Staple Crops Report for 2008-2009 seasons
This 23 page report has 14 pages of text, 1 of notes and 8 of photos.
In 2008 and 2009, Sunroot attempted to grow various grains, pulses and oilseeds under the auspices of “the Staple Foods Project”. While the goal in both seasons was to grow enough food to feed some number of people for some portion of the year, it ended up functioning merely as a research project. Yields were consistently lower than hoped for, and the logistics of harvesting and processing proved more difficult than suspected. Over $15,000 was spent, much of it out-of-pocket for the farmers.
The Project has been extended into a third year, 2010. We have included our projections and plans for 2010, which has entirely different logistics and circumstances, in the “Conclusions” section of this report.
This report from the Staple Foods Project is intended to give an unvarnished, unsentimental, just-the-facts-ma’am view of our experiences over the last two seasons. The Staple Foods Project is not intended as a “model”. There are no “models” — there is just life, in front of us, and there is nothing to do but live it, whether we’d like to admit this or not. We are not interested in entertaining the intellectual and emotional illusions that permeate the whole of the “Sustainability” movement, so herein we offer these facts, figures, and observations only as a record of what we saw in front of us.