming
lend themselves to physical and social activities across generation and income
gaps that improve health and enhance a shared sense of purpose and fun.

[i] This
graphic was developed based on the principles discussed in Chapter 2 of Daly
and Farley "Ecological Economics:
Principles and Applications" (2004, Island Press)

[ii] http://www.storyofstuff.com/

[iii] http://www.footprintnetwork.org and
http://www.rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/about_ecological_footprint.htm;
the original ecological footprint analysis (EF1) is at the first reference, and
the second type (EF2) at the second. The
major difference between the two is that the second attempts to incorporate
aquatic systems (e.g., oceans), total terrestrial productivity, and
biodiversity reserves.

[iv] Graphic
from: http://www.footprintstandards.org/

[v] For the
50% figure see: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=global_footprint; for the greater than 90% and discussion of
differences between methods see: http://www.rprogress.org/publications/2006/Footprint%20of%20Nations%2020...

[vi] http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1397

[vii] http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_big_melt_meets_big_empty

[viii] http://www.climatecodered.net/

[ix] http://css.snre.umich.edu/main.php?control=detail_proj&pr_project_id=29

[x] See
especially Table 2. in: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/AC911E/ac911e05.htm

[xi] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431

[xii]
Graphic from: http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS01-06.pdf

[xiii] http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/04nov/RL32677.pdf

[xiv]
Although no date appears on this paper, it is clearly related to a 1994
conference and workshop: http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/energyuse.pdf;
http://www.cias.wisc.edu/archives/1994/01/01/energy_use_in_the_us_food_system_a_summary_of_existing_research_and_analysis/index.php

[xv] http://www.energyfarms.net/

[xvi] http://asi.ucdavis.edu/conferences/farmtofork/;
http://californiaagriculture.ucop.edu/0704OND/editover.html;
http://asi.ucdavis.edu/Research/ASI_Program_Proposal_Brief_-_Energy_Life_Cycle_Assessment_in_Food_Systems_9-13.pdf

[xvii] http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/

[xviii] http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodGuideIndex.htm

[xix] An
acre is ca. 43,000 sq ft. Our experience
at Brookside Farm suggests about 1 lb of produce per square foot of cultivated
space is to be expected, with infrastructure and paths requiring significant
area. Fruit orchards in Mendocino County yield about 20,000 lbs per
acre: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/agriculture/pdf/2006%20Crop%20Report.pdf

[xx]http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=4156527aacccd010VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD

[xxi] http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

[xxii] http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30863

Brookside Farm provides produce year-round. After all, people eat even when the days are
short and cold and plants go into a hibernation mode. Before supermarkets could place a call to a
vegetable broker and have a truck deliver boxes of tomatoes from anywhere in
the world, humans planned for seasonality by growing during the summer the
kinds of foods that would keep during the winter. Brookside Farm is a bit unique among veggie
CSAs (locally at least) by growing storage crops. As a result, our baskets in January are still
pretty hefty.

These baskets are from January 15^th. Potatoes, onions, shallots, and winter squash
make of the bulk, and are all from storage.
Carrots, beets, parsnips, Jerusalem
artichokes, tree collards and kale are still harvested fresh.

The farm has experienced a cold and wet January, including a
few days of snowfall, but without much accumulation. Snow is not very troublesome, even to the
greens. Much more concerning would be a severe
frost at night (in the low teens) and bright sunny days. The wet soil can expand and contract, harming
root crops in the ground. Above ground
greens can be tissue damaged by extreme lows and fluctuations. A sunny day could light and warm the leaf
surface enough to provoke strong photosynthesis, the need for gas exchange and
the opening of leaf pores, but since the soil is still frozen root activity
could be limited and the leaf could become water stressed.

We don't get a lot of snow in Willits, so its presence is an
exciting novelty and the transformation of the beautiful landscape is
captivating. The picture is from January
31^st, and shows in the foreground a row of kale and cabbage, middle
of the frame are former potato beds in compost crops, and the conifer trees
from the neighboring property dominate the background.

A particularly hardy crop around here is a variety of leek
known as "elephant garlic" (Allium
ampeloprasum). Once established, it
is practically impossible to get rid of because it propagates by sending out
subsidiary bulbs that form new plants the next year. During the summer it goes dormant and can be
harvested for the edible bulbs. Like
regular leeks, you can try eating the immature leaf stalks, though these are
generally tougher than the familiar leek.
Two big advantages to elephant garlic are that the plant requires no
watering around here to produce well, and it is high in calories. Most don't think it tastes as good as true
garlic, but it is milder and so can be eaten in larger quantities--providing
some significant calories if need be. I
think of elephant garlic in the same way as Jerusalem Artichokes-not the best
to eat but oh so easy to grow.

I don't have a lot to do on
the farm this time of year, but work for
the farm is continual. A tree pruning is
scheduled for next week as we expect a break in the weather. Seeds have been ordered and organized. I started some flats of leeks in the
greenhouse. Going to get some folks to
look over the work plan for the coming season and refine as I see fit. Should probably take stock of tools and
equipment, making sure everything is in good repair and blades are sharp;
organize the workshop so it is ready when called upon. And there are relationships to cultivate with
the school system, the after school program, community service clubs and
potential farm volunteers and donors.
Oh, and my wife reminds me to do sit ups and push ups regularly!

I wasn't happy with the news in Part 3 of this series, which
basically concluded that Mendocino
County could not be food
self-reliant.[i] To quote the most relevant and discouraging
passage from that essay:

The Caltrans EIR implies that in
about a ca. 20 year span, Mendocino County went from 69,000 to 35,000 acres of
prime farmland, down from and original endowment of 94,000 acres. This does
seem like a remarkably high rate of loss, totaling 34,000 acres or about 1700
acres per year for 20 years. In either case, whether the real figure is closer
to 69,000 or 35,000, both are far from the estimated need of ca. 95,000.

However, I knew that this conclusion rested on certain
assumptions, and that changing these might alter the conclusion. In the end we may be left having to decide
which assumptions are more realistic, or whether what may be theoretically
possible is probable given human nature/folly, or, if you are more inclined,
human spirit/ingenuity.

So I went in search of better news (and the resulting
dopamine reward this could potentially provide) by re-performed some
calculations, starting with the diet. I
will call the diet from part 1 of this series diet 1, and the one presented in
this essay diet 2.[ii] Before creating diet 2, I wanted to be
clearer on what the dietary needs and expectations are in North
America. The USDA has a
fascinating set of web pages. Included
is a survey from the Agricultural Research Service of what several hundred
people eat during a day, which can be extrapolated to the whole population
(standard errors noted) and then broken out by demographic category.[iii] According to this data set, on average, people
eat about 2200 calories per day. As
expected, the very young and old eat the least, and females eat less than males. Another branch of the USDA, the Economic
Research Service concludes that people consume closer to 2700 calories per day
on average.[iv] Changes in American consumption patterns over
time are also discussed in a report by the same sub-agency.[v] In general we are eating more calories than
30 years ago, but we are consistently wasting about 25% of the food produced.[vi]

New Diet Assumptions

For my second go at a model diet, I selected the 2200
calorie per day figure, and I assumed we could get by with half the food waste
of today, which means a production system is required that produces about 2600
calories per person/day. By contrast,
diet 1 used the figure about 3000 calories per day as a guide, which is still
about 700 calories per day lower than what Americans have available to them
from the current system. Diet 2
therefore has less calories available than diet 1, and far less than current U.S.
diets, but is still enough food overall if food waste is half of current
percentages.

Diet 2 is given below, and for comparison I give the current
U.S.
consumption patterns for the modeled foods.
I have made a change in the fruit and vegetable category, where potatoes
are segregated for analysis purposes. Significant
differences between diet 2 and U.S.
averages include much lower meat, sugar and egg consumption, and much higher
dry bean consumption. To compare U.S.
consumption of sprouting seeds (sunflower seeds in my model) I used data on
nuts, which are nutritionally similar. In
the U.S.
this mostly means peanuts, but locally it could be walnuts and
filberts/hazelnuts. I believe diet 2 is
a much healthier diet than current U.S. habits.

Diet 2 also took into account the calories yielded per area
for different food items. This is one
reason why potatoes were given stand-alone status-they efficiently make human
food. When grains are fed to animals,
as in chickens and dairy cows, area efficiency is very low. Diet 2 therefore has fewer animal products
than diet 1, and more veggies and potatoes.
I limited potato consumption to 180 lbs per year because potatoes are
typically edible for only 6-7 months at a time and eating more than one pound
of potatoes per day would get tiresome.
Even with the extra load from vegetables, fruits and potatoes, the total
diet weight is still low, ca. 5.2 lbs, because the total calories are reduced
and grains and dry beans still form the core of the plan.

New Inputs and Yield
Assumptions

In addition to fiddling with the diet, I made a giant change
when modeling the land-area required for the diet-I assumed no limits to
irrigation, which essentially doubles the yields of grains and dry beans.[vii] Remember
also that sugar is modeled as honey and, perhaps optimistically, is given no
direct land area requirement.

So what's in going to be?
Will eating lower on the food chain plus more intensive inputs change
the results? Are we gonna make it? Drum roll.....

First, we look at the acres per person for diet 2:

Not bad! The "acres
minus meat" for diet 1 was 0.76 per person.
Next, multiply by population size:

If you read previous essays you may recall that meat is
assumed to be produced on subprime farmland plus prime farmland in a green
manure rotation. This brings up the need
to account for crop rotations and green manure, thus:

And finally, adding rotation-demanding to non-rotation
demanding areas gives:

So the number here, ca. 38,000 acres, compares favorably to
the amount of prime farmland currently remaining according to the Caltrans
EIR.

Rwanda

Before getting too pleased with the results, I want to put
them into perspective. Let's assume for
the moment that Mendocino
County does have 38,000
acres of prime farmland left, which equates to 0.43 acres per person, or in
metric terms 0.17 hectares. The arable
cropland per capita in Mendocino County is currently slightly less than what Rwanda
had during the genocide period (0.20 hectares).[viii] Scholars have suggested that the tensions
that eventually led to the bloodshed came from the fact that the land base was
barely able to provide enough for the population, and that few subsistence
farmers had the cash to buy imported food.

I am not predicting that the same kind of events would unfold
in Mendocino County under similar circumstances. The point is that when populations are up
against their resource capacity it is normal for stress to build, which
increases the probability of violence.

Fertilizer Impact

Because irrigation is now assumed, the yields of the grains
and dry beans, and by extension the dairy and eggs, increase
substantially. Crops remove nutrients from
the land in proportion to their yield; therefore quantities of fertilizer are
increased per unit area. Three factors
offset increased fertilizer demand per area:
(1) green manure crops are also irrigated and increase in yields at the
same proportion as the crops they support, (2) increased yields means a
decrease in total area required to support the population, and (3) diet 2 is
smaller than diet 1, with fewer animal products.

My estimations are very crude right now, but the overall
impact is that much less fertilizer is required for the diet 2 plus irrigation
model than with diet 1 and no irrigation.

The proportion of fertilizer needs that can be recovered
from humanure is also higher with the diet 2 model. Here's another look at the only reference I
can find for the average nutrient content of human waste.

Adding the straw and other non-edible residue from farming to
the humanure could potentially provide sufficient closure of the nutrient cycle
loop and make the local agricultural not dependent upon large quantities of imports.

The Water Assumption

If about 38,000 acres of prime farmland need to be irrigated
to provide high enough yields, the obvious question to ask is whether the water
resources exist?

The Mendocino County Crop Report shows that about 19,000
acres are in production for apples, pears, and wine grapes.[ix] Another 6000 acres of pasture are irrigated. Perhaps another 1000 acres can be added for
vegetable cultivation, tree farms and nurseries. Therefore, currently around 26,000 acres are
irrigated.

The United States Geological Survey assessed ground water
resources in Mendocino
County in the mid-1980s.[x] In general, valley bottoms with prime
farmland have shallow water tables that are recharged annually given the
usually abundant rainfall regime of the county.

Because much of the area requiring irrigation is sown in
small grain crops, the period of irrigation is limited to late spring, i.e.,
May and June. By mid-late June these
crops will finish maturing and watering should be ceased. I don't currently see water being a limiting
factor for productivity on prime farmland in Mendocino County
as long as the infrastructure exists to access it.

Ground water pumping using shallow wells (usually less than
50 ft) is not extremely energy demanding and should be backed by renewable
energy resources. Encouraging existing
farms (mostly vineyards) to take advantage of any state or federal programs for
renewable energy could help prepare for a more diverse local food system.[xi] Since Mendocino County
likes to promote its wine industry as "organic," and one major winery is the
first to go "carbon neutral" this may not be a difficult sell in the southern
half of the county.[xii]

Alternative Food Sources

A quick mention of what I didn't evaluate: acorns, wild game, fish, seaweed, etc. I suspect acorns could provide for some
serious calories, and the others occasional protein and mineral
supplements. My main worry about wild
game is that it would be extirpated if our current population tried to rely on
it for long. The local ocean-going
fishing industry is probably fuel intensive, but it would be interesting to evaluate
the potential for low-energy input, sustainable fishing off the Mendocino
coast.

Conclusion

Population growth and land-use changes in Mendocino County
have created the surprising situation, in this largely rural area, of a very
low availability of high quality, prime farmland per person. While it is theoretically possible to feed
the current population of the county on likely available farmland, it would
require full-scale irrigation and a restricted diet-and no margin for
failure. Maintaining soil fertility over
the long-term would also mean cycling human body waste and agricultural residue
back to the land.

In this series I did not develop any scenarios about when Mendocino County might need to be more food
self-reliant, nor make a strong case for the benefits of a local food system,
but these arguments can be found elsewhere.[xiii] I found the exercise useful in that it
highlighted the resources on which our population depends-good soil, adequate
water, sufficient mineral nutrients, reliable climate-and quantified about how
much of that exists within our locale.
By following the references provided, similar analyses could be done
just about anywhere.

[i] http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1491

[ii] http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1489

[iii] http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=14958

[iv] See the
Calories spreadsheet here: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodGuideIndex.htm

[v] http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/foodreview/jan2000/frjan2000b.pdf

[vi] http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/Jan1997/jan97a.pdf

[vii] http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1490;
diet 1 assumed about 18 bushels of wheat per acre, diet 2 about 37 bushels per
acre.

[viii] http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpdc/0409061.html; See Table 1, divide farmland per household by
adult equivalent household size.

[ix] http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/agriculture/pdf/2006%20Crop%20Report.pdf

[x] http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/files/well/GroundWaterResourcesMendoCounty.pdf

[xi] http://attra.ncat.org/farm_energy/funding.html

[xii] http://www.mendowine.com/MendocinoCountyOrganicWineGuide2006rev.pdf;
http://www.winebusiness.com/news/dailynewsarticle.cfm?dataId=47813

[xiii] http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1488;
http://globalpublicmedia.com/relocalization_a_strategic_response_to_peak_oil_and_climate_change

For this essay I think it would help to step outside of
ourselves as humans, and consider us as another species of animal that depends
upon a daily supply of resources in the forms of food, water, and air for
survival. Strip the emotions from the
implications as best we can. Calling us
by our scientific name, Homo sapiens
Linneaus may adjust the frame of mind accordingly. Linneaus was the man who, in 1758, described
and named humans in a taxonomic system.
In official scientific protocol, the author of a species name must be
given with that name to avoid confusion because sometimes the same name is accidentally
given for different species. But from
now on I will abbreviate and just use H.
sapiens.

Now that we are examining the population of H. sapiens, let us bring the insights of
an ecologist to bear on the question of what resources must flow from the
environment to support this species? Food
derives from soil mediated ecological processes. Good soil by itself doesn't
guarantee biological productivity. The
other chief factor on land is fresh water available in proper quantities and
frequencies. The potential for soil to
produce food is not evenly distributed on Earth. Some places are more richly endowed than
others, and historically I suppose population density would correspond to
biological productivity. With cheap
fossil fuels the limits of local ecology can be temporarily overcome and
millions of H. sapiens now casually
occupy mega-cities in deserts.[i]

The United States Department of Agriculture has codified and
mapped environmental heterogeneity in the form of soil maps.[ii] These will be used to help answer the
question of whether Mendocino
County's current
population of nearly 90,000 H. sapiens
could theoretically be fed with the local land-base available. Previous essays established a hypothetical
diet and calculated the land area needed to grow that diet for the current
population.[iii] A summary table from the diet and area
calculations is given below.