Thanks! I think you are filling the missing piece in the permaculture and the like system. I'm from Vietnam, I like the permaculture, the food forest ideas. But we need to earn money too! It's life.
I also live in Colombia near Cali. I have a small plot of land, really small, but I have dedicated these last 6 months to experiment what grows better. I´m mixing different plants such as plantain, cassava, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, other herbs, peppers, zapallo, coffee, nacedero (pollinators and chop and drop), moringa, and searching what can be profitable for my really small plot of land. It´s almost like gardening. I plant things, see how it grows, if not healthy, take them out, plant new things, and so on. It´s really great. First I started like a hobby but now I´m serously wanting to make some profit from it. Also lots of flowers to attract pollinators.
@@EcoInstant I am at 1000 msnm, dry forest tropical climate. I do have 2 neem trees and use them for pest control. When there are no seeds, I get the leaves and leave them soaking for 24 hours and then spray plants. Also works. What is your climate and msnm?
I feel like I learned so much about your model from your pinapple example. I had a hard time figuring out why, to me as an accountant, your supply was all over the place. I get it now it doesnt serve you to have large supply of pinapples because your demand isnt there. So instead you sell pinapple AND fenceposts AND leaves AND guava . Because that allows you to get most locally without having to incur shipping costs. Thank you this really tought me something. Your a jack of all trades (or in this case crops) because it doesnt pay to master one thing.
New to your channel but it seems like you might enjoy checking out the ahapuaha land management system from Hawaii/Polynesia, basically ancient large scale aquaponics system. Supported local populations with surplus, absolutely commercially viable. Maybe something applicable you could apply to your farms, fun read if not.
Certainly, permaculture is still at that early stage where practically everyone is able to discover some method of their own that will help the greater community. Trading that information online is not only going to help that community, but offer it up to the possibility of another gardener improving on it.
@@Debbie-henri Us early folk are worth our weight in gold I believe, but the real power will be when thousands of young optimizers jump.on board and improve models. But for that to happen we need to keep working on the models and framework! Young people want to, but they don't know how to make it through the transition phase.
I think the biggest thing for me is how do young farmers A.) Get into permaculture without having to blow a ton of money on infrastructure B.) Work fulltime on a permaculture farm without having to have another job to support permaculture as almost a habit instead of a full-time career C.) Make an actual profit without compromising the land on a cash crop. As a young farmer not wanting to farm ecologically, these are the major hurdles...
@@eamonncuerden-conboy6621 I totally agree with these concerns, I tried (and failed), and now am trying again! My best advice is 'biodiversity nursury', and my next video is about this!
A) It can be and should be extremely cheap without requiring much infrastructure if any at all. Just seeds and animal poop. Almost all crops grow better from seed and it makes it very cheap to vegetate mass acres. Next best after seed is easily propagated cuttings. The goal is to create mega doses of biomass from ground to canopy to fuel microbiology and decomposition processes as the engine of your forests growth. B) Agroforestry in alley cropping lanes allows for the aisles between tree rows to be planted with cash crop annuals while waiting for overhead canopy closure. In other words, full-time market gardening for profit while transitioning into food forest in the same location. C) part B kind of answers your question for C. Anything you can grow and sell for good money in your area can be grown in these aisles and none of them need be grown with degrading practices. I hope this allows you to see that the hurdles aren't so difficult. Have a good one.
A) its very difficult (in europe, usa, canada, australia, at least) to get acess to land for cheap. Most cases young - an urban, no experience - people dont have enough money to go bigger then small lands (under 2 or 3 acres), usually not in flat good soil (valleys). That makes it very small scalle, and already less efficient to work on. As this tend to be forestry systems, it tends to be a long time investment, some part of it, at least 10 years, before you start to have a product return. Maybe less is you are very energetic and creative, maybe go trough syntropic style. Its a lot of work. Specially if you need do produce food for markets (there s a minimum of quantity of a few products), so you will be running a full time market garden growing inside a growing forest where you are focusing on producing bio mass! You can see this is not fast and not very efficient... Its full time work, and very stressfull. And there s a big learnning curb when you start, on all things, since seeds, bed making, prunning, planting, tools, climate cycles, etc. We are talking 2 or 3 years minimum until you get some minimum prodution able to go to markets. And you still need machinery. At minimum a working car, pick up or van style... ... and if you are living in the place you need to create or adapt houses, barns, roads, etc. This is just 1/2 of it. If you decide to sell products in market, there the side of the market it self. Regulations, taxes, transport, packing, storeging, marketing, accouting... competition from professional experienced growers and sellers...intermediaries!... growing is just 1/2 of the job... So: inexperience, low ressources, low mechanization, secondary quality land, small scale, polyculture , long term...complex job (s) , no specialization...you end up a jack of all trades, trying to do everything at the same time... its the perfect model of anti specialization, wich obviously have a cost in produtivity. Im not saying its impossible. Im sure some excepcional people can do it. For most normal people , not incredible energic, creative, good at diy, social, etc...for a normal person... its gonna be very very difficult to go this way. do you know proven cases of sucess? I known my case and lots of other i see i real life and online: 99% of permaculture sites are homesteads, and people make it possible with side jobs, or rural/eco tourism, workshops, youtube...and the prodution in most cases dont feed not even the household. Its very very rare a homestead achive 50% products (food and other land product) for own survival, both in quantity, quality and diversity, and in money value. Most well runned producing permaculture homesteads dont achive even 20 or 30%... money have to come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And this is not the kind of project you want to go using debt, or even renting. Its long term, and you need to love the land. You need to own it. Do you see this spreading to a meanninfull size that produces...lets say: 10% of all land products of the world? Right now permaculture/sintropic agroforestry and systems alike count to about...0,001% of land products. It would need to grow about 1000% just to be ...10%.
@@srantoniomatos 1) If land is too expensive then you will have to start small scale on a quarter acre, but this human scale ends up being the most efficient anyway. You can grow and save to reach your desired acreage size from there. 2) Sloping land has its own advantages and the problems of sloping land are fixed with a system called (SALT) Sloping Agricultural Land Technology. 3) As for time complaints, since you can grow annuals in the aisles, it wont be 10 years before a return. You will get crops in your first year. You don't need to run a full time market garden. Its up to you how much or how little work you want to devote to the annual crops vs the perennials. Alternatively, alleys can also be planted with crops that yield in a couple of years like berries, root crops, and cut flowers if you want less work in the beginning phases. Growing and cutting biomass is not stressful, it's a joy. 4) Your complaint about needing a car and a house with modern amenities isn't an agroforestry problem, it's a problem of modern society. 5) Proven cases of success are Ernst Gotsch on hundreds of acres, Masanobu Fukuoka who was on around 10 acres et al, numerous market gardeners on 1 acre or under, and also personal dealings including people in the field who don't have any sort of social media presence but just get on with farming. Its not some exceptional thing. Peasants can and do engage in this. And yes, these methods can easily spread to be the paradigm of agriculture because they produce better food for CHEAPER.
My friend, tanks for the reflexion on my comment. You are confusing traditional family small scale self prodution farmming in pooor countries with permaculture. And for good reasons. Many times is very much alike. After feudalism era, when aristocrats and church owned most of the land and peasents farmed it (not just food, also forestry, constrution materials, fuel, medicines, etc), in the 19 and 20 centuries families become owners and producers, and even 1 century ago 90%plus of farm products were produce in small family farms. But that is far gone. Tecnology and comoditazation took over. Now, bettween 2/3 and 1/3 (numbers vary a lot) is still done by small scale family farmers (under 5 acres), but that share is shrinking very fast. Its disapearing. For every permaculture farm openning 1000 traditional family farms go away. And the ones still existing are more and more tecnologic, use sintetic fertilizers, plastics, machinery, etc. And in the rich world they only exist when are connected to the markets, and usually are subsdize. They are also specialized: orchards, veggies, etc. Usually they produce in monoculture... Permaculture appeared in a very rich country, and is adopted mostly by the urban midle classes of those rich countries. Is adpoted as a lifestyle, as a gardenning style, a ecologic garden/farmming style. I dont know a single one that live of the food they sell to/in the markets. Permaculture was borne as a contrarian, in the context of anticapitalism...never intended to go comercial. The only comercial aspect of permaculture are the PDC s. You are right when you say that sintropic agro reconizes the need to be profitable, maybe because its from a poor country, where land and labour is cheap and people need to work hard to survive. For rich world is, as you said, a "hobby". Except for some a few expetional examples, polycultures are much more inefficient (not less produtive, in ecologic sense) when it comes to deliver food to a market. Are you one of the exceptions, are you profitable in food prodution? Im not. For me permaculture is a privilige. One that i make sacrifices for, so i can deserved it.
@@srantoniomatos I feel this comment very deeply, in some ways you are explaining it better than me. I hope we can shift this a bit by marrying different schools into a framework. I see it too, but we live on the periphery, the last bastion of 'poverty' farming. It could be a good place to turn the tide - ie I don't think (under the conditions you mentioned) the revolutionary agriculture wave we need will come from the developed world. Hopefully through these rambles I can organize my thoughts and produce some framework videos on spanish as well. Thank you for commenting!!
@@EcoInstant its nice to have an open talk about this. Tanks. I deal we this dilemas in my personal life, including my professional life(landscapper), and also live in a not very rich country, with small scalle intensive agriculture , and its not easy to reconcile a "permaculture mindset" with lots of what we see everywhere in land managment. Im not sure with need a diferent agriculture. This one produces for 8 billion with excess (but very different sharing), and seems like prodution is going through another revolucion and is about to become even more productive. More techy, more digital... and more and more green. My country (europe) is greenner then ever in the last centurie. Specially in forestry... so, i see permaculture/ecologic forest designs as a niche, not so much dedicated to produce food or products for the markets, but more focus on ecological gardenning/forestry style. To tell you the true im not sure, i still love it, and more, then when i decided to go this way, then with a more idealistc and ambitous mindset.
Thanks! I think you are filling the missing piece in the permaculture and the like system. I'm from Vietnam, I like the permaculture, the food forest ideas. But we need to earn money too! It's life.
I also live in Colombia near Cali. I have a small plot of land, really small, but I have dedicated these last 6 months to experiment what grows better. I´m mixing different plants such as plantain, cassava, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, other herbs, peppers, zapallo, coffee, nacedero (pollinators and chop and drop), moringa, and searching what can be profitable for my really small plot of land. It´s almost like gardening. I plant things, see how it grows, if not healthy, take them out, plant new things, and so on. It´s really great. First I started like a hobby but now I´m serously wanting to make some profit from it. Also lots of flowers to attract pollinators.
@@luzgiraldo2468 This is fantastic! What elevation above sea level are you? Below 1000m I can highly recommend neem for pest control like jenjen.
@@EcoInstant I am at 1000 msnm, dry forest tropical climate. I do have 2 neem trees and use them for pest control. When there are no seeds, I get the leaves and leave them soaking for 24 hours and then spray plants. Also works.
What is your climate and msnm?
I feel like I learned so much about your model from your pinapple example. I had a hard time figuring out why, to me as an accountant, your supply was all over the place. I get it now it doesnt serve you to have large supply of pinapples because your demand isnt there. So instead you sell pinapple AND fenceposts AND leaves AND guava . Because that allows you to get most locally without having to incur shipping costs. Thank you this really tought me something. Your a jack of all trades (or in this case crops) because it doesnt pay to master one thing.
New to your channel but it seems like you might enjoy checking out the ahapuaha land management system from Hawaii/Polynesia, basically ancient large scale aquaponics system. Supported local populations with surplus, absolutely commercially viable. Maybe something applicable you could apply to your farms, fun read if not.
@@RachetRanger I love looking into stuff like this! New (and old) models are popping up for sure.
Certainly, permaculture is still at that early stage where practically everyone is able to discover some method of their own that will help the greater community.
Trading that information online is not only going to help that community, but offer it up to the possibility of another gardener improving on it.
@@Debbie-henri Us early folk are worth our weight in gold I believe, but the real power will be when thousands of young optimizers jump.on board and improve models.
But for that to happen we need to keep working on the models and framework! Young people want to, but they don't know how to make it through the transition phase.
I think the biggest thing for me is how do young farmers A.) Get into permaculture without having to blow a ton of money on infrastructure B.) Work fulltime on a permaculture farm without having to have another job to support permaculture as almost a habit instead of a full-time career C.) Make an actual profit without compromising the land on a cash crop. As a young farmer not wanting to farm ecologically, these are the major hurdles...
I second this!! These are the same things I’m struggling with!!
@@eamonncuerden-conboy6621 I totally agree with these concerns, I tried (and failed), and now am trying again!
My best advice is 'biodiversity nursury', and my next video is about this!
A) It can be and should be extremely cheap without requiring much infrastructure if any at all. Just seeds and animal poop. Almost all crops grow better from seed and it makes it very cheap to vegetate mass acres. Next best after seed is easily propagated cuttings. The goal is to create mega doses of biomass from ground to canopy to fuel microbiology and decomposition processes as the engine of your forests growth. B) Agroforestry in alley cropping lanes allows for the aisles between tree rows to be planted with cash crop annuals while waiting for overhead canopy closure. In other words, full-time market gardening for profit while transitioning into food forest in the same location. C) part B kind of answers your question for C. Anything you can grow and sell for good money in your area can be grown in these aisles and none of them need be grown with degrading practices. I hope this allows you to see that the hurdles aren't so difficult. Have a good one.
A) its very difficult (in europe, usa, canada, australia, at least) to get acess to land for cheap. Most cases young - an urban, no experience - people dont have enough money to go bigger then small lands (under 2 or 3 acres), usually not in flat good soil (valleys). That makes it very small scalle, and already less efficient to work on. As this tend to be forestry systems, it tends to be a long time investment, some part of it, at least 10 years, before you start to have a product return. Maybe less is you are very energetic and creative, maybe go trough syntropic style. Its a lot of work. Specially if you need do produce food for markets (there s a minimum of quantity of a few products), so you will be running a full time market garden growing inside a growing forest where you are focusing on producing bio mass! You can see this is not fast and not very efficient... Its full time work, and very stressfull. And there s a big learnning curb when you start, on all things, since seeds, bed making, prunning, planting, tools, climate cycles, etc. We are talking 2 or 3 years minimum until you get some minimum prodution able to go to markets.
And you still need machinery. At minimum a working car, pick up or van style...
... and if you are living in the place you need to create or adapt houses, barns, roads, etc.
This is just 1/2 of it. If you decide to sell products in market, there the side of the market it self. Regulations, taxes, transport, packing, storeging, marketing, accouting... competition from professional experienced growers and sellers...intermediaries!...
growing is just 1/2 of the job...
So: inexperience, low ressources, low mechanization, secondary quality land, small scale, polyculture , long term...complex job (s) , no specialization...you end up a jack of all trades, trying to do everything at the same time... its the perfect model of anti specialization, wich obviously have a cost in produtivity.
Im not saying its impossible. Im sure some excepcional people can do it. For most normal people , not incredible energic, creative, good at diy, social, etc...for a normal person... its gonna be very very difficult to go this way. do you know proven cases of sucess?
I known my case and lots of other i see i real life and online: 99% of permaculture sites are homesteads, and people make it possible with side jobs, or rural/eco tourism, workshops, youtube...and the prodution in most cases dont feed not even the household. Its very very rare a homestead achive 50% products (food and other land product) for own survival, both in quantity, quality and diversity, and in money value. Most well runned producing permaculture homesteads dont achive even 20 or 30%... money have to come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And this is not the kind of project you want to go using debt, or even renting. Its long term, and you need to love the land. You need to own it.
Do you see this spreading to a meanninfull size that produces...lets say: 10% of all land products of the world? Right now permaculture/sintropic agroforestry and systems alike count to about...0,001% of land products. It would need to grow about 1000% just to be ...10%.
@@srantoniomatos
1) If land is too expensive then you will have to start small scale on a quarter acre, but this human scale ends up being the most efficient anyway. You can grow and save to reach your desired acreage size from there.
2) Sloping land has its own advantages and the problems of sloping land are fixed with a system called (SALT) Sloping Agricultural Land Technology.
3) As for time complaints, since you can grow annuals in the aisles, it wont be 10 years before a return. You will get crops in your first year. You don't need to run a full time market garden. Its up to you how much or how little work you want to devote to the annual crops vs the perennials. Alternatively, alleys can also be planted with crops that yield in a couple of years like berries, root crops, and cut flowers if you want less work in the beginning phases. Growing and cutting biomass is not stressful, it's a joy.
4) Your complaint about needing a car and a house with modern amenities isn't an agroforestry problem, it's a problem of modern society.
5) Proven cases of success are Ernst Gotsch on hundreds of acres, Masanobu Fukuoka who was on around 10 acres et al, numerous market gardeners on 1 acre or under, and also personal dealings including people in the field who don't have any sort of social media presence but just get on with farming. Its not some exceptional thing. Peasants can and do engage in this. And yes, these methods can easily spread to be the paradigm of agriculture because they produce better food for CHEAPER.
My friend, tanks for the reflexion on my comment.
You are confusing traditional family small scale self prodution farmming in pooor countries with permaculture. And for good reasons. Many times is very much alike.
After feudalism era, when aristocrats and church owned most of the land and peasents farmed it (not just food, also forestry, constrution materials, fuel, medicines, etc), in the 19 and 20 centuries families become owners and producers, and even 1 century ago 90%plus of farm products were produce in small family farms. But that is far gone. Tecnology and comoditazation took over. Now, bettween 2/3 and 1/3 (numbers vary a lot) is still done by small scale family farmers (under 5 acres), but that share is shrinking very fast. Its disapearing. For every permaculture farm openning 1000 traditional family farms go away. And the ones still existing are more and more tecnologic, use sintetic fertilizers, plastics, machinery, etc. And in the rich world they only exist when are connected to the markets, and usually are subsdize. They are also specialized: orchards, veggies, etc. Usually they produce in monoculture...
Permaculture appeared in a very rich country, and is adopted mostly by the urban midle classes of those rich countries. Is adpoted as a lifestyle, as a gardenning style, a ecologic garden/farmming style. I dont know a single one that live of the food they sell to/in the markets.
Permaculture was borne as a contrarian, in the context of anticapitalism...never intended to go comercial. The only comercial aspect of permaculture are the PDC s.
You are right when you say that sintropic agro reconizes the need to be profitable, maybe because its from a poor country, where land and labour is cheap and people need to work hard to survive. For rich world is, as you said, a "hobby".
Except for some a few expetional examples, polycultures are much more inefficient (not less produtive, in ecologic sense) when it comes to deliver food to a market.
Are you one of the exceptions, are you profitable in food prodution?
Im not. For me permaculture is a privilige. One that i make sacrifices for, so i can deserved it.
@@srantoniomatos I feel this comment very deeply, in some ways you are explaining it better than me.
I hope we can shift this a bit by marrying different schools into a framework. I see it too, but we live on the periphery, the last bastion of 'poverty' farming. It could be a good place to turn the tide - ie I don't think (under the conditions you mentioned) the revolutionary agriculture wave we need will come from the developed world.
Hopefully through these rambles I can organize my thoughts and produce some framework videos on spanish as well. Thank you for commenting!!
@@EcoInstant its nice to have an open talk about this. Tanks.
I deal we this dilemas in my personal life, including my professional life(landscapper), and also live in a not very rich country, with small scalle intensive agriculture , and its not easy to reconcile a "permaculture mindset" with lots of what we see everywhere in land managment.
Im not sure with need a diferent agriculture. This one produces for 8 billion with excess (but very different sharing), and seems like prodution is going through another revolucion and is about to become even more productive. More techy, more digital... and more and more green. My country (europe) is greenner then ever in the last centurie. Specially in forestry... so, i see permaculture/ecologic forest designs as a niche, not so much dedicated to produce food or products for the markets, but more focus on ecological gardenning/forestry style.
To tell you the true im not sure, i still love it, and more, then when i decided to go this way, then with a more idealistc and ambitous mindset.