Simpler Food Production

Permaculture also deserves our attention and careful evaluation. Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison, an Australian who noticed how rainforests continually produce an abundance of food without human chores of tilling, planting, and weeding. Masinoba Fukuoka had similar ideas much earlier, documented in the One Straw Revolution. Both men advocate an initial investment of labor, tilling, and planting, but they do so in ways that model nature and seek to eliminate as much ongoing labor as possible. After setting up a permaculture garden, no mechanization should be needed, and no checmical inputs should ever be needed. Companion plants, landscaping, and the acceptance of critters and weeds are all part of permaculture. Heirloom varieties are important so the plants can reseed themselves. Animals are encouraged in the mix because of their ability to turn pests into manure and provide some surface tilling, such as chickens eating Japanese beetles, cattle working their own manure into the ground in when rotated in small paddocks, and moles aerating the soil for the next succession of crops.  Farmers of Forty Centuries is also an interesting read to see how the Chinese have accomplished sustainable agriculture with soil that is still extremely fertile to this day.