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
For communicating and sharing design elements I have found sketchup really helpful.
We have had sketchup introductions as part of some of the events and I agree it would be good to emphasize how helpful it is to get drawings done of the project. It is nice that these can also be so easily embeded.
I started a 3d-warehouse library here with farm hack models and related components - but this could be greatly expanded and more clearly incorporated into the site too.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=cc34dd5b3d6df3291e3...