I used to live on an 800 acre conventional farm in South Georgia that is now well on the way to transitioning toward permaculture. They discovered that conventional row crops (corn, soy, cotton, etc.) were simply not profitable, so they let these fields go fallow for a few years while a redesign was considered. Fortunately they had some timber to harvest and some percentage of
land in pecan orchards, so there were some transitional
income streams. Now the former row-crop land is turning into a rotational-grazing setup for grass-fed
beef, with sheep and poultry. I think this was a wise choice. A big challenge on larger acreages is labor....there simply aren't
enough people on the land to manage tight, dense polycultures, especially not for economic yield. Forestry and animal grazing systems are the classic sustained yield systems for thinly populated broadacre sites....
