permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

> Industrial Ecology and Ecological Engineering
> Opportunities for Symbiosis
> David R. Tilley
> In The Journal of Industrial Ecology
> Volume 7, Issue 2 / Spring 2003
> -
> The first symbiotic area, ecosystem engineering for byproduct recovery,
> is defined as the design, creation, and management of living ecosystems
> (e.g., forests, wetlands) that utilize the by-products of industrial
> systems. Examples of this exist, including constructed wetlands for lead

> recovery and phyto-mining of nickel tailings. The second symbiotic focus
> is entitled “ecosystem analogues for industrial ecology,” which fits
> with a founding principle of IE to strive to have industry emulate the
> energy efficiencies and material cycles of natural ecosystems. This
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For starters, thinking about the Carbon Cycle and practical application and use of recycled livestock manures and quarry rock dusts on 
farmland, a new form of agriculture is suggested, more efficient, a food/fiber production system that emulates and ultimately is in sync 
with Nature. An array of futuristic natural farming methodologies that allow soil to evolve, undisturbed, into a living system that hosts an 
increasingly diverse array of organisms that contributes to its tilth and fertility and its ability to promote robust plant growth while 
remaining a resilient system able to maintain and enhance its productivity through future applications of soil amendments of all sorts.

This quote from Paul's post seems appropriate in its emphasis of the 
importance of developing soil that becomes self-maintaining:

> 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."

> focal area quantifies the ecological analogy and exploits the tremendous
> library of design alternatives that nature has developed over thousands
> of years to deal with varied resource situations. The third focal area
> is termed “ecosystem information engineering.” The means by which living
> ecosystems have created robust knowledge systems and information cycles
> should be understood in terms useful for managing current society’s
> information explosion. As industrial society evolves toward the
> information society, holistic models are needed that account for the
> available energy and material resources required to operate effective
> information ecosystems, such as service industries.

I personally believe in massive applications of manures, composts and rock 
dusts
accompanied by extensive (hopefully) one-time tillage and bed formation.

Comments welcome.
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech