permaculture

[Steve Diver <steved@ncatark.uark.edu>]

No, I am not getting at either one of your characterizations
for my question:

"Farmers have too many obstacles in their way to allow exotic
plants to flourish?  Or that permaculture ethics should be waved
for anyone in a commercial venture?"

I was looking for practical examples that farmers would encounter
that ask the question are they working with nature or against
nature.

The farm sizes I provided offered an opportunity to look at
market farmers and small scale farmers, as well as medium
and large scale farmers.   PC ethics and principles exist, and
one of them is scale.  Yet, scale in itself does not exclude
PC implementation on the broadscale.  Yet, the examples
that came back were mostly generalized rhetoric about
agriculture.

If you take just one state, and then look at all the geographical
zones within that state, and you consider the differences in soils,
climate, water availability, market situation, infrastructure, history,
culture, and so on, you will find a great diverestiy of crops and
livestock and farmers and methods of production and scale of
production and even a great diversity amongst people and their
approaches and attitudes toward farming and land stewardship.

I guess I don't understand this thread.  What difference does
it make if a plant is exotic or native.   Agriculture is manipulation
of natural ecosystems.  Permaculture is cultivated ecology.

Steve Diver


Kirby Fry wrote:

> Steve,
>
> >> Give me about a dozen examples of what a farmer would encounter.   Let's
> talk about land management in terms of 0.5, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120,
> 360, 720, and 1500 acre size farms, OK?  <<
>
> What would a farmer encounter?  Well, let's first consider a principle of
> scale that, the larger a farm is the less likely it will be sustainable and
> the more likely it's pollution by-products will reach lethal concentrations
> and go largely unused.  But specifically a farmer (in the U.S.A.) will
> encounter...
>
> Many weeds and woody plants coming up behind his plow which he would surely
> feel compelled to spray with round-up or 2-4-d.  Critters attacking his
> crops and endless efforts to eradicate such critters.  The loss of nearly
> all soil nutrients and minerals.  An increasing dependency on genetically
> modified crops, the latest super hormones and deviously clever chemical
> cocktails.  New and intriguing outbreaks of BSE (mad cow disease) and hoof
> and mouth disease.  Fertilizers destroying the soil microbes, collapsing his
> soils and causing algael blooms in local water ways.  Manure lagoons that
> the neighbors despise and the state never quite gets around to noticing.
> Freezing peaches towards the end of summer.  Overspraying pesticides and
> defoliants so that the once wildlife rich margins of his property won't even
> support a single tree.  The loss of all of his topsoil and organic matter.
> Subsidies that encourage him to produce a commodity in an already flooded
> market.
>
> What are you getting at, Steve, that Farmers have too many obstacles in
> their way to allow exotic plants to flourish?  Or that permaculture ethics
> should be waved for anyone in a commercial venture?
>
> At the very least we need to treat exotics like pollution and consider them
> to be an under-utilized resource.  At the best, we should be ecstatic that
> something manages to survive and cover the soil inspite all of our best
> efforts to denude the planet.
>
> Kirby Fry
>
> For the real scoop on environmental and social justice issues check out the
> archives of Democracy Now!
> http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/archive.html
>
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