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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] the truth about vegetarianism

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] the truth about vegetarianism
  • Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:05:51 -0500

Richard is well on the way to feeding his family from the Permaculture design in what was his yard in Santa Rosa. As the design matures and he and Janet tweak it as its feedback loops advise, it provides for them. Richard walks his talk.

Einstein, way back when, advised vegetarianism to "save the world." I didn't make it up. Nor did Richard. The UN body that produced the paper about going vegan to save this climate regime (since our national governments are all corrupted by corporatist - the authoritarian combination of governmental power with corporate power -money) came from all over the world. No one is coming to save us from our ignorance of natural process. We must save ourselves. Veganism is a means by which we consciously engage the process of life and reclaim our colonized volitional potentials from the corporatist mind control industry. I'm not talking about the few who have learned to live with the land without damaging it. I'm talking about the multitudes who remain clueless about the ecological crisis we are deeply into now on Earth.

Livestock is the only thing that approaches plowing in sheer ecological destruction wrought by the farmers of western culture, who made deserts and moved on until there was nowhere to go. It seems to me that situation came about from raising livestock for money rather than subsistence. Agriculture colonized the land, enslaved it in order to produce a surplus to support the priests and soldiers required by the owners (banksters) of the surplus in order to maintain Master status. Thus the evil economic paradigm was born expressly to attempt dominion over nature. How is that working out for us? Making a yield isn't the dumb part. Attempting dominion over nature - which produced our species - is.

More and more Permaculture oases are sprouting in the deserts of the SW US on down into Mexico as Scott Pittman and his crew get folks trained in design skills for drylands Permaculture. Putting massive amounts of organic matter into pure sand within a few years forms a lens of mostly rainwater that supports trees. These designed ecosystems are there now, supporting folks who live with them, tweaking them into increasing fullness. I don't know how many, if any, support livestock beyond chickens and rabbits.

I think there are ways to integrate livestock into human food production systems that sustain themselves. Chickens and rabbits are Permaculture animals, easiest to integrate and maintain in ecosystemic balance. Hoofed animals are harder to integrate, though not necessarily impossible, as Holistic Management shows. Chicken and rabbit "wastes" are easiest to add to the natural closed cycles of a successful design.

The bottom line is, I think, that, unless we are fortunate enough to know enough pattern literacy to symbiotically join existent functional ecosystems, we design and build complete ecosystems with ourselves and our families designed, as symbionts, into the system from the beginning, if we, from family to city scale, are to survive industrialism's pending collapse. As Stewart Brand said, we are as gods so we might as well get good at it.

Smiles.
Tommy

On 6/4/10 10:30 AM, Doug Willhite wrote:
I don't give a rip what the U.N. or Richard Heinberg might have to
say about it... really, I don't. I've known Richard since the 1970's.
He's a brilliant and talented man. But there's a vast difference
between being "book smart" and being "street smart."

Veganism and vegetarianism are NOT realistic or doable options for
folks who are serious about taking responsibility for their own food
supply. Not around here. Not where I live. Your kind of talk --
"vegan lifestyles are a survival device" -- is just plain la-la land!

The myth of vegetarianism needs to be dispelled pronto. Vegetarian
ideology is currently one of the biggest obstacles to reaching local,
community food self-sufficiency.

doug





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