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  • From: Steve Diver <steved@ncatark.uark.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Creating a Pc outreach organization
  • Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 10:40:06 -0500

Greetings Charles -

Thanks, you've provided the additional clarification I was
seeking and it helps to get a second viewpoint where you
expand what you're talking about.

Essentially, I agree with your idea.

ATTRA it should be noted is geared to farmers and others
in *commercial* agriculture in the United States only. This
includes market farmers, small farmers, large farmers, land
owners examining their farming options, and part-time farmers,
as well as NGO's, USDA, NRCS, landf-grant universities,
Extension Service, and media who work with farmers. We
do not have funds to work with farmers in other countries.
We do not have funds to support homesteaders and home
gardeners. Though, the ATTRA web page is of course
available to anybody in the world with computer access.

A permaculture research service would offer a different
focus and a different audience than ATTRA. There will
always be some cross-over and cross-pollination, but
Pc essentially has a different focus.

In my experience, I see Pc benefiting home owners, gardeners,
homesteaders, and communities more immediately than
farmers. Thus, the needs of the Pc audience and the topics
targeted towards a Pc audience are really quite different
than the farmer-audience addressed by ATTRA.

Pc provides a framework for homes and villages to become
more sustainable through design and implementation
of technologies and systems that create a small ecological
footprint, that bring synergy and productivity and ecology
to their surroundings.

When you list the topics that Pc addresses, you will notice
that a large portion of items do not relate to agriculture:

green architecture, composting toilets, rainwater catchment,
solar and renewal energy, etc.

When I drive through cities, the biggest impact I see on
worldwide sustainability is built structures and transportation.
This is where energy is consumption and pollution with
accompanying global warming gasses are created in greatest
quantities. It takes a lot of fossil fuel energy to heat and cool
homes and building, and it takes a lot of fossil fuel energy to
run automobiles and trucks.

Agriculture is out there, but I don't see Pc having great impacts
on farms. Let farmers farm and let's focus on creating
sustainable infrastructure to help farmers adopt sustainable
farming technologies. There are many fine organic
farming and sustainable agriculture organizations and
networks scattered all over the place working to help
farmers. The quality of information presented at their
conferences is very good. Farmers have all kinds of
support. Yet, it is the macro-economics of globalized
and market driven and government subsidy agriculture
that dictates limits of technology adoption for farmers. We
should also not homogenize agriculture or homegenize farmers
as if they are alike. We have to keep in mind that we are
talking about vast differences in agriculture from place to
place and person to person and farm to farm.

The biggest impact from Pc will come when whole communites
conduct a Pc audit or an energy audit of some sort, and start
drawing relationships between their built structures and
transportation systems and local food production systems.

Local food production systems may include home gardens,
community gardens, linkage to local food production including
farmers' markets and CSA's, and foodshed analysis within
a 150 mile radius of the farm.

A Pc outreach organization on a global scale, such as you
suggest for so many countries we refer to a 3rd World,
would be a major undertaking. Yet, web-based delivery
would make it feasible.

The web already provides great quantities of helpful
information on permaculture, today. But I suppose that
a single web page with a central Pc focus could be helpful to
increase exposure to Pc among communities and villages.

Again, I point to Smart Communities Network managed
by NCAT as a model of a very large undertaking to
provide some of the resources permaculture needs
to support this adoption of sustainable living.

Smart Communities Network
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov

Best,
Steve Diver
ATTRA


Charles Knoles wrote:

> > Message: 6
> > Date: Sun, 01 Sep 2002 18:06:25 -0500
> > From: Steve Diver <steved@ncatark.uark.edu>
> > To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> > Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: big ag in Pc
> > Reply-To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> >
> > ATTRA already does what you describe below, or
> > much of what you describe below...
> >
> > *give information to farmers of all scale
> > *well proven techniques for their bio-region
> > *alley-cropping silviculture, mechanical harvesting of
> > perrenial polycultures, agroforestry, etc.
> >
>
> Dear Steve,
>
> I know that ATTRA is doing many great things including many of the things
> I outlined hence my reference to it. The purpose of starting another
> organisation would be that it would have a specific focus on permaculture
> worldwide whereas ATTRA seems to have a focus on all forms of sustainable
> agriculture in North America.
>
> The original impetus for this idea came from trying to help several
> sustainable ag. projects that my college is involved with in tropical
> countries. Trying to get a hold of useful info for their projects that
> related to permaculture was extremely difficult and I think it would be
> nice -considering the amount of outreach work permies get up to- if we had a
> place that functioned similar to ATTRA that focused on their needs.
>
> > Well, to be honest, the mechanical harvest of perennial
> > polycultures does not exist so that's your answer on that
> > item.
>
> Right. On the other hand I believe this is something we need. I put this
> in because I went to a talk by a permie up in Wisconsin named Mark Sheppard.
> He has planted out rows of Badgersett chestnuts and hazelnuts undercropped
> with N-fixers with asparagus growing in between the rows to give an interim
> yield. He was talking about using modified conventional farm equipment to
> harvest his nuts when they got to maturity. I know that mechanical
> harvesting is also high on the research priority list for the land institute
> so it is possible that we might see this in the future.
>
> > What do you see as far as.... "These studies would be made
> > available to farmers in a simplified practical format."
>
> Basically, just translating scientific english into spoken english and
> publishing it.
>
> > It might be useful to get a second viewpoint of what you
> > are seeking. What do you want to see, what is the
> > need and reason for it, and what effect will it have?
>
> Will do. Hopefully I've done it to a small extent in this post but I'd
> like to get your further input as I develop this idea further. Thanks for
> the insights.
>
> Charlie
>
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