Diversified Farming
Monoculture is Gambling
What makes diversified farming profitable?
There are many variables that control profitability for rural industry.
- the season
- the economy
- government interference
- the season in other parts of the world
- currency value
- labour availability
- availability of your product locally
- availability of your product overseas
- and heaps of others
Table of Contents
Monoculture is Gambling
There is one constant on the land – no two years are alike.
Using an orchard as an example, some fruits need frost early in the season to set the buds for next year’s crop. The same frosts will damage the buds for other crops. Rain later in the season will fill some fruit and split others. This variability will occur in almost every rural venture.
While one crop is excelling, others are OK and others are not performing at all well. Next year it is the same – with different crops.
The only reliable answer is diversity. Multiple income streams are sustainable – monoculture is gambling that all the gods will constantly smile upon you. I do not like those odds. Nor do I like a good income only 1 in 5 years.
A Higher Yield from Multiculture
This is quite logical, just not thought about by many people.
This compares the yield of monoculture to the yield of multiculture.
There is no doubt that if you grow one crop, that your yield OF THAT CROP will be greater than if the crop was part of a selection. It could not be any other way. You have optimised the conditions for that crop.
Lets change our viewpoint for a minute from a view of SINGLE CROP YIELD to the TOTAL YIELD of multiple simultaneous crops.
It is also worthwhile overlapping some crops in time. Growing one crop under another so that when the first is harvested, the second may mature.
There are seven productive layers described below.
- Canopy / Tall Tree Layer
- Sub-Canopy / Large Shrub Layer
- Shrub Layer
- Herbaceous Layer
- Ground-cover / Creeper Layer
- Underground Layer
- Vertical / Climber Layer
If each of these only yield a half of their single crop potential you still have three and a half times the yield. You will of course have the guild effect to boost yields to around three quarters of their potential instead of half each.
That gives you a possible multiple of five and a quarter. It is unlikely that you will use all of the layers but just doubling the income from a piece of land is still a good show.
Even if you choose the simple path and place two crops per year on the same land that has gotta be better than one.
This describes the “Efficient” in Clean, Efficient and Profitable. It does lead to increased profitability.
It all depends on what your goal is – to grow pumpkins or to make money.
Monoculture is gambling.
Product Integration
Multiple uses of the land
Simultaneous cropping
Properly done, this can enable three crops per year in the same ground. One of these may be a green manure.
Sequential cropping
Waste Management
Where possible integrate your enterprises. In most cases, a waste from one enterprise will become a raw material for another. Since most of our systems are organic, compost will be the catch all.
Standard Operating Procedures allow you to create a business that is process dependent which is role based rather than person based. This means that you have multiple people capable of doing any process – even yours – particularly yours.
This increases the value of the business considerably.
Micro-Enterprises
Here is a selection of micro-enterprises for you to consider. They do integrate in that their wastes can be processed as compost and some may be grown simultaneously on the same ground as different level crops. For example the orchard may have flowers growing as a herb layer or in the lane between the trees. For maximum yield, be careful to only grow compatible crops.
The waste from Organic Hydroponics may be used as a fertigation solution for flowers, vegetables and herbs. Once again, ensure the Hydroponic crop and the other species are compatible – the hydroponic crop will leave root exudates in the solution. Use tomato solution only on pasture – grasses and most forbes are strong enough to resist its effect..
A trap crop of Azolla and duckweed will capture accumulated hydroponic nutrients to be passed easily to compost.
Here is a list of some possible micro-enterprises.
- Advanced Tree Nursery
- Bamboo (Timber and Fibre)
- Berry Orchard
- Compost
- Flowers – Cut
- Flowers – Edible
- Fruit Orchard
- Herbs
- Microgreens
- Mushrooms
- Nut Orchard
- Organic Hydroponics
- Seedling Nursery
- Truffles under oak or hazelnut trees
- Vegetables
- Wasabi
- Water Chestnuts
- Water Cress
Points to Take Away
Many people are offended by the suggestion that multiple streams of income are necessary. This is lazy thinking.
Way too many times I have heard I have heard the equivalent of “I am an orange orchardist and damn those South American producers!” – “we will all be rooned said Hanrahan” if you know your Banjo Patterson.
How does this type of thinking have any hope of running a successful business? Obviously when South America has a great orange year, their production has been high and competition has driven their prices down – our retailers pounced and ordered their stock. This is a common story across all styles of production world wide. Never expect any form of loyalty from the market – it is not there.
The only way to maintain a level of profitability is to have multiple income streams! If one is down another is up and the rest are floating in the middle. Next year is the same, but with different streams.
The smart operators create products where they are “Price makers not price takers“. They also have their share of down times.
Prior to devoting my time to Properly Organic and Designer Acres, I served as a contracted super tech in the bleeding edge of satellite imagery, business management and accounting software, then telecommunication software bringing SMS and Mobile Application Protocol into Australia. I then decided to return to the land. I quickly discovered that apart the shape of the bales and the colour of the tractors little had changed.