Sustainable Food Production
Seeds
The integrity of our seeds is becoming more and more compromised as their genetics are being manipulated and changed. The issue of Seeds is a huge one. Whomever controls the seeds controls the food.
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SREP giving seeds away in the Sierra Madre Mexico |
As part of our project we promote seed saving and sharing. We have hundreds of packets of Organic seeds that we give away as donations, to help create more sustainable local food systems. We are focused on promoting open pollinated and organic seeds that individuals can cultivate and share amongst their friends, to reduce their dependence on large corporations and chemical agriculture. If anyone would like seeds please
contact us.
Growing methods: What is Sustainable Agriculture?
There is no set answer to this question, and it means many different things to many people. On one level it means that a farm can maintain it's level of abundance for an indefinite amount of time, meeting all its needs from the land that it encompasses. Historically, there are very few models of this actually occurring on a societal level, but there are cultures that have been able to support themselves for thousands of years from a given place. Today we have a limited amount of space per person, and so we are at a place of being receptive to new models. One of the most promising is a method called Forest Gardening, where a diversity of plants are grown together modeling a forest ecosystem that provides a year round abundance of food, materials, and medicine.
Some of the key principles of having a long term abundant agriculture are good soil fertility, ample water supply, and pest management.
Methods for achieving these principles include composting and returning all organic matter to the soil to maintain or IMPROVE soil fertility, collecting rainwater in the wet season for irrigation in the dry season, mulching to conserve water and aid soil fertility, and practicing diverse plantings (include crop rotations and companion planting) for pest management.
Some of these Sustainable food production methods have been developed further into more concrete ideas, like: Organic, Biodynamics, Square-Foot Gardening, Natural Farming, Biointensive, Permaculture, Food Forests, and many more. Each of these methods has a set of guidelines or rules that make them slightly different from each other, although, the ideas found within often overlap.
We work with our partner organization in Tennessee, the Broadened Horizons Farms, an 11 acre organic teaching farm. The land where the farm is located, was degraded due to cattle ranching and for the past 2 1/2 years has been under restoration. There are now extensive gardens and ponds at the farm. They utilize rainwater catchment for irrigation, and have cold frames and greenhouses for a year round food supply.
(Click on the picture above to learn more)