As an overview of the global state of carbon farming, Eric also discusses the reality of what we can do, through dietary practices and engaging in our own food production, to create change. For those of you inclined towards policy and top-down approaches, you’ll hear plenty of possibilities of how you can move the conversation in your community and with your legislators.

Find out more about Eric at perennialsolutions.org, and The Carbon Farming Solution at ChelseaGreen.com.  

Given the range of topics touched on regarding climate change, the resources below include not only those that Eric mentioned, but also a number of previous interviews with Dr. Laura Jackson, Keefe Keeley of The Savanna Institute, small-scale farmers Lee and Dave O’Neill at Radical Roots, and the market farmer Jean-Martin Fortier, as well as Jerome Osentowski of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture. In the conversation with Jerome, he even touches on the impacts he’s seeing of climate change after his many years in the high altitude environment of Colorado where CRMPI calls home, and the focus of his decades of work on greenhouses.

As I put together the notes for this show, I’m left thinking about how to move forward in a meat-reduced world and have questions I need to answer. How viable is meat on leftovers? What systems do we need to implement to capture food waste so it gets to animals instead of the refuse bin? I should have expected to be left with more questions after speaking with Eric, so am going to keep digging into this and will share more as I find it. I would like to have Eric back some time to continue the conversation about permaculture and food production on marginal land.

If you have questions about this or anything else we covered in today’s conversation, leave a comment below. 

Resources
The Carbon Farming Solution Project Drawdown
Perennial Solutions
The Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri Agroforestry at Virginia Tech
IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Trees on Farms by RJ Zomer, et al. (PDF)
Savanna Institute
Steve Solomon - Gardening When It Counts
John Jeavons - Grow Biointensive
Legal Pathways to Carbon_Neutral Agriculture by Peter Lehner and Nathan Rosenberg (PDF)
Diet for a Small Planet

Related Interviews 
Dr. Laura Jackson - Modern Agricultural Systems 
Keefe Keeley - The Savanna Institute 
Jean-Martin Fortier - The Market Gardener 
Dave and Lee O'Neill - Radical Roots Farm 
Jerome Osentowski - The Forest Garden Greenhouse

He joins us to talk about his next book, which he is seeking to support with a crowd-funding campaign via Kickstarter. That book Eric is working on, and needs your help with, examines perennial solutions to stabilizing and reducing the impacts of climate change, and to help bolster a reduction of fossil fuels, including an eventual transition to a petro-chemical free future.

Our conversation, though a bit nerdy at times, expands the thinking on potential yields in a system, and how we can creatively respond to change. I find his decision to use crowd-funding as a model fascinating because of how it connects authors and producers with their audience, allowing them to combine efforts to create works of value in a way equitable to everyone involved. Here is the idea of collaboration, not competition, being used in a horizontal way.

His kickstarter campaign runs until April 30th. At this point he's not quite halfway to his goal, but making steady climbs, including my own donation to his cause. He and I got a little geeky on the industrial perennial possibilities, but I keep turning over all those yields, many of which I didn't know about. Milkweed (Asclepias L.) is of particular interest because it grows readily here in central Pennsylvania and is the host species for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippu). What other creative or novel solutions exist we haven't begun to consider yet? What ways have you thought of to make a difference with permaculture that's new to you?

I'd love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below.

The two articles that form the genesis of Eric's book can be found here:
Perennial Staple Crops of the World
Stabilizing the Climate with Permanent Agriculture

Resources:
Eric Toensmeier
Perennial Solutions
Kickstarter Campaign for Writing the Carbon Farming Toolkit.

In addition to his work as an author, Eric's diverse background means he's spent his time breeding plants and saving seeds, as well as teaching classes that expand the ways in which we can build a better a better world. You will find much of wthis his website perennialsolutions.org. He is also building the Apios Institute which focuses on regenerative perennial agriculture for a temperate climate. He also happens to be a heck of a nice guy that made for an easy free flowing interview in which we discuss some listener questions submitted via the show's Facebook page, and then delve into a conversation about perennial plants, the broad-scale application of permaculture, and removing some of the fear factor of implementing a forest garden. Throughout you will hear both of us touch on plants we would like to see improved and simple ways anyone who is growing a garden can help domesticate and improve edible perennials.

Resources
Eric Toensmeier
Perennial Solutions
Edible Forest Gardens
Keyline Design
USDA PLANTS Database
Books
Billy Joe Tatum's Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook (Out-of-Print. Bookfinder.com link)
Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties by Carol Deppe
Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford
Edible Water Gardens by Nick Romanowski (Out-of-Print. Bookfinder.com link)
The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening
Return to Resistance: Breeding Crops to Reduce Pesticide Dependence by Raoul Robinson
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Wild Urban Plants of thr Northeast - A Field Guide