GreenStart's mission is to foster a resilient energy and food system for New Hampshire by providing technical education and practical agricultural examples. An educational non-profit organization established in 2006, GreenStart sees food and fuel security as the end-product of a vibrant, sustainable agriculture system in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire has 40% of its land area in agricultural soils, yet farms only 10% and imports 95% of its food and fuel. New Hampshire has no significant petroleum resources. To feed and fuel itself from sustainable natural resources, New Hampshire must improve its soils while also improving production.
To achieve this end, GreenStart facilitates projects that
1) increase soil carbon “banking”
2) decrease energy inputs
3) increase both food and fuel outputs (positive energy and carbon balance)
4) promote “tight” cycling of nutrients
5) provide opensource access to appropriate knowledge, seeds and equipment
I posted a wiki to capture FarmHack design principles. I am sure several of these could be consolidated and articulated further - It would be great to also link to examples of each criteria in use with FarmHack tools and to reference them as we document our tools and design choices.
Here is the link to the building design principles wiki http://www.farmhack.net/wiki/design-principles-farmhack
A good similar discussion can be found here http://www.openstructures.net/pages/2#vraag-1a
and here http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/12/how-to-make-everything-ourselves-...