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A conventional farmer invests an average of $260 per acre per year to earn an income of perhaps $720 per acre per year - a relatively small profit on a large investment. Additionally, conventional farming, being a low-margin enterprise, is highly dependent on conducive environment - weather, price of fuel and fertilizer. Integral Farming (IF) is designed to be about 40 times more profitable per acre than conventional farming while IF also lowers farmer's risks by adding new revenue streams and being less dependent on external factors, including weather or costs of inputs.
IF will provide local food supplies to populations cost-effectively, while simultaneously minimizing input usage (mainly energy and water). The system is designed to be flexible and can be applied in many environments from conventional farms to rooftop food production. The only way to achieve the design objectives is to ensure that waste is minimized, that input energy is used efficiently, that the outputs of one process, traditionally regarded as waste, become inputs of other processes in such a way that the loop can be closed and the only losses replenished. Input to IF is, for example, bulk food to create bio-diesel, to power IF and other farm activities, to feed fish, poultry and mammals. Waste products from these processes are used as an organic fertilizer with which to grow vegetables, herbs, flowers, and other valuable crops. The crops are designed to tailor the resulting effluent as a balanced organic soil-enhancing fertilizer for conventional farming. Also, IF buildings minimize energy requirements from their construction to operations, being long-lasting and highly insulated. Advanced thermal management and large stabilizing masses reduce heating and cooling loads. The entire building serves as a water collection system and in most climates will provide most of the water required by IF.
The world is in desperate trouble and this includes farming. Current civilization is overpopulated because it depends on vast amounts of surplus energy to feed, clothe, transport, and to provide water to its population, which all depend completely on readily available cheap energy. All of the aspects of modern civilization are in trouble, especially water, which is perhaps even more critical resource than oil. Rivers, sea and lakes have suffered wide-scale eutrophication, which has caused fish stocks to collapse. These fish stocks used to feed approximately 2 billion people. A further problem is that metal contamination is concentrated in the food-chain, and it is now unsafe to eat many species of ocean and freshwater fish. Fixing these problems may well take longer than the time available to work on the solutions. More information on all this can be found on www.smarterearth.org. Integral Farming Executive Summary can be downloaded from here.
