TO the untrained eye, it does not look hugely dissimilar to an average field, though admittedly a very big one.

Located on the edge of the village of Woodborough, the 15-acre site could easily have been used for building houses.

But instead, it has been leased to environmental organisation Ecoworks on a peppercorn rent, so that it can be transformed into a model of sustainable agriculture.

"It will be a food-producing nature reserve, but a food-producing woodland will be part of it," says John Macdonald, who helps manage the site for Ecoworks.

The Nottingham-based charity also has food-producing community gardens at the St Ann's Allotments and in the grounds of a former school in St Ann's. But the Woodborough site aims to demonstrate sustainable food production on a much larger scale.

"The real dream for this site, for Ecoworks, is that we want to try and convert what we see as unsustainable farming practices in the majority of British agriculture," says John.

"Conventional farmers won't go there at the moment. They are not willing to take a 10 or potentially 15-year hit in order to put these systems in. What we want to provide is a large-scale model that, hopefully, we can approach farmers with and they will say, 'OK, maybe we can allow a field to fall under this cultivation'."

The site has been named PIP – for Permaculture In Practice. "Permaculture" comes from "permanent agriculture" and the system aims to produce food by mimicking the relationships found in natural ecologies.

"If this land hadn't been farmed, then it would be woodland," says John. "If you leave Britain alone for a couple of hundred years, you end up with woodland. The problem is, woodland doesn't feed people very well. What we are looking at doing is designing model ecosystems based on the ecology of Britain, but replacing species with food-producing species, or those beneficial to humans."

Following the "forest garden" model, almost every tree, shrub or ground layer plant would either produce food itself or would be planted to add extra fertility to the whole system. John refers to pioneering work on the system which has been done on a three-acre site in Devon, and says the results are promising.

While most agriculture relies on huge amounts of fossil fuels, this model will require virtually none. The land will also be cultivated without ploughing, to avoid damaging the soil. But this means avoiding certain kinds of crops.

"We predominantly eat grass as a species: wheat, corn, rice and oats. Grass, to grow it, requires ploughing, and ploughing reduces soil fertility," says John.

One alternative source of carbohydrates is nuts. Chestnuts, John says, have almost the same chemical composition as rice.

Fruit and vegetables grown on the various Ecoworks sites are used to supply Nottingham cafes and restaurants including Hart's and the Alley Cafe, as well as being distributed through the Ecoworks box scheme and turned into meals for the Harvest Café – a converted Citroen H van which dishes up food at community events and festivals.

Although the crops grown by Ecoworks don't have organic certification, they are grown following organic methods.

"In some sense, we see it as organic-plus, in a way," says horticultural worker Antony Dumskyj .

An area of PIP has been used to grow some of this food – two tonnes of squashes and pumpkins and about 6,000 leeks – following a no-dig production system.

Being unable able to dig the soil means that Antony has spent hours going over it this winter with a hoe. "It's getting the beds ready for spring sowing and growing, clearing up residues from the squash and pumpkin harvest and getting it in good condition ready for spring sowing," says Antony.

"It is quite labour intensive but we utilise some of the volunteers we get. It's a big project, there's no denying it. It's quite ambitious but we really think it's important what we are doing, and we want to show this model of how it can be done without relying on big machinery and petrol or oil.

"We are confident that over time, the workload will get lighter and the condition of the soil will improve year after year."