permaculture

["Loren Davidson" <loren@farwalker.com>]

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Sharon Gordon" <gordonse@one.net>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date:  Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:26:47 -0400

>Radical Simplicity:Small Footprints on a Finite Earth, by Jim Merkel is due
>out in September.

So in order to move toward voluntary simplicity, I need to go buy another 
book on it in addition to any I already have? :)

  He and Erica/Rowan are the ones who have been working on
>experimenting through the Global Living Project with getting a person's
>footprint down to actively using 1 acre per person (out of 5-6 acres per
>person in the world) to supply all of one's needs.  



>If you'd like to design a small farm for your family based on actively using
>1 acre of land per person, in addition to design info from all the various
>permaculture books, the Jeavons book on How to Grow More Vegetables
>(etc) Than you Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than you Can Imagine, 6th
>ed has good info 

Actually...unless they've changed their focus since the earlier edition of 
HTGMV that I own, their goal has been to grow the entire nutritional needs of 
a family of 4 on 2100 square feet. They came up with this number by taking 
the total amount of arable land on Earth and dividing it by some projected 
total population number, assuming that we can achieve a steady population at 
some point in the next 50 years.

Granted, this is just the agriculture portion of one's total footprint, and 
doesn't include building materials, materials for clothing, etc. But that's 
the number I recall, and one of their small booklets describes a system they 
were working out for that 2100 square feet, including growing biomass for 
compost and mulch.

Loren


--
Loren Davidson    loren@farwalker.com 
Permaculturist, healer, singer/songwriter
http://www.earthspring.org/loren/
Music Website: http://www.lorendavidson.com
"SUVs: We're changing the climate - ask us how."
--


____________________________________________________________
Free 20MB Web Site Hosting and Personalized E-mail Service!
Get It Now At Doteasy.com http://www.doteasy.com/et/