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
One way around this, depending on the crops you have in mind would be to do no-till planting or transplanting, and use heavy mulches instead of cultivation for weed suppression. Generally an additive approach rather than extractive. It would have the added benefit of not bringing up new weeds seeds as well. You can see some of the equipment to make this work on a larger scale at Steve Groff's farm. On a half acre you would be able to do this approach easily by hand.