Mark Shepard's Perrenial Agriculture

I had a great time last week at the Acres USA conference in Louisville, KY. One of my favorite speakers was Mark Shepard (http://www.forestag.com/) and his new book "Restoration Agriculture" was made available during the conference. His basic idea is to use perrenial agriculture (nuts) for our staple foods and oils to replace grains, growing them using Yeoman's keyline design methods with swales to distribute and hold rainwater in the soil. Since it takes 10-15 years to get good crops from some of these nut trees, he also has a transition plan to raise annual crops and animals in the alleys between rows of trees. It was very enlightening.