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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] miscellaneous items of interest

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] miscellaneous items of interest
  • Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 14:59:42 -0800

Stephanie Gerson wrote:

4. Finally, so far we’ve been engaging the Permaculture community, but I’d like to broaden our efforts to include market farmers practicing/
making the transition to sustainable agriculture – both for purposes of grant eligibility (i.e. SARE) and for making PIW truly valuable in promoting sustainable agriculture. As a part of this effort, I spoke with Steve Diver today and we had an interesting conversation. He told me that he doesn’t see PIW satisfying the needs of market farmers practicing/attempting to transition to sustainable agriculture, at least not those in this country – considering that they are crunched for time, must make end meet, and have little leeway for experimenting with guilds. However, many are aware of Natural Systems Agriculture being practiced at the Land Institute. So, I have some questions for us:
‡ Is PIW (with its current vision) valuable to market farmers practicing sustainable agriculture (similar questions to those I asked regarding the Whole Systems Foundation)?
‡ If not, how can we make it useful (this might simply require a shift in terminology – from “guild” to “intercropping”)? Or, is this
something that doesn’t worry us, as we are not (necessarily) catering to market farmers?

I have a lot to say about this as I think that constructing PIW to become a
useful
tool for market farmers would be a good thing and could bring in lots of
grant money,
funding that might be needed to get the basic work completed.

I hope others here will be interesting in discussing this, JohnS & JohnH with
their practical
approach and Stephanie and Chad with their vision.

I see PIW as doing two different things that might be integrated somehow:

1) PC relationships database
2) market farmer database, analysis and planning tool

‡ And if so, how do we include them in the design process? Steve suggested the possibility of user testing specifically for farmers, and I think this is a great idea. Perhaps we could create a testing prototype, put a call out to market farmers, and solicit feedback specifically from them. Or Johns, would you rather keep testing general? I do think it would be helpful for PIW and grant apps to have testing specifically for farmers.

If my suggestion above is followed wouldn't that necessitate two different
testing platforms - is this possible or practical?

Also, this might be a good topic to introduce to the PIW list.

Absolutely and in the marketfarming list also.

LL
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
Market Farming Forum
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/marketfarming




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