Food production has to become more efficient, says permaculture advocate Rob Avis.
“We need a remake of the entire system from the bottom,” he told the Organic Connections conference in Regina.
Permaculture focuses on a regenerative system that weaves together all environmental and social aspects of food, water, shelter and waste.
Avis of Verge Permaculture in Calgary said this would result in farms that provide net positive calories, run on solar energy, produce nutrient dense food, benefit topsoil, increase fertility and diversity, improve water quality, decrease pollution and provide habitat.
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He said the outputs of one system become the inputs of another, which is a pattern that nature has already perfected. However, the system that exists now is what he called an immature ecosystem that is low in diversity, highly competitive, leaks nutrients and focuses on annual plants.
A mature, highly diversified system that uses perennial crops and recirculates nutrients is more desirable, he said.
One example is a small three quarter acre farm in Kelowna, B.C., that supplies vegetables to restaurants and takes back the restaurant compost for fertilizer.
Avis said urban centres could be producing more food than they are. There are 40 million acres of lawn in the United States compared to 45 million acres of wheat.
That land could produce enough to feed every U.S. citizen 2,000 calories per day.
Fred Kirschenmann, a holistic resource management advocate, said larger-scale farming should also focus on developing more perennial crops.
“Nature doesn’t operate on a system of annuals,” he said.
