Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Beautiful video. I'd agree it's not suited to industrial scale farming. But 
then we shouldn't even have industrial scale farming.

The practices they call permaculture that actually work have been around for 
ages. Mollison, who invented the term, had a big brouhaha with the Americans 
who copyrighted the word and tried to charge big bucks to the unwary just to 
hear the philosophy behind it. Another form of Enclosure - put a fence around 
something and charge people for what used to belong to all (as in the English 
Enclosure movement, the AMA, and so on). I won't spend $800 on a weekend to 
hear stuff I've read all about for years.

In practice it's almost indistinguishable from Biointensive which I practice, 
with modifications (or Biodynamic, or SPIN, or whatever). I just use what 
seems to be the most sensible, sustainable methods I can manage. And none of 
it is original with me of course.  My problem with formal permaculture as 
they teach it is, it's more a philosophy than a set of practices to adapt for 
the urgent needs of people everywhere. And I don't have years left to develop 
a forest garden where no forest should be in the first place.

You asked!

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/14/2010 at 8:59 AM Arzeena Hamir wrote:

>I'd never really given much thought to Permaculture for farming - it
>always seemed more suited to gardening.
>
>Here's an excellent video from the UK that outlines the issues around
>Peak Oil and gives examples of farms in the UK that are using
>permaculture techniques to produce food without the reliance on fossil
>fuels.
>
>Any comments would be much appreciated.
>
>http://www.viddler.com/explore/PermaScience/videos/4/
>
>Arzeena