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  • From: Lee Flier <lflier@mindspring.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Make the toolbox bigger/ was It's free on the web/ was question about PCDcourseprices
  • Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:43:18 -0400

GlobalCirclenet wrote:

I do think your Gaia's Garden book is helpful. However, backyard gardens
that "combine low environmental impact, low maintenance once established,
and high yields with elegant aesthetics" may attract those who can afford
"elegant esthetics", but doesn't reach the broader potential of
permaculture to alter industrial agriculture.

I disagree. A great deal of the richest farmland in the US has been converted to suburban homes. If suburbanites were to start growing food on their own land (or paying itinerant permies to do it for whole neighborhoods), this could in fact reduce the burden on industrial agriculture. The first step in that process is removing the social stigma of food gardening. A lot of middle class suburbanites think of food gardening as unsightly, relegating it to an ugly row-cropped tomato patch in the back yard, or a few container pots full of herbs, if they produce any food at all. Mostly it's just chemically maintained lawns. Lawns are in fact more environmentally destructive than agriculture. Moving the ever increasing suburban population away from lawns and into producing much of their own food in an organic way, would be a very big step in the right direction IMO. This doesn't mean anybody should stop their efforts to effect change in larger scale agriculture, but I do think people tend to underestimate the potential impact of suburban permaculture, not only on the environment itself but on cultural barriers to the further advancement of permaculture.

Lee




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