Simply Sustainable

	Henning Sehmsdorf’s 50-acre S&S Homestead Farm on Lopez Island is a model of the whole-farm approach. The Whole Farm The Systems Approach Embraces Circles and Cycles Washington farmer Henning Sehmsdorf imagined that growing organic barley on his S&S Homestead Farm would forge another link in his chain of self-sufficiency. His test yielded more than he expected: Sehmsdorf harvested 2 tons of grain and 2 tons of straw from his 2-acre field. And when the loan of tillage equipment failed to materialize, the beef cattle he wintered on the barley plot broke the sod and fertilized the soil (FW01-081). With soil fertility and organic matter enhanced by the manure, Sehmsdorf is now planning a three-year rotation: barley followed by a cover crop of clover and rye followed by vegetables. The barley will feed his chickens, pigs and a single Jersey milk cow. The cover crop and vegetables will take up the accumulated nutrients deposited by the over-wintering beef cows, which he’ll rotate through the plot using electric cross-fencing. “Over time we have learned to minimize purchased inputs producing animal feeds and natural fertilizer on the farm as needed,” he says. In addition to cycling crops and livestock, Sehmsdorf recycles rainwater collected from rooftops, and he’s built his home, buildings and raised vegetable beds from trees harvested sustainably from the farm’s forests. In American Samoa farmer Litani Ahoia supports self-sufficiency by encouraging other farmers to collaborate on producing local food for local consumption. Ahoia’s systems approach integrates pond production of fresh-water fish with vegetables raised using overflow water (FW98-021). Farmers in American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands are capturing nutrients from fish ponds to grow bananas, taro and other crops. Fingerlings and vegetable seedlings are distributed to cooperative members to raise at their homes, reducing their costs for fruits and vegetables otherwise flown in from great distances (FW98-021). Ahoia says the project is encouraging more people to try commercial farming. Likewise, Vince Calvo, a Northern Mariana farmer, has set up an aquaculture and fertigation project to raise tilapia fish, using the waste water to irrigate and fertilize taro, bananas, watercress and other crops (FW00-104). The effluent-rich wastewater from the fishponds supplants expensive imported fertilizer. “There is visual evidence that the irrigation has replaced the use of commercial fertilizer in my crops,” says Calvo, who adds that the sale of fish has proved economically beneficial. On Pohnpei, the garden island of Micronesia, Kalistus Marquez hopes to produce an island beverage called sakau in a way that reduces environmental destruction (FW01-028). Increased consumption of sakau—extracted from pepper plant roots—has prompted farmers to clear upland forests to grow more plants, increasing erosion and reducing water quality. Marquez is growing discarded pepper plant nodes in a nursery fertilized with pig manure, recycling both the nodes and the waste and slowing the denuding of upland forests.   “Sustainable agriculture uses both local knowledge that is specific to place and scientific knowledge that looks to larger systems. We need both types of knowledge, which develop over time, to support farming and ranching in the West.” Deborah Young, associate director, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Tucson, Arizona Simply Sustainable Home Top