Picture a worn-out cornfield in the hills of southwestern Wisconsin. Now picture it as a rolling oak savanna: rows of chestnut, hazelnut, and apple trees curving across the slopes, cattle and pigs grazing the grassy alleys between them, ponds catching the rain. That is New Forest Farm, and it is the flagship of restoration agriculture, a framework built by farmer Mark Shepard for growing perennial staple crops the way a natural ecosystem would.
Shepard took a 106-acre (43-hectare) former row-crop farm and, over more than two decades, planted roughly 100,000 trees to rebuild it as a productive perennial polyculture modeled on the region's native savanna. Underneath it all runs a second idea: keyline design, a water-management system from 1950s Australia that decides where every tree row and pond goes. This guide unpacks both, honestly, including where the evidence is strong and where the hype outruns it.
Here's what this guide covers:
Key Takeaway
Restoration agriculture replaces annual monocultures with perennial staple crops, livestock, and water-smart design. Keyline geometry decides where water and trees go; perennials do the long, slow work of building soil. The ideas scale from 100 acres down to a backyard.
Shepard's core insight is that annual grain farming fights nature. Most temperate land wants to grow from bare soil toward grassland, shrubs, and eventually woodland or savanna. Modern agriculture freezes it at the bare-soil stage, which takes constant inputs to maintain. Restoration agriculture, laid out in his book Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, works with that succession instead: it grows food from the perennial system the land is trying to become. Our guide to syntropic agriculture covers a related succession-based approach.
The staple crops do real dietary work. A 2022 review in the journal Foods (PMC) describes sweet chestnuts as high in starch, low in fat, and gluten-free, essentially a tree-grown grain. Hazelnuts play the opposite role: a classic 1998 analysis found they run 54 to 63 percent oil and 14 to 18 percent protein, a perennial stand-in for oilseeds. Between the tree rows, grazing cattle, pigs, and poultry turn grass into meat and manure, a practice called silvopasture. It is the same layered logic as a food forest, scaled to a working farm.
Why This Works: Work With Succession
Permaculture's "observe and interact" principle says to read what the land is already doing and cooperate with it. A degraded field left alone marches toward woodland; restoration agriculture simply guides that march toward useful species. Because perennials keep living roots in the ground year-round, they hold soil, feed microbes, and store carbon in ways annual crops never can, which is the ecological engine behind the whole system.
STUN stands for "Sheer Total Utter Neglect," and it is exactly as blunt as it sounds. Instead of pampering a few grafted trees, Shepard plants huge numbers of genetically diverse seedlings, gives them almost nothing, and lets drought, cold, pests, and competition kill the weak ones. The survivors that also produce well become his breeding stock. Over years, the population shifts toward plants genuinely adapted to his land.
The appeal is that it selects for real-world resilience under the actual management system, not in a coddled trial plot. The trade-offs are just as real: it takes years, it accepts high mortality, and it only makes sense when seedlings are cheap and land is plentiful.
Don't Take "Neglect" Too Literally
Even STUN's advocates admit young trees need some help. The University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry notes that "nothing will improve the growth of trees like the control of competing grasses," recommending a weed-free band about 3 feet (1 m) wide around young trees for the first few years. On a small lot, plant a few good trees and care for them; save pure neglect for a dedicated breeding patch.
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Send Me the ChartKeyline design is a way of reading a hilly landscape so you can spread water evenly instead of letting it rush down the valleys. It was developed in 1950s Australia by P.A. Yeomans, who laid it out in The Keyline Plan and Water for Every Farm. His key observation: in hill country, water concentrates in the valleys (which erode) and leaves the ridges dry. He found a specific point in each valley where the slope shifts from steep to gentle, the keypoint, and drew a reference contour through it, the keyline.
The clever part is the plowing pattern. Instead of running dead on contour, keyline cultivation runs slightly off contour so that water drifts from the wet valleys out toward the dry ridges, soaking in across the whole slope. Shepard adapted this to what he calls "American keyline," using it to lay out tree rows, swales, and ponds so that, in his words, the goal is to "keep the water high on your hills where it can benefit the farm." Reading your land's ridges and valleys this way is a direct application of the permaculture principle to catch and store energy.
The honest answer is: the agroforestry benefits are well supported, but the flashiest keyline soil claims are not. Here is where the evidence lands.
| Claim | What research shows |
| Silvopasture stores more carbon | ~43% more than treeless pasture (136 vs 95 Mg C/ha) |
| Healthy soil holds more water | Confirmed; better drought and flood resilience (NRCS) |
| Keyline plowing builds topsoil fast | Mixed; raised total carbon but not active carbon (BC 2018) |
| Perennial staples yield real calories | Yes, but payback takes ~17 years (Missouri chestnut budget) |
Sources: Orefice et al. 2025, silvopasture carbon, USDA NRCS Soil Health, BC Keyline Water Management 2018.
A 2025 study found silvopastures stored about 43 percent more carbon than treeless pastures, almost entirely in the tree biomass. But a 2018 British Columbia field trial on keyline plowing found it raised total organic carbon while having no significant effect on the active carbon that microbes actually use, a reminder that "keyline builds inches of topsoil in a few years" is more marketing than measured fact. And a University of Missouri chestnut budget shows the economics are patient work: negative income for the first decade, turning positive only around year 17. Restoration agriculture rewards the long view.
Restoration agriculture is a farming framework developed by Mark Shepard that replaces annual grain monocultures with perennial staple crops, such as chestnuts, hazelnuts, and apples, grown in polyculture and integrated with livestock. The idea is to mimic the structure of a natural ecosystem, in Shepard's case the oak savanna native to his Wisconsin region, so the farm works with ecological succession rather than against it. Because perennial plants keep living roots in the soil year-round, the system builds soil, stores carbon, and resists erosion far better than tilled annual fields, while still producing meaningful food for people. It is described in his book "Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers."
STUN stands for "Sheer Total Utter Neglect." It is a plant-selection strategy where you plant a large number of genetically diverse seedlings densely, provide minimal inputs, and let natural stresses like drought, cold, and pests kill off the weaker individuals. The plants that survive and also perform well become your breeding stock, gradually producing a locally adapted, resilient population. The strength of STUN is that it selects for real toughness under actual conditions. The weakness is that it takes years, accepts high mortality, and only makes economic sense when seedlings are cheap. Most small gardeners are better off caring for a few quality trees and reserving neglect for a small experimental patch.
Keyline design is a landscape water-management method created by Australian farmer P.A. Yeomans in the 1950s. It reads the shape of hilly land to find the "keypoint" in each valley, where the slope changes from steep to gentle, and draws a reference contour called the "keyline" through it. Cultivation and tree rows are then laid out slightly off contour so that rainwater is guided from wet valleys toward drier ridges, soaking into the whole slope instead of rushing off and eroding the valleys. On a farm it governs where you place plow lines, swales, ponds, and tree rows. On a small property, the same principle helps you decide where to move and store water.
This is the most oversold claim in the keyline world, so treat it with healthy skepticism. Yeomans and many enthusiasts described keyline plowing building inches of topsoil in a few years, far faster than the centuries natural soil formation usually takes. But a 2018 British Columbia field study found keyline plowing increased total organic carbon while having no statistically significant effect on active soil carbon, the fraction most useful to plants and microbes. Keyline subsoiling can genuinely help break up compaction and improve water movement on the right site, but it does not magically manufacture deep, rich soil. Lasting soil improvement still comes from organic matter, perennial roots, and good grazing.
They can replace a meaningful share of it, though not all of it soon. Chestnuts are high in starch and low in fat, making them a genuine tree-grown carbohydrate staple, and they are gluten-free. Hazelnuts are dense in oil and protein, functioning like a perennial oilseed. Together they can supply real calories, fats, and proteins from a low-input perennial system. The catches are that yields build slowly over many years, harvests can be irregular, and US processing and markets for these crops are still developing. For most gardeners, the realistic path is to add nut and fruit trees alongside, not instead of, annual vegetables and grains, and let the perennial share grow over time.
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