permaculture

["ontignano" <ontignano@tiscali.fr>]

Hello Paul, the idea of exportation of fertility was very much at the heart
of Emilia's work here in France, and so too with her former partner, Marc
Bonfils. For Emilia, Masanobu Fukuoka was the pre-eminent exponent of what
she called 'soil's self-fertility'. Fukuoka makes it abundantly clear in
'One-Straw Revolution' that soil, left to itself, becomes more and not less
fertile.

What always seems to get overlooked in discussions of fertility is the
concept of life itself. While entropy might well be a scientific theory
relevant to physics it isn't necessarily a useful distinction within
agriculture, whose main preoccupation is life itself.

Very simply Emilia believed that given the appropriate use of rotation and
succession in market gardens (truck farms) and broadscale field crops,
returning all unused parts of the crops back to the field, then annual crops
can be grown in a soil that becomes progressively more fertile: This she
called Synergistic Agriculture.

Jamie

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Paul Park
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 8:00 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: [permaculture] Emelia Hazelip Quote re entropy

I found the following quote at http://www.seedballs.com/hazelip.html

"I truly believe that as long as we have not found peace with the soil, we
won't find peace above the ground. That as long as we justify the
exploitation of an organism, other exploitations will follow and we will
remain parasites, consuming more than participating and spiralling into
entropy until we commit mass suicide."

This relates to my previous post about exporting things from the land.  My
question is, is there any way to stop entropy, or can we merely slow it
down?  It seems that I remember from physics classes years ago that entropy
is inevitable.

Paul



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