Restoration Agriculture

1. Annual Agriculture: A Cycle of Destruction and Collapse

Every human society from the temperate zone to the tropics that has relied on annuals to feed itself, is now gone.

A historical pattern. For roughly 10,000 years, since the dawn of "civilization," humanity has relied on annual crops like wheat, rice, and corn. This reliance, however, has consistently led to societal collapse, leaving behind degraded ecosystems and dust. The author argues that this isn't a coincidence but a direct consequence of annual farming practices.

Inherent destruction. Annual crops require exposed soil, necessitating the eradication of perennial vegetative cover through plowing or herbicides. This exposes soil to the elements, leading to:

• Wind erosion: Precious topsoil blows away.
• Water erosion: Soil washes into muddy streams.
• Oxidation: Organic matter and minerals are lost.
• Drought conditions: Tillage dries out the soil.
  These losses accumulate over decades and centuries, reducing fertility, decreasing yields, and causing widespread hunger and disease.

Modern acceleration. Fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers have only accelerated this destructive trajectory. In North America, centuries of ecological abundance have been replaced by monocultures, leading to:

• Extinction of megafauna (bison, passenger pigeons).
• Degradation of rivers and fisheries.
• Altered hydrological cycles and rainfall patterns.
• Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.
  The author contends that our current global culture is on the same path as ancient collapsed civilizations, but at an unprecedented speed.

2. The Perennial Vision: Farming in Nature's Image

Given the opportunity, there are forces in place in the natural world that are as dependable as gravity, forces that lead toward health, healing, diversity and stability in an ecosystem.

Nature heals. The author's childhood experience with the polluted Nashua River, which healed itself once pollution ceased, taught him that nature possesses inherent restorative powers. This resilience is the foundation of Restoration Agriculture, which aims to actively participate in this healing process while producing food.

Beyond the garden. Traditional gardening and annual farming are labor-intensive and often destructive. The author contrasts this with the effortless abundance of wild woods, which provide food with no human input beyond harvesting. This observation sparked the question: what if we based our culture on perennial plants, imitating nature's rich, abundant habitats?

Standing on giants. Inspired by J. Russell Smith's "Tree Crops," Masanobu Fukuoka's "One-Straw Revolution," and Bill Mollison's permaculture, the author developed a vision for a permanent agriculture. This vision blends:

• Smith's "two-story agriculture" using woody crops.
• Fukuoka's "do nothing" farming principles and ecosystem mimicry.
• Mollison's permaculture ethics: earth care, people care, and equitable resource distribution.
  The goal is to design agricultural ecosystems that mimic natural systems in form and function, providing human needs while improving the environment.

3. Maximize Solar Capture with Three-Dimensional Polycultures

Sunlight is the ultimate energy source of all agricultural systems.

Farmers as solar collectors. All agriculture is fundamentally about capturing solar energy. Monoculture fields, like a flat sheet of paper, capture minimal sunlight. Restoration Agriculture, however, uses three-dimensional, multi-layered perennial systems to maximize solar capture.

The 3D advantage. Imagine folding a sheet of paper into tents and stacking them on the same footprint. This illustrates how a multi-layered system dramatically increases the photosynthetic surface area. Perennial woody plants offer:

• Spatial advantage: Layers from tall trees (100+ ft) to groundcovers.
• Time advantage: Leaf out earlier in spring, stay green later in fall (2-3 extra months of photosynthesis).
• Longevity: Live for hundreds to thousands of years, producing continuous yields.
  This multi-layered structure allows for significantly more energy capture per acre than annual crops.

Beyond energy. Increased surface area also means more interaction with the atmosphere, leading to:

• Greater carbon dioxide absorption and oxygen release.
• Enhanced water interception: Rain is slowed, absorbed, and filtered, preventing erosion and recharging groundwater.
• Fog harvesting: Plants sweep moisture directly from the air.
  This deep, textured structure of a savanna biome supports the most animal life and provides the widest variety of food for humans.

4. Water is Life: Master Keyline Design for Abundance

Water has shaped the land and sculpted it into an extremely effective drainage system.

Water is the #1 nutrient. Without water, no plant life, no crops. Therefore, optimizing a farm's relationship with water is the first critical step in Restoration Agriculture. Natural landforms efficiently drain water away, but perennial vegetation and organic matter act as sponges, storing water in the soil.

The Keyline Plan. P.A. Yeomans' Keyline Plan is a holistic approach to water management that aims to:

• Capture every raindrop: Prevent runoff.
• Slow water down: Increase residence time in the landscape.
• Spread water out: Redirect from valleys to drier ridges.
• Store excess: In soil, ponds, tanks, and living biomass.
  This system uses precisely measured swales (water-harvesting ditches with berms) and pocket ponds to achieve these goals, transforming drainage into infiltration.

Beyond swales. Keyline design goes beyond simple water harvesting:

• Spreader swales: Move water slowly across the landscape at a 1% slope, allowing it to soak in.
• Collector swales: Gather water to create surface ponds, mimicking natural vernal pools.
• Pocket ponds: Act as "surge protection" during heavy rains, recharging groundwater and creating amphibian habitat.
• Annual subsoiling: Parallel to swales, this practice shatters compacted layers, allowing water and air deep into the soil, rapidly converting subsoil into fertile topsoil.
  By preventing runoff, Keyline systems stabilize stream levels, restore springs, and dramatically increase site productivity.

5. Diverse Livestock: Nature's Tools for Fertility and Pest Control

The total weight of the animals on that pasture seemed almost unbelievable. Yet the pasture was rich and green.

Animal polycultures. Just as diverse plants occupy different niches in space and time, so do animals. The author observed a multi-species pasture (horses, cattle, sheep, geese, ducks, guineas, hogs, chickens) thriving, demonstrating the power of animal polycultures to build soil and manage ecosystems.

Leader-follower grazing. This system mimics natural savanna grazing patterns where:

• Cattle (leaders) take the most nutritious "first bites."
• Pigs follow, cleaning up leftovers, dropped fruits/nuts, and insect larvae (especially with nose rings to prevent excessive rooting).
• Turkeys scratch for seeds and insects, depositing mineral amendments.
• Sheep act as "finish mowers," eating coarse vegetation and undesirable broadleaf plants.
• Chickens scratch through manure, further controlling insects and spreading nutrients.
  This sequential grazing optimizes forage utilization, reduces pest/disease cycles, and distributes fertility.

Ecological benefits. Integrating diverse livestock provides numerous advantages:

• Weed control: Animals selectively graze, reducing undesirable plant populations.
• Fertility: Manure and urine enrich the soil, accelerating nutrient cycling.
• Pest control: Animals consume insects, larvae, and seeds, breaking pest cycles.
• Soil health: Trampling incorporates organic matter and creates micro-basins for water/seed.
• Increased carrying capacity: Different species utilize different forage types, maximizing biomass conversion.
  This approach transforms animals from a potential source of degradation (overgrazing) into active agents of ecological restoration.

6. Breeding Resilience: The Power of "Sheer, Total, Utter Neglect"

If a plant wants to live and thrive and reproduce, we will harvest its seeds, its fruit, its leaves or other edible, medicinal or otherwise marketable products.

Beyond the lab. Plant breeding doesn't require sterile labs or complex genetics. Ancestors like Native Americans and Luther Burbank used simple observation and selection. The author advocates for "mass selection" combined with "STUN" (Sheer, Total, Utter Neglect) to breed resilient crops.

The STUN method. Instead of coddling plants with endless inputs, STUN involves planting a large genetic diversity (e.g., 1,000 apple seeds) and letting nature select the fittest. This approach:

• Identifies superior genetics: Only plants adapted to local conditions (soil, climate, pests, diseases) survive and thrive.
• Reduces costs: Eliminates labor and expenses for weeding, watering, and chemical applications.
• Breeds resistance: Plants susceptible to pests or diseases die, ensuring only resistant genes are passed on.
  This is a direct contrast to conventional agriculture, which breeds "super bugs" and relies on unchanging, vulnerable crop varieties.

Dynamic adaptation. The goal is not to find a single "perfect" variety, but to foster continuous adaptation. If conditions change in the future, new resilient varieties will emerge from the diverse genetic pool. This approach ensures that agriculture remains in sync with the evolving natural world, rather than fighting against it.

7. Beyond Calories: Restoration Agriculture's Nutritional Superiority

What we do on our farms shows up in the food system and eventually is reflected in our human bodies.

Corn's nutritional deficit. While corn yields massive calories per acre, it is nutritionally deficient in critical vitamins (C, B12, A, E, folic acid) and minerals (calcium). Excessive reliance on corn leads to diseases like scurvy and pellagra, highlighting that high calories do not equate to adequate nutrition.

True caloric yield. The "feed the world" argument for corn is misleading. A significant portion of corn calories is diverted:

• 43% to livestock feed (with a 90% trophic energy loss).
• 30% to ethanol fuel (99.95% caloric loss for humans).
• 15% exported.
• 7.7% industrial ingredients.
  Only 2.7% is direct human food. After accounting for these losses, one acre of corn provides a mere 3.06 million net human food calories, making it an inefficient food source.

Restoration Agriculture's abundance. An oak savanna-mimic system (chestnuts, apples, hazelnuts, raspberries, grapes, currants, plus diverse livestock and mushrooms) produces:

• Over 5.9 million net human food calories per acre (more than double corn).
• A complete, nutritionally dense diet, addressing all deficiencies found in corn.
• Additional yields from biomass (wood, shells) and medicinal fungi.
  This system converts inedible biomass (grass, wood) into highly nutritious human food, demonstrating a profound increase in efficiency and nutritional output.

8. Agroforestry: Bridging the Gap to Perennial Systems

Agroforestry represents the techniques that we use to bridge the gap between annual and perennial crops.

Transitional strategy. Agroforestry practices integrate woody plants with annual crops or livestock, allowing farmers to maintain current cash flow while establishing long-term perennial systems. These USDA-accepted practices provide a legitimate and practical pathway for conversion.

Five key practices:

• Windbreaks: Linear plantings of trees/shrubs to mitigate wind effects, prevent erosion, protect crops/livestock, reduce heating costs, and provide habitat. Edible species (pine nuts, apples, hazelnuts) can be used.
• Riparian Buffers: Perennial vegetation along waterways to filter agricultural runoff, prevent erosion, absorb chemicals, and create wildlife habitat. Water-loving edible/biomass crops (hazelnuts, cattails for ethanol) are ideal.
• Alley Cropping: Rows of trees/shrubs intercropped with annuals. Designed for efficient equipment use, it allows continued annual crop income while trees mature. Root pruning prevents nutrient competition.
• Silvopasture: Intentional combination of trees, forage, and livestock. Creates dappled shade for increased forage yield and animal comfort, while livestock manage undergrowth and fertilize.
• Forest Farming: Manipulating forest canopy to grow shade-tolerant, high-value crops like medicinal herbs (ginseng, goldenseal) or edible fungi (shiitake, maitake).

Beyond conventional. Restoration Agriculture takes agroforestry to the next level, integrating these practices into a holistic, ecosystem-mimicking design. It's not just about conservation but about creating productive, multi-layered systems that yield food, fuel, medicine, and fiber.

9. The Role of Bees and Wild Pollinators

Over 30 percent of humanity’s food plants are pollinated by bees.

Pollination dependency. A significant portion of human food plants relies on insect pollination. While European honeybees (Apis mellifera) were introduced to North America and became crucial for agriculture, native bees are mostly solitary and do not form large colonies or produce surplus honey.

Honeybee crisis. Industrialized beekeeping, with its mobile hives and reliance on chemicals, has inadvertently created conditions for pests and diseases (e.g., Colony Collapse Disorder). The practice of returning wax frames and not culling weak hives has fostered the buildup of resistant pathogens, leading to massive colony losses.

Restoration Agriculture's solution. Instead of relying solely on honeybees or chemical interventions, Restoration Agriculture:

• Creates diverse habitat: The multi-layered perennial system is the pollinator habitat, supporting a wide array of native bees, flies, beetles, and other insects.
• Reduces chemical use: Eliminating sprays protects all pollinators from direct poisoning and ensures a continuous food supply.
• Fosters natural selection: By allowing strong honeybee hives to reproduce naturally and culling weak ones, the system selects for locally adapted, disease-resistant bees.
  In a mature Restoration Agriculture system, wild pollinators often outnumber honeybees, ensuring robust pollination services without external inputs.

10. Adapting Restoration Agriculture to Any Biome

No matter where one goes on planet Earth, there are families of plants and their associated animals that grow and thrive together in virtuous relationships with zero external inputs.

Ecosystem mimicry. Restoration Agriculture is not limited to oak savannas; its principles apply to any biome. The key is to understand the local ecology, identify native plant associations, and then substitute productive, domesticated variants of those species.

Biome-specific examples:

• Temperate Riparian Zones: Utilize Juglandaceae (pecan, black walnut), Rosaceae (cherries, plums), pawpaw, grapes, and pasture for livestock. These areas are naturally moist and fertile.
• Northern Pine Forests: Incorporate nut-bearing pines (Korean, Siberian), apples, tart cherries, hazelnuts, blueberries, cranberries, and forage. These systems thrive on acidic, granite-derived soils.
• Boreal Forests: Supplement native species (spruce, lodgepole pine, birch, serviceberry) with non-native, high-protein/oil sources like Siberian pine (pine nuts) and Siberian peashrub (nitrogen-fixing, edible beans) to address nutritional deficiencies in cold climates.
• Subtropics: Leverage immense biodiversity with starchier staples (breadfruit, plantain), nuts (cashew, macadamia), and a vast array of fruits, spices, and beverages (citrus, coffee, cocoa).

Mass selection for adaptation. Even in challenging climates, mass selection can identify variants of tropical or temperate plants that tolerate extreme conditions. By planting many seeds and selecting for precocious, productive, and resilient individuals, new food crops can be developed for any region.

11. Economic Prosperity Through Ecological Restoration

As our production systems more closely approximates natural systems, our production costs approach those of nature.

The myth of profitable farming. Most farmers struggle financially, with off-farm income often subsidizing operations. Conventional agriculture's high input costs (seed, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel) and commodity pricing create a rigged system where farmers sell low and buy high, leading to debt and unsustainability.

Cost reduction is key. Restoration Agriculture dramatically lowers production costs:

• Perennialism: Planting costs are incurred once, amortized over decades or centuries, approaching zero annual expenditure.
• No inputs: Breeding for pest/disease resistance and site adaptation eliminates the need for sprays and specialty fertilizers.
• Natural processes: Nature provides fertility, pest control, and water management for free.
  The author's New Forest Farm, for example, operates at one-third the annual production cost of a conventional corn farm, even with annual cash crops.

Increased net revenue. Lower costs combined with increased total site yield (from overyielding polycultures) lead to higher net profits per acre. For instance, chestnuts can yield $5,000/acre gross revenue with minimal costs, far surpassing corn's $1,200/acre gross.

Diversification and aggregation. Multiple crops spread risk and income streams across seasons. Farmer-owned cooperatives, like Organic Valley, aggregate diverse products, process them, and market them, allowing smaller farmers to access larger markets and receive fair prices. This model creates more livelihoods and rebuilds rural economies.

12. A Call for New Pioneers: Rebuilding Nature, One Farm at a Time

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

A planetary crossroads. Humanity faces unprecedented ecological crises: mass extinctions, climate change, and widespread ecosystem destruction. While debates rage about causes, the undeniable fact is that human agriculture has obliterated vast natural landscapes.

Our ultimate responsibility. As conscious beings, we bear the responsibility for the health and well-being of all life on Earth. This means moving beyond "subduing" nature to becoming stewards who restore and enhance it.

Action, not waiting. We cannot wait for governments, universities, or corporations to act. The time for research and incentives is over; the time for planting is now. Every individual, especially farmers and landowners, has the power to initiate this transformation.

The virtuous cycle. By planting perennial, food-producing polycultures, we:

• Create clean water, pure air, and build soil.
• Provide abundant, nutritious, low-cost food.
• Restore wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
• Generate economic opportunities and spiritual renewal.
  This process creates a rich, living planet for future generations, transforming barren land into productive, beautiful ecosystems that will endure for millennia.

Last updated: November 15, 2025