Permaculture is self renewing, self watering, self perpetuating ultragardening. In the end the inputs become negligable and the output extremely abundant. The land is manged down to a few square feet until it can run itself. I practice an offshoot of this revolution, inenstive gardening. No green waste leaves my property, I feed myself and my wife rougly half of all the food we eat from 450 square feet and if things go well it will go up to 75 percent this year. The biggest problem I have however is my climate. 110 in the summer and 30 in the winter, so I can't quite get anual production. I highly urge you to look into the movement - just got back from a 4 day conference where folks are greening the desert sustainably. The front yard grass goes next year, for good. That is another 300 or so square feet leaving a place for quail in the back. Of course the "government" does not allow chickens here. They do, however, allow constantly barking and baying dogs.
Biodeisel is easy but unfortunately it doesn't really take you off of the petrol teat. Even if you grow your own oil bearing crops you still need petrol products. However, there are ways to use straight vegitable oil. If you do not follow Joel salatin's work you likely should. I consider hunting in land other than one's own to be poaching, and it is an input that needn't exist. The larger permacultured areas do not use water from streams that originate from outside the property, all water is havested from the land, all fertility generated from the land and all energy derived from wind and solar.
