As we confront the challenges facing agriculture upon entering the 21st century it will no longer suffice to simply add crop/livestock mixes to our farming systems. Given the depletion of fossil fuels, the onset of climate change, and the draw-down of our ecological capital, it will become necessary to design creataive new farming systems that function on biological synergies rather than energy intensive exogenous inputs. Such biological synergies consist of complex self-renewing and self-regulating features such that the entire biotic coummunity on the farm performs energy conserving and ecologically restorative functions.