Not expecting much from treadwell but hopefully ill be surprised . If he does nothing we ' ve basically only got Thielen and Flash , since wright and Johnson are practically useless <| sep |> Read up on agroforestry methods like alleycropping and sylvopasture and planplant accordingly . You ' re not going to find much in the way of empirically verifiable information in the permaculture realm . I don ' t mean to denigrate the work done in permaculture but it is not usually quantitatively measured as much as it could be . For that , you ' ll need to delve into those other terms that I mentioned , which are essentially aspects of permaculture that have been accepted by conventional farming research groups . Mark Sheperd provides a good blend of the two philosophies , the quantitative with the more philosophical reasons for pursuing such a farm . If what you are envisioning is a dreamy sort of food forest though , I do not believe it will be economically viable or effective . There needs to be fairly strict design and organization to make harvesting , cultivation , and other aspects of management possible . At the same time , falling too far in the other direction into the typical market farm or market garden means that you will be continually spinning your wheels by importing organic matter , minerals , and mulch materials to supply your production needs . Agroforestry methods such as alley cropping are the best way to organize your farm in such a way that it remains manageable and many aspects can remain mechanized . It also ensures that you have perennial crops maturing while you are still able to show short term production whether that be simply proof of concept for your system or whether out of financial necessity . The costbenefit analysis for such a system is not so difficult . You take your multispecies rows of perennial crops , you identify their time to yield , and the management costs , and the eventual yield over their useful lifespan . For the interrow areas where you will plant annuals , herbaceous perennials such as asparagus and strawberries , and cover crops , you identify the yearly cost of planting and management , and the likely yield . Now what is important to note is that due to the other perennial plants growing in your system you are going to take reduced yield from a lot of your annuals . What you need as far as data is to show that even if you only produce a 75 % from say your flax seed , you will also produce 75 % of the total possible yield from walnuts , and gooseberries , and hardy kiwis . So even though the individual yield of any given crop may be smaller than a monocrop , by both reducing input costs due to beneficial interactions between plants and by stacking yields from multiple crops in the same general area you exceed what could be produced in a strict monoculture . I do not have any specific sources to refer you to unfortunately as my specific interest lies in combing market gardening and agroforestry , which means my scale is much more compact and does not use machinery so my organization and pattern design differs a bit from standard alley cropping . There is one farm I know of in france that has a brochure on the research they are doing agroforesterie . net other work can be found in central america and parts of Africa . edit and lest anyone accuse of being a hater or simply not creative enough with the sort of Mollisonesque ideal of a nowork farm that lets you stroll through the canopy gorging yourself on food let me say that I own and operate a small farm and have tried every bit of lassiezfaire management as well as strict market gardening methods a la SPIN farming . I have found deficiencies in both and in order to remain economically viable while pursuing ideals of sustainability I have found it necessary to remain realistic and make my decisions based on empirical eviudence related to yield , marketability , and other financial evidence that allows me to survive as a business