On May 11, the National Farmers Union [of Canada] sent out a press release based on USDA projections for the crop year 2007 and the news is grim. Global grain supplies will fall to a 53 day supply--the lowest in the 47 years records have been kept and could be the lowest in a century.

NFU Director of Research Derrin Qualman said that the converging problems of natural gas and fertilizer constraint, intensifying water shortages, climate change, farmland loss and degradation, population increases, the poliferation of livestock feeding, and an increasing push to divert food supplies into biofules means that we in the opening phase of an intensifying food shortage.

Permacultue, at least since the publication of David Holmgren's book "Principles and Pathways", has given much attention to diminishing energy supplies and what we can do about it by applying his 12 Principles and Pathways.

The time is here to really get serious about small-scale food production. Although we have principally been flower growers, we are giving increasing attention to growing food. This year we expect to harvest 1 to 2 tons each of fingerling potatoes and dry onions.

Please visit our website at. . .

http://www.wholesystemsag.org

. . . for information on our no-tractor, no-tillage, permanent mulch way of growing. We think it's the easiest and most sustainable of the several alternative methods now popular.

Good wishes and good growing,

John Warner

Madera Whole Systems Agriculture near Fresno, CA

Hand-scale market growers since 1996

Here is a link that might be useful: Whole Systems Agriculture