permaculture

[<permed@nor.com.au>]

>Bill Mollison:  Yes, for example, I went to a new ecology, the tropics, 
>latitude 28 and I went to the grasslands. Now tropical grasslands are 
>fearful things: they're over your head, they're tangled, they're awful, 
>and we turned it back into jungle, into rain forest; in about three 
>years.  I put in some 45 dams and miles and miles of swales, so it all 
>turned into a huge self-watering system. So, at the end of three or 
>four years, I said: I can do it, I can create paradise out of hell. There 
>were 57 big Herefords on this farm of 170 acres—and you couldn't 
>fatten them so you couldn't make it pay. And that's all there 
>was—just great big earth-tamping machines running around losing 
>money and now, you know, we produce more fish out of a half acre 
>pond than all the Herefords put together. And thousands of mangoes 
>and endless bunches of bananas and on and on and on and on. 

I had to read this twice to recognise the property Bills talking about here. 
The reality of the farm is not quite as fantastic as it sounds and 
unfortunately that's very typical of Bill.  Yes there were a lot of dams and 
swales put in - the landform engineering was probably the best thing there -  
quite a few hundred mango trees were planted but not maintained and stunted 
and lost in the grasses, the fish ponds had a couple of productive seasons 
before disease hit and the next entreprenuer managing them made fatal 
mistakes as they really didn't know much about fish farming. I'm didn't see 
any jungle or rainforest emerging after 3 years unless he's refering to the 
little acre or so of food forest planted on the original 5 acre plot next 
door. In the absence of grazing animals the grasses and weeds proliferated. 
Hundreds of thousousands of dollars were pumped into the property, mainly on 
ill-conceived and poorly planned enterprises that never took off. The farm 
was never fully designed, had no management plan - I think I'd better 
stop.... 
While I have much to thank Bill for, I really feel uncomfortable about the 
way he hypes so many projects with exaggerated claims, projects that I'd be 
embarrassed to take a PC class to sound fantastic, isolated good projects are 
blown into whole regions and nations....
Just take what he says and downscale a heap and you'll be closer to the 
reality. Bill's yarns and claims have lost pc a lot of credibility over the 
years. The good stuff stands well on it's own honest merits without 
exaggeration, the stuff-ups need to owned and lessons shared so people dont 
go making the same mistakes over again.
Permaculture needs to be open and honest about its successes and failures if 
it's going to be taken seriously and have a sustainable future.
Robyn