[permaculture] [Fwd: Re: [fukuoka_farming] Re: Academy of natural farming]
Toby Hemenway
toby at patternliteracy.com
Mon Aug 6 03:11:18 EDT 2007
Bob Monie wrote
> > Gardens are certainly
> > part of the food web, and the microbes, worms, and other creepy crawlies
> > endemic to this werb are welcome, but we don't need the horses, cows,
> > and other big-manure animals or even the medium size ones like ducks and
> > chickens to make our gardens work.
If I may borrow Larry Santoyo's rhetorical style for a moment: What in
natural systems would make you think an ecosystem could lack animals and
still have all its functions? Nothing in nature works that way. Then
humans have to take on all those roles that animals do far better and as
a natural part of their life. Horse and chicken manures are much nicer
than mine to garden with, and ducks are much better than me at eating
slugs. Assuming I'm not going to be cruel to them, deliberately
excluding animals from a garden ecosystem is more ideology-driven than
ecology driven.
Toby
http://patternliteracy.com
>
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