Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

Thanks.  I was saying yes, yes, yes, but it seemed like there was still disagreement, when I don't see that there's any grounds for it.  

In "Introduction to Permaculture" by Bill Mollison and Reny Slay, there is a plan drawn by Vicki Robin (a famous Australian Permaculture teacher) of a Permaculture design on a 50'X100' lot that produces a lot of food and will produce it for a long time, because, as a designed system, it produces its own inputs.  This book is widely available, but no longer cheap as it once was.  It's a very good introduction, with several useful projects to build.  

In the scenario given, Permaculture fits the bill as, once learned, one can teach another, and cascade the effect to get millions trained in the basics of building self-supporting ecosystems that support the humans that live on/in them.  This is one reason that Permaculture is such a great tool for restoring destroyed landscapes.  

The problem I have with that method is that, in my experience, only a gifted few teachers teach Permaculture so the ecological perspective gets through to the student and breaks them out of the economic paradigm, where everything has a price put on it.  My teachers were Penny Livingston and Starhawk, so I got it, but by then I had already got it once from Richard Heinberg, one of my teachers at New College in Santa Rosa, who, I understand, has a Permaculture design at his house.  I had also been a Green for about twenty years in 2001.  

Some things are beyond the human invention of price.  A stable climate, provided for free, is one.  But it didn't have a price so no one knew its value, until it was gone.  The only way I know to avoid that error in the future is to learn ecology, which contains economics (and all other "disciplines").  Economics minus its ecological context and its political component is destructive, as the last half millennium demonstrated.

"Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability" is very good at any stage of the learning curve (I learn more from it each read) at placing Permaculture in the context of what David Holmgren calls the thinking and design revolution.  It's an excellent winter read.  Mollison's "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" is immense, and it's expensive, and it will never lose its usefulness, I think, as background information. 

Scott Pittman is still teaching the Permaculture Design Course at Pojoaque, NM.  He's been doing it since 1985, and he's excellent.  See www.permaculture.org.    

Smiles.

Tommy

On Jan 17, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Emery Mitchamore wrote:

I'm sorry, but you missed the point.  It appears that a limited introduction to Permaculture (perhaps from those selling courses), has given you the wrong impression.  If you have the time during some of your housebound weather, and are curious, study it some more and you will find some useful tools for implementing exactly the methods and techniques you advocate.  I've studied it enough to know that there is no contradiction between your methods and what Permaculture advocates. In addition, there is much to offer for environments and circumstances different from yours.  In fact, Permaculture offers precisely the tools needed for the scenarios you describe.

On Jan 17, 2010, at 5:25 PM, Tradingpost wrote:

My response to permaculture is this:  In the near term the urgent need is for millions to learn to produce all they can in as little space as possible. Why? The perfect storm - too many people, not enough good land, abrupt climate changes, rising fossil fuel-derived fertilizer & pesticide costs and falling income, and an economy running on fumes.  And Peak Oil, but also rising prices in *anticipation* of Peak Oil. That's right. Nations hoarding and speculators driving up prices will be in the news. Full oil tankers are waiting to sell, lying off the coasts right now in anticipation of higher prices later. Even in recession now, global demand is predicted to outstrip supply by at least 10% this decade (except the IEA feels sure the Saudis can take up the slack. They can't). In theory a mere 15% shortfall can drive oil to $500 a barrel. The powers that be know this. They plan for it; the people don't. They know we are in the post-Peak "plateau" currently and long wars are being
 fought to control oil & gas producing countries. For obvious reasons they don't want to panic the markets.

The effects? Big cities where population is dense will soon need all the space they can get for growing cheaply, with as little high priced food transported from outside as possible. Towns and rural areas will need the same since big farms hog most agricultural land and their fossil fuel input costs and prices keep rising. In town and country many people need to learn efficient growing in adverse soil & climate conditions, simply because there are too many people to feed and so much land has been ruined by industrial agribusiness. Topsoil depletion and water scarcity are widespread problems in agricultural areas. Most of us simply can't pick and choose where we'd love to have our "permaculture" design.

I'm not foolish enough to draw up a timeline on this, but the direction is unavoidable. As in what we need to salvage some community food security. One of the sources for my comments was Heinberg's essay "Fifty Million Farmers". As for the "shift" you mentioned, my view is people will do what they need to do when forced to by economic conditions. One sign of this now is increased savings and less spending.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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On 1/17/2010 at 2:56 PM Tommy Tolson wrote:

I lived in a Permaculture design in Santa Rosa, CA when I was married  

to my first wife.  From the second year, its food forest produced  

food.  We planted annuals on berms of adobe clay that we amended with  

shell flour, kept mulched with straw, and watered with drip  

irrigation.  Everything we planted grew like crazy.  The marriage  

didn't.

I've seen the change that happens when people realize that part of  

Transition is inner transformation.  When I got to Austin, local  

Permaculture was all about gardening, and I objected to that.  It's  

part of Permaculture but not nearly all of it.  Permaculture is about  

building functioning ecosystems which happen to produce food for all  

the creatures who make their living from that land.  It's still a lot  

more esoteric than it should be by now.  Stewart Brand, I think, said  

long ago, "We're as gods, so we may as well get good at it."

I, too, think we've run out of time.  The national government wages  

wars for the oil to keep up our unsustainable consumer society.  We  

sacrificed four thousand dead and no telling how many injured so  

ExxonMobil and Chevron could bid on producing Iraq's oil.  When US  

fossil fuel interests got the inside track at Copenhagen, it was all  

over.  We can't afford mitigation, but we can far less afford climate  

change.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, wondered this week when the  

recovery would start.  Real recoveries are not jobless.  The economic  

paradigm can't see ecological constraints.

My hope is that people proactively engage the process now to create  

the future they want to live after the economic paradigm falls and the  

ecological paradigm replaces it.  Growing one's own food is, I think,  

a necessary element of getting through the crisis part of that  

paradigm shift.  But it's only an element.  The shift itself is the  

system, and I hope it can be consciously negotiated.  We need to re-

learn how to build community, and learn how to create cultures that  

support us in "being all we can be."

But the big deal is the crash that the failure at Copenhagen and  

corporate control of Congress almost surely guarantee.  I believe  

community will determine who lives and who doesn't, when the time comes.

Smiles.

Tommy

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